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littlemisstfc · 2 years ago

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EARTHSPARK IS SO GOOD, YOU GUYS. OH MY FUCKING GOD. 😩

Hello boyos, gorls, and nonbinary pals. It’s been a while since I’ve written a huge writing on this silly platform, huh? Lol.

Anyways, quick updates: I’m releasing a new video sometime this month, which is me ranting about the misogyny of the Bayverse. Fun times. Fun times. :D Also, I’ll be at TFCon LA 2023 next week for Saturday and Sunday. Feel free to come by and say hi to me. :)

Back to the review…so….the 2010s to early 2020s has been a very weird decade for Transformers. Not only for the Bayverse movies (my beloathed), but for the tv shows. While Age of Extinction is my guilty pleasure and Dark of The Moon is legitimately good, the movies are declining in popularity and quality, thus resulting in a huge reboot to fix up Bay’s mess. That resulted in Bumblebee (2018), a gem that was the light at the end of a very frustrating tunnel. Transformers Prime started strong, but then turned into a mish mash of wasted potential and became a frustrating chore to watch by the end. RID 2015 is a show that exists. Rescue Bots is great, and Academy is fine for what it is. If you read my review of BotBots before the accidental deletion, that show is pretty good. However, it’s a show where someone might gotta have to take it or leave it. In the middle of the downward spiral of the Aligned continuity and the movie universe rebuilding itself from Bayverse’s mess, Transformers Cyberverse is the true outlier. It’s so great I made an entire video about it that you can check it out in the link below. 🤭

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Now, I wanted to bring this up when talking about Earthspark because ngl, I was worried about the potential likelihood of the show falling into the pittraps of the Aligned continuity in the first round. Now that I’ve watched the show, I can confidently tell you that IT’S EVEN BETTER THAN I EXPECTED. WE HAVE A FUCKING MIRACLE AT THE END OF A TURBULENT DECADE.

This show is thankfully so much amazing and cool and wholesome, JUST LIKE IT HAS NO RIGHT IN BEING THIS GOOD. True, like I always say, there is no such thing as a perfect show. This show definitely have flaws, but they’re not detriment to the show’s quality. It’s basically everything I ever want from a Transformers show, including even subversions of the Transformers formula like Cyberverse.

Let’s go on this little journey together on everything I like and dislike about the show. Spoiler warning here since this show is best experienced blind and I’m not like some people who decided it’s a good idea to not put spoilers behind a tag or filter. Don’t be like these people. Don’t spoil the show for those who cannot access it. Don’t do it. 🙂

Anyways. 3, 2, 1, Pingu.

The Good, The Bad, The Skullcruncher:

Let’s get the elephant in the room clear: the art style is…an art style that exists. It’s not for everyone and it did take me a while to warm up to it. However, over time, I’ve gotten used to it since the amazing animation and fight choreography are great enough to make up for the art style.

The school episode is meh. It’s nothing interesting of note except the Terran parts and frankly, I find the two bullies pretty annoying. However, it does deserve points for having the amazing Daran Norris back in a Transformers show. At least it is not boring, but it’s not worth noting.

The humor sometimes doesn’t land, especially since modern humor such as the iPad environment we’re in is a delicate line these days. The humor is Yeessss tier most of the time though.

I’m glad that Hashtag didn’t keep her weird accent when she first appeared. That’s a plus. 👍🏽

Bee did come across as a bit of an asshole at first, which was admittingly something I wasn’t vibing with. However, thanks to the power of good character development, I warmed up to him. However, a counterpoint is that it’s a unique subversion of how Bee is introduced from other Transformers media.

I have no idea how to feel about Mandroid. It feels like he really doesn’t have much of a significant impact on the story, since GHOST are the main antagonist and the Decepticons being more of a morally gray chaotic neutral type characters. After the end of the first part, I only have questions of where the hell is he. It’s such a shame, since he has a lot of interesting potential and he has a banger voice actor behind him. At least he came back in the finale episode for reasons I’ll get to in the positives section of this review.

Anyways…yeah, that’s all I have to talk about in terms of critiques. Let’s move onto the good stuff: EVERYTHING ELSE. 🥳

A Night of a Thousand Bumblebees:

This show gets points for referencing the Optimist Prime and Negatron meme.

The main characters are just so charming and lovable, I WILL PROTECT THEM WITH MY LIFE. The Malto family is the main human characters done right. Dot is such a badass with such an enduring friendship with Megatron, along with being a loving mom and best wife to Alex. She’s also really great disability representation, showing that even with the prosthetic leg, she’s still a badass. Speaking of Alex…this man has no right in being such a lovable dork who loves his family and having so much swag. I want that Bumblebee suit. Mo and Robbie are very likable and adorable, especially regarding to their relationship with their Terran siblings. Speaking of the Terrans, they’re just utter darlings and a joy to watch. Twitch is hyperactive and cute, Thrash has a lot of funny moments and a likable personality, Hashtag is surprisingly enjoyable considering her powers of the Internet, I would die for Jawbreaker, AND NIGHTSHADE IS THE AUTISM CREATURE. I fucking love them, not only for being already being great nonbinary representation but also has a lot of relatable quirks such as their mechanic hyperfixation and their difficulty in having social interactions with other people. And…THE SCENE WHERE THEY SAY THEY ARE THEY/THEM HAD ME SOBBING SO HARD. It’s just amazing to see the franchise that helped me out so much throughout my life validate my existence and the existence of so many others like me. ✨😭✨

LOOK AT FLUFFY EARS. SHE’S SO ADORABLE. 🥺

ELITA IS MY PINK WIFE. I FUCKING LOVE HER. SHE CAN TOP ME. ✨😩✨

Bumblebee took a while for me to warmed up to him, but he eventually becomes the Bubblewrap we all know and love. Also, his relationship with Breakdown, although brief, is so wholesome. 🥺

Other things I love is the voice acting, including the welcomed returns of Transformers alumni such as Steven Blum and Roger Craig Smith, the animation is beautiful, the fight scenes are bonkers and well choreographed, the humor is yeesss tier, and overall, the messages such as having a good relationship with your family and good teamwork. Delicious food. ✨

I really love what this show is doing with Megatron and Optimus. Their relationship is perhaps my favorite part of the show. You can definitely feel not only how close they are as fwiends, but you can see both sides of the idea they represent: what if every bot deserve second chances? I appreciate the nuance to the Autobot vs Decepticon conflict, something that is definitely built up from Cyberverse. Here, it explores in depth about the more gray and complex areas of the conflict, where neither side is right nor wrong. However, it’s a reasonable two sides of a coin story that is explained well enough to appeal to both kids and adults. I also like how Megatron and Optimus are willing to hear each other out even through their disagreements. Optimus is also very likable and adorable, being a big ol dork you cannot help but be charmed by. Now…let’s focus on Megatron now.

I thought “Decay” was my favorite episode for exploring Optimus’ and Megatron’s relationship in depth, and bitter divorce ex Soundwave…until “Warzone” came out. This Megatron manages to fix the main issue of Autobot Megatron: it makes sure that he has to work hard to earn trust in his journey of redemption. He is someone with a lot of regrets over how much destruction and devastation done to Cybertron, because of his actions. It doesn’t sugarcoat the realities of his redemption: there are people who are not gonna accept that he wants to end the war nor understand how much the war costed the Cybertronian people everything. The cherry on top of his lessons to the baby boo boos about not repeating the same mistakes the Transformers did is the presence of the flowers from the IDW. Quick summary: they represent how much lives are lost in a conflict. Just…the way it fell from the monument at the Spacebridge Memorial to Megatron gently picking it up and putting it back on it, symbolizing how much he truly changed for the better. After the fight with Shockwave, including all the heartbreaking LAYERS of the gravity of Megatron’s redemption, it concludes on a beautiful message that many people came learn from, especially in these current times. you cannot change the past, but if we learn about it, we will be able to not make those same mistakes ever again. Thus, “Warzone” is my favorite episode in the entire season. In fact, I want to dedicate an entire essay to how this series portrayed Megatron once everything is done and finished. We’ll come back to the topic soon, lads.

Also, I really love how the show is exploring the not so bright side of having bots on planet Earth. The finale episode is perhaps the episode that rivals “Warzone” for not only bringing more amazing nonbinary representation in the form of Sam (looking forward to seeing her and their relationship with Nightshade in future episodes), but for managing to tell a story of how to deal with racism (through the Terrans being treated as outsiders in the big city) without sugarcoating it and telling it in a way that kids can understand. Hashtag feels the most pain in being treated as an outsider, even with her family there to tell her that everything will be okay. Then…perhaps one of the darkest scenes of Transformers as a whole is when Mandroid took over her as an attempt to get rid of the baby boo bops and try to get Bumblebee’s parts, and feeds into her insecurities over whether or not she has the right to live on Earth. Through the use of mind tricks, he is a representation of all the disgusting ignorance and stupidity plaguing our real world right now, trying to “prove” that marginalized people, who are represented by the Terrans here, have no right to exist. However…then the Malto kids used the power of the Green Prime to reach out to Hashtag and let her know that everything will be okay. True, not everybody is going to be compassionate and understanding of people who are different from them. There are genuinely evil and hateful people who will never be negotiated with and will never understand the concept of being a decent human being. However…it doesn’t mean that you should let them get to you. You deserve the right to be yourself and live your life the way you want to live it. You are surrounded by people who love you and understand what you’re going through. You are not alone. You are good enough. In a time where we experience such amount of racism, misogyny, and homophobia in places in and out of the Transformers fandom…we need this message more than ever. We should not follow Mandroid’s hateful ideology. Instead, we should be the Maltos. Love will triumph over hate, and no matter how much the world tries to crush you, you are more than meets the eye in beautiful ways.

Conclusion: This is number three on the Transformers ranking list as of the time I am writing this. 💕

Transformers Earthspark is incredible. It has no right in getting everything so right. It’s a fantastic love letter to the Transformers franchise as a whole. Let the haters talk smack. I am confident in saying that this show is the ever rare Ultra Yesss tier 10/10.

Please check it out if you have accessibility to the show on any platform. I promise that you’ll not regret this fantastic start of a promising new future for Transformers. ❤️

#transformers #transformers: earthspark #transformers earthspark #val talks #Youtube

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somewandomnoob · 1 year ago

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-0- SWN

-0- She/they/it/he/ve

-0- When I have the motivation too, I make stimboards.

-0- I love obscure animated shows for some reason… And obscure games.

-0- AuDHD (Autism + ADHD)

-0- Please note that I am a minor and got into 2000s marvel shows because of comic youtubers, specifically one. I also got into it by watching reviews, which I also like, because who wants to watch a movie, when you can watch someone talk about it!

-0- FANDOMS -0-

X-Men: Evolution (current hyperfixiation), Sparklecare (and some of it's bigger aus), Miniforce, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, MCU (kinda), 101 Dalmatian Street, Cookie Run (Specifically CROB), Get THAT Mish!, and uhhh I forgor.

#pinned post #pin

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dweemeister · 4 years ago

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NOTE: This is the third film released theatrically during the COVID-19 pandemic that I am reviewing – I saw Raya and the Last Dragon at the Regency Theatres Directors Cut Cinema’s drive-in operation in Laguna Niguel, California. Because moviegoing carries risks at this time, please remember to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by your local, regional, and national health officials.

Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)

As Raya and the Last Dragon, directed by Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada and written by Qui Nguyen and Adele Lim, made its theatrical and streaming bow, the United States was grappling with a wave of highly-publicized hate incidents towards Asian-Americans in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This spike in racially-motivated verbal abuse, assaults, and homicides began with the pandemic and, frustratingly, had only been receiving national attention in these last few weeks. Despite the nation’s racist origins entwined with chattel slavery of black people and its continued unequal treatment of minorities including Asian-Americans, I am not qualified to say if the U.S. is “more” or “less racist” than other countries. But I can hardly think of any other people that interrogate racial inequality and oppression as much (and as publicly) as Americans – an undeniable strength. There was no way Raya and the Last Dragon’s cast and crew could have anticipated the film’s fraught timing, but the film provides a much-needed, positive, and heavily flawed, action-adventure romp drawn from Southeast Asian cultures.

The very notion that Walt Disney Animation Studios was attempting to craft a film using an amalgam of Southeast Asian cultures stoked my excitement and dread. Southeast Asian cultures – including, but not limited to, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam – are often lumped into those of East Asia (China, Korea, Japan), which dominate Asian-American depictions or Asian-influenced media in the United States. What gave me pause is that Disney’s track record in films featuring non-European-inspired characters and places inspired by non-European cultures is mixed. Aladdin (1992) and Pocahontas (1995) are aggregations of (and indulge in stereotypes towards) Arabs and indigenous Americans alike, especially in their presentations of “savagery” (Pocahontas in particular is guilty of false equivalences).

Cultural aggregations in fictional settings are not insensitive, per se. Yet, Disney’s stated intentions on this film are undermined by a voice cast ensemble almost entirely composed of actors of Chinese and Korean descent – you can bring up Adele Lim’s response to the voice casting controversy all you want, but her response contradicts the film’s promotion. Amid its gorgeous production and character design, Raya manages to avoid the worst mistakes of its Disney Renaissance predecessors. But its hero’s journey is too cluttered and too littered with the anachronistic and metatextual jokes plaguing the last decade’s Disney animated features.

Five centuries before the events of Raya and the Last Dragon, the land of Kumandra saw its people live in harmony with dragons. That relationship, however, would be devastated by the appearance of the Druun – a swirling, purple vortex that turns living beings into stone. In the conflict against the Druun, the last dragon, Sisu (Awkwafina), makes a fateful sacrifice to save Kumandra by concentrating the dragons’ collective power into a magical orb. Soon after, Kumandra’s five tribes – Fang, Heart, Spine, Tail, and Talon (named after parts of a dragon) – fight amongst each other for control of the orb (Heart eventually gains possession of it), effectively partitioning the land. In the present day, the Heart tribe’s Chief Benja (Daniel Dae Kim) proposes and hosts a feast-summit to discuss and heal Kumandra’s divisions. Benja has taught his daughter, Raya (Kelly Marie Tran), the ways of a warrior and the necessity for Kumandra’s tribes to realize their oneness. At the feast-summit, Raya befriends Namaari (Gemma Chan; Jona Xiao as young Namaari), the daughter of Fang Chief Virana (Sandra Oh). Predictably, Namaari betrays her new friend in an orchestrated ploy to pilfer the dragons’ orb for Fang. Just as the Druun make a surprise invasion of Heart, the botched heist sees the orb break into five, and each of the tribes makes off with part of the orb. It will be up to Raya to recover the other four pieces of the orb, lest Kumandra succumb to the Druun.

The film’s screenplay is, charitably, a mess. Though Qui Nguyen (primarily a playwright) and Adele Lim (2018’s Crazy Rich Asians) are the credited screenwriters, Raya’s phalanx of story credits (mostly full-time, white employees at the Disney studios) suggest studio interference. Raya seems as if it is trying to cleanly differentiate certain tribes as based on a certain Southeast Asian nation. Instead, it comes off as a brew of mish-mashed parts (this problem extends to the otherwise stunning animation). With the exception of those from the militant Fang, the bit characters from the various tribes do not behave any differently from the members of other tribes. The partition of Kumandra, five hundred years before the events of Raya, feels like as if it had never existed for lengthy stretches in this film.

After Kelly Marie Tran, as Raya, narrates the mythology and history of Kumandra in the opening minutes, the film’s structure tethers itself predictably to the monomyth. The fracturing of the dragon’s orb into five parts sends Raya onto a tedious adventure: the physical travel to a new part of Kumandra, introduction of a sidekick (all of them are comic reliefs), an action setpiece involving a necessary assist from new sidekick, and the integration of that sidekick into Raya’s ever-growing party. Lather, rinse, repeat. To squeeze the four other tribes into the film’s 107-minute runtime and set up a climax and resolving actions results in a frantically-paced movie. Almost all of the film’s dialogue is subservient to its structure, the hero’s journey. This disallows the viewer to learn more about our lead and her fellow adventurers. In arguably the most important example in how the dedication to story structure undermines the characters, take Raya’s repeated mentions to her newfound confidants that she has difficulty trusting others. Six years have passed since the day of Namaari’s betrayal and Raya’s discovery of Sisu. How has Raya’s sense of distrust evolved over time, and how does it manifest towards those of other tribes? Does it appear in moments without consequence to her quest, in gusts of casual cruelty? In terms of characterization, Raya is showing too little and telling just the basics – a dynamic that also applies to the film’s most important supporting characters.

Ever since Tangled (2010), the films of the Disney animated canon have increased their use of metatextual and anachronistic humor (e.g. Kristoff’s comment about Anna’s engagement to a person she just met in 2013’s Frozen and Maui’s Twitter joke in 2016’s Moana that still makes me gnash my teeth when I think about it). Invariably, the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has seen its brand of pathos-destroying humor bleed into the Disney animated canon and Star Wars. Like so many films in the Disney animated canon, Raya takes place in a fantastical location in a never-time far removed from the present. From the moment Raya meets Sisu, the circa-2020s humor is ceaseless. For Disney animated movies set in fantastical worlds, this sort of humor suits films that are principally comedies, such as The Emperor’s New Groove (2000) – a work that owes more to Looney Tunes than anything Disney has created. Instead, Raya’s comedy will suit viewers who frequent certain corners of the Internet, “for the memes.” Do Disney’s animation filmmakers believe the adults and children viewing their films so impatient and unintelligent about human emotions? That they will not accept a scene that deals honestly with betrayal, disappointment, heartbreak, or loss unless there is a snide remark or visual gag inserted within said scene or shortly afterward?

Raya seems like a film set to portray its scenarios with the gravity they require. But overusing Awkwafina’s Awkwafina-esque jokes and a DreamWorks- or Illumination Entertainment-inspired infant causing meaningless havoc will subvert whatever emotions Nguyen and Lim are attempting to evoke. These statements are not arguing that Raya and Disney’s animated films should be humorless, that Disney should stop casting an Awkwafina or an Eddie Murphy as comic relief. Instead, Raya is another case study in how Disney’s brand of ultramodern humor is overtaking their films’ integral dramatics. Raya is noisy, clamorous – no different than anything Disney has released in the last decade, save Winnie the Pooh (2011).

Production designers Helen Mingjue Chen, Paul A. Felix, and Cory Loftis have worked on films like Wreck-It Ralph (2012), Big Hero 6 (2014), or Zootopia (2016). Each of these films feature glamorous, near-future metropolises or sleek digital worlds. Where the tribespeople of Kumandra might not be behaviorally-differentiated, the color coding, lighting, and biomes of each of the five lands comprising Kumandra ably distinguishes Fang, Heart, Spine, Tail, and Talon from each other. As if taking cues from the production designs of Big Hero 6’s San Fransokyo and, to some extent, The King and I (1956), it is difficult to pin down specific influences on the clashing architectural styles within the lands, in addition to the unusually empty and cavernous palaces and temples and varying costumes. As picturesque as some of these lands are, the art direction does not help to empower the characteristic of the tribes and their native lands. Nor does James Newton Howard’s thickly-synthesized grind of an action score, which prefers to accompany the film’s excellent combat scenes rather than stake a clearer thematic identity for its own. Howard uses East and Southeast Asian instrumentations and influences in his music, but, disappointingly, they are heavily processed through synthetic elements and are played underneath the film’s sound mix.

Character art directors Shiyoon Kim (Tangled, 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) and Ami Thompson (2017’s MFKZ, 2018’s Ralph Breaks the Internet) embrace the (generally) darker and varying skin complexions of Southeast Asian peoples. The skin textures are among the best ever produced in a Disney CGI-animated feature, and the variety of face shapes – although still paling in comparison to the best hand-drawn features – is a pleasure to witness.

The number of films starring actors/voice actors of Asian descent (all-Asian or majority-Asian), animated or otherwise, and released by a major Hollywood studio makes for a brief list. Raya and the Last Dragon joins an exclusive club that includes the likes of The Dragon Painter (1919), Go for Broke! (1951), Flower Drum Song (1961), The Joy Luck Club (1993), and Crazy Rich Asians (2018). Among those movies, Raya is the only entry specifically influenced by Southeast Asian cultures. Its cast may be headlined by Kelly Marie Tran (whose skill as a voice actor is one of the film’s most pleasant surprises), but most of the roles went to those of Chinese or Korean descent. No disrespect intended towards Gemma Chan, Sandra Oh, or veteran actress Lucille Soong, but the majority East Asian cast only serves to further monolithize Asians – as the amalgamated story, plot details, and production design have already done. I will not second-guess any fellow person of Southeast Asian descent if they feel “seen” through Raya. What a compliment that would be for this film. How empowering for that person. But the life experiences of those of East Asian and Southeast Asian descent are markedly different. Disney’s casting decisions in Raya – all in the wake of the disastrous Western and Eastern reception of the live-action Mulan (2020) – have revealed a fundamental lack of effort or understanding about the possibilities of a sincere attempt at representation.

To this classic film buff, the discourse surrounding Raya strikes historical chords. When Flower Drum Song was released to theaters, the film was labeled by the American mainstream as the definitive Asian-American movie. Opening during the height of the American Civil Rights Movement, the film (and the musical it adapts) looked like nothing released by Hollywood (and on Broadway) at that time. In that midcentury era of rising racial consciousness and the lack of opportunities for Asian-Americans in Hollywood, the marking of Flower Drum Song as the absolute pan-Asian celebration was bound to happen – however unfair the distinction. Even though Rodgers and Hammerstein (two white Jewish men who made well-meaning, problematic attempts to craft musicals decrying racial prejudice and social injustices) composed the musical and zero Asian people worked behind the camera, those labels remained. With some differences in who wrote the source material, The Joy Luck Club and Crazy Rich Asians have followed Flower Drum Song’s fate in their categorizations. Will Raya? Time will be the judge, the only judge.

Before time passes judgment, we have some present-day hints. Though not released by major studios, the quick succession of The Farewell (2019) and Minari (2020) point to an experiential specificity that Raya attempts, but never comes close to achieving. Whether through aggregation or specificity, Hollywood benefits from the perspectives of underrepresented groups. Widespread claims that Raya too closely copies Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008) reflect that dearth of East Asian and Southeast Asian representation in American media. For too many, ATLA is the Asian fantasy. These simplistic observations and bad-faith criticisms (one could rebuke Disney’s vaguely-European princess films on the same principles, but I find this as lazy as the bad-faith ATLA criticisms) also suggest a lack of understanding that Asian-inspired stories are drawing from similar tropes codified by Asian folklore and narratives centuries old. If one reads through this reviewer’s write-ups, you will find an abiding faith in the major Hollywood studios – past, present, and future – to be artistically daring and to genuinely represent long-excluded persons. Many might see this faith as misplaced. But even in the major studios’ flawed attempts to depict underrepresented groups, like Raya, they concoct astonishing sights and form moving links to the cinematic past.

Assuming you have not skipped to this paragraph, the write-up that you have read may seem scathing to your eyes. Raya is no Disney classic – there has not been one for some time. However, I thoroughly enjoyed my first viewing of Raya. After a few weeks’ worth of keeping my agony private over the recent uproar over attacks on persons of Asian descent in America, it was a surreal experience to see even an amalgamated celebration of Southeast Asian culture. Over this last year, we have lost people and things that emboldened us and ennobled us. In this season of unbelonging and otherizing feelings for Asians in America, Raya’s timing is fortuitous. It is emboldening and ennobling.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

#Raya and the Last Dragon #Don Hall #Carlos López Estrada #Kelly Marie Tran #Awkwafina #Izaac Wang #Gemma Chan #Daniel Dae Kim #Benedict Wong #Sandra Oh #Thalia Tran #Lucille Soong #Alan Tudyk #Qui Nguyen #Adele Lim #James Newton Howard #Disney #My Movie Odyssey

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 5 years ago

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Michael After Midnight: Hellboy

I really love Guillermo Del Toro’s work. I really do. His first Hellboy movie was the first film I ever saw from him and was a gateway drug to the rest of his filmography, Ron Perlman, and Hellboy himself. Because of the film and Teen Titans, Perlman became one of my favorite actors, and because of the film, I checked out the sequel and all the animated movies. I never got into the comics unfortunately, but it’s safe to say that Hellboy had an impact on me.

But, like… I really think people hold it and its sequel in too high of a regard. GDT’s Hellboy movies are good movies, don’t misunderstand me, but I wouldn’t really say they’re some of GDT’s best. The first film has a lot of great ideas but is bogged down by the fact it has a stupid, pointless love triangle with a bland everyman character and doesn’t let Doug Jones do Abe’s voice, and the second film can get a bit too silly to the point where there is a phantom Seth MacFarlane in a diving suit doing a bad German accent. It’s a testament to Ron Perlman, Doug Jones, and the effects that they can carry these films on the force of their personalities and spectacle alone. They’re fun action movies, but I think they lack a lot of the depth of GDT’s films like Pan’s Labyrinth and especially The Shape of Water or even the sheer awesome value of something like Pacific Rim. They’re worthy films in the man’s filmography, but they aren’t his artistic masterpieces.

Which made it so weird to me when this movie was announced, this reboot of a property anyone with any sense knew was long dead, and people started treating GDT’s movies like cinema’s Holy Grail. I love the combination of GDT and Perlman as much as anyone else guys, but come on, I’d rather have more Hellboy and have GDT finally take us to the Mountains of madness than have him fight an uphill battle to get a third Hellboy film made. And it’s not like this movie was rushed out immediately, this franchise got the reboot ten years later. People were seriously getting mad because a dead film series was getting rebooted just because of nostalgia. Again, can’t stress enough that I love Del Toro, I love Perlman, and the Hellboy movies they made together kick ass… but at some point you have to let go and move on, and hope for better things. Frankly, as I alluded to before, Del Toro’s Lovecraft adaptation is something I’m far more excited to see than I would be another Hellboy film from him.

God, what a detour that was, huh? I haven’t even talked about the actual movie I’m reviewing yet… well, despite everything, despite it being a reboot of a beloved but very dead franchise, despite suffering a lot of executive meddling and behind-the-scenes drama, despite it bombing at the box office due to poor release scheduling which leaves any sequels in doubt… it’s actually a pretty good film. Like, genuinely good, I wouldn’t even say “so bad it’s good,” though it really, really pushes it at times.

For instance, the plot is utter hogwash. It’s a bunch of mystical bullshit that just happens to get Hellboy from scene to scene and show us some cool magical shit, because while the story itself is dumb, the background and lore of the world is most certainly not. It’s an absolute mish-mash of all sorts of fantasy tropes, with the devil, King Arthur, Baba Yaga, giants, Mexican vampires, werecats, and fairies all thrown into the mix, with sprinklings of the Bible, Rasputin, Atlantis, Nazis, and whatnot thrown in for good measure. It’s the exact sort of crazy crossover fairytale madness I love about Hellboy. Baba Yaga in particular is fantastic and horrifying, with her one major scene really stealing the show, and the demons from Hell that pop in towards the end likewise leave an impression with their fantastically creative designs and gory methods of murder. Ah yes, there’s the biggest plus this movie has: the gore. The sheer levels of bloody violence this movie delivers in its fight scenes is nothing short of hilariously beautiful. Special mention has to go to the demon attack sequence at the end, which is like a highlight reel of blood and guts.

The movie definitely crammed a lot in to try and build up the world for a sequel, which is a risky thing for these big comic book universe films, and ultimately I don’t think it truly paid off well for it, sadly. I did like a lot of the backstory given to us, but a lot of the time it felt like it was bogging down the pacing. It’s like every time we have a new character, they have to spend five minutes detailing this time Hellboy pissed in their Cheerios and that’s why they hate monsters or whatever. Heck, even in a flashback a character kind of pauses to kind of explain what they’re about. It adds to the silliness, sure, but I feel like they should have slowed down and kind of eased into the worldbuilding instead of getting overexcited and blowing their load so quick.

The characters are mostly okay. Ian McShane is literally incapable of being bad, and getting to hear him say “fuck” with alarming regularity is great, and David Harbour is definitely a worthy succesor to Perlman in taking up the big red fist. The rest of the cast, though? They’re mostly just okay, and even the better ones like Hellboy’s sidekicks for the journey Alice and Ben are kind of thrown at us, show off their powers, and then get sidelined for a lot of the movie so Hellboy can punch everything, though Ben at least gets to help in the climactic fight and everyone shares a cool action scene at the end. Speaking of the climactic battle though, the climax as a whole is simultaneously cool and underwhelming, with Milla Jovovich’s big bad Nimue going down like a Milla Jovobitch. Nimue is not an awful protagonist, and she does have some good backstory to her, but ultimately she’s a bit underwhelming as an antagonist, though this is pretty standard for Hellboy movies after the first one. If nothing else, she gets defeated with the most amazingly bad pun imaginable, so she’s not on my shit list.

Frankly it’s really hard to quantify why I like this film; most would argue my criticism of the film would make it bad at worst, “so bad it’s good” at best, but I don’t think either criteria fits it, I think it’s a genuinely good film, just not a great one. It’s fun, it’s goofy, it’s cheesy, it’s gory, and even if it is a little dumb it has lot of good lore and absurd amounts of backstory for every character. This will be a weird comparison, but I feel like the comic book movie I’d say it most reminds me of is Suicide Squad, mainly because both films are dumb plots filled with interesting characters and lore, but where Suicide Squad is an entertaining hot mess, Hellboy is more akin to a very gory cheesy 80s/90s fantasy film.

I’d recommend this movie. It’s the sort of film you want to watch if you don’t want to think to hard and just want to have some gory fun. I think more open minded Hellboy fans will like it, and anyone who just likes big dumb action movies or cheesy dark fantasy films will get a kick out of this. It’s really not a completely bad movie by any means, but it certainly is a bit more bloated and less polished than it could have been, kind of like a Pirates of the Caribbean sequel.

I’m no oracle or anything, but I kind of see this film eventually developing a cult following, a sentiment Milla Jovovovich shares. It certainly has the makings of one – bad box office, critical revilement, rejection by audiences at first, lots of cheese, good ideas buried under the lack of polish, great ideas sticking out in the mix – but only time will tell. Frankly I don’t think it’s any worse than the other Hellboy films, and is an enjoyable take on the character in its own right. I hope it manages to finds its audience eventually, and while I don’t think it will ever be as big or beloved as fellow critically reviled campy superhero film Venom, I think it deserves at least a fraction of the respect that movie got.

#Michael After Midnight #Review #Movie review #Hellboy #Hellboy 2019 #David Harbour #Ian McShane #comic book movie #fantasy #dark fantasy #demons and shit

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popatochisssp · 6 years ago

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How are the boys with memes? Like who keeps up with the freshest memes, who has no clue what they are, and who (heaven forbid) uses Facebook mom memes?

I should be embarrassed by how ready to answer this ask I am. Well anyway, here goes! XD

Meme Fluent: Sans (Undertale), Papyrus (Undertale), Rus (Swapfell Papyrus), Papy (Horrortale Papyrus)

Can At Least Ask Where The Bathroom Is In Meme: Paps (Underswap Papyrus), Jasper (Underfell Sans), Slate (Horrortale Sans)

Meme-blivious: Sky (Underswap Sans), Pyre (Underfell Papyrus), Mal (Swapfell Sans)

And now specifics, because I have those, because I am way too prepared for this and have thought this out in detail with their Top Two favorite genres of meme because I am a meme-loving fuck, myself:

Sans (Undertale): Of course he’s hip to the meme scene. No explanation necessary there, except for the types of memes he’s into. Minions memes? Minions memes. He is a troll and a garbage sort of person, so he both ironically and unironically loves Minions. The cornier and more played out the meme, the more he loves it and shares it with all his family and friends to the point that they start to hate him. He exits way too many text conversations with the gif of Stuart walking to the pool in the little red speedo and everyone is very sick of it. But another thing genuinely loves is those funny product reviews people do of stuff: When somebody leaves a long review on a useless or silly product, that is his jam. His longest running favorite is literally everything posted about sugar-free gummy bears, but whether the review is sarcastic or overly dramatic in tone, he gets a good, long chuckle out of the stuff these people come up with and is at any moment a few hours away from trying his hand at the medium himself.

Papyrus (Undertale): More meme-savvy than you’d expect, but he doesn’t sleep much and most of the stuff he likes to do out of the house have ‘reasonable business hours,’ whatever that means, so the witching hours are his internet time! He’s a blogger at heart, though, and his favorites are WarriorMale and shitty-car-mods-daily– the former because he deeply resonates with the fighting-positive spirit of it, and the latter because they are so wrong and he has so much to say about all those incredible cars!

Sky (Underswap Sans): Doesn’t have much spare time to spend on the internet, so he is almost meme-illiterate, and the ones he does know are usually pretty old. He loves fun and positivity, so any of those image edits about loving and supporting your friends get a smile out of him, and doggo memes crack him the fuck up, every time. Heck, they do him the real big laughter! Bamboozled again!

Paps (Underswap Papyrus): He’s online a decent amount, but definitely not enough to understand every single meme he sees. He gets the gist of the really popular ones and has a tendency to hold onto his favorites a little longer than their shelf-life, but who decides a meme is dead, anyway? He loves The Onion headlines as reaction images, and he never fails to chuckle at a good, old fashioned Cask of Amontillado meme. In fact, he has a whole store of them printed out just to look at later. He keeps them down in the basement, would you like to see them?

Jasper (Underfell Sans): Similar to Paps, he spends some time on the internet, but not that much–he generally figures he has better shit to do, but it’s fun for unwinding a little every now and then. He is The Worst with his memeing, though, because his favorites are engineering fails and uncomfortable images. Mailboxes built in the middle of a driveway and ramps with railings through the middle are hilariously stupid to him, but he also gets a very mean-spirited chuckle out of sending people things like horses with dog-mouths, or a hunk of meat decorated to look like a donut, stuff that’ll make just about anyone go, “Hmm, don’t like that.” If looking at it fills you with discomfort and possibly even anger, he will locate it and send it to you at two in the morning.

Pyre (Underfell Papyrus): Is not even really sure what a meme is. Has way better shit to do in real life, or at least believes that he does, to be online very much at all! That said, he does have a small collection of gifs from all the reality shows and things with Real Housewives in them to use as reaction images because one thing he can really appreciate is the kind of petty, cattiness those ladies get up to and he likes to co-opt it when someone’s giving him attitude over text. Another thing he likes, though he has no idea that it was ever a meme or even meme-adjacent, is the Troubled Birds images– he actually has the physical book, he got it as a gift from Jasper and he’d never admit it but it is genuinely a treasured possession of his. HE IS LOOKING FOR TROUBLE AND IF HE CANNOT FIND IT, HE WILL CREATE IT!

Mal (Swapfell Sans): Actually the worst about memes because he knows what they are, but…well, there’s no other way to put it, he’s the Facebook mom memer, it’s him. He adores wine-mom memes especially, as a wine-drinker himself, but he’s also a huge fan of those ecards with sassy, bitchy messages on them. “I need to stop asking people ‘how stupid can you be?’ They’re taking it as a challenge!” That’s the kind of thing that gets a laugh from him and he always sends it to his brother who just sighs every time he sees one at this point.

Rus (Swapfell Papyrus): Now Rus spends a lot of time on the internet and it shows because probably his favorite sort of meme is what everybody keeps calling a resurgence in dadaist absurdism. Deep-fried images that don’t seem to make any sense, memes with at least twelve layers of meme-history that you need a Level 50 understanding of the internet to get, he loves those, which especially frustrates his brother because he doesn’t understand what Rus is laughing at??? WHAT IS FUNNY ABOUT THIS THING!!! …So naturally, the most confusing and weird ones are Rus’ favorites to send along to make his bro all pissy and confused, revenge for the daily stream of Mom Memes he gets from him. But more for himself, Rus is also subscribed to several channels and blogs that do stim or satisfying videos. They’re calming and…well, satisfying to him, and he likes to watch those whenever he’s stressed out. Frosting ones are probably his favorites, if pressed he might admit he thinks they’re even more satisfying than eating what the frosting’s going onto.

Slate (Horrortale Sans): He’s on the internet plenty! There’s just no guarantee that whatever the latest in meme culture is will stick in his skull from day to day, so he’s not always as up-to-date as he could be. Still, he has a couple of big favorites in the meme trends, and the biggest one is vine compilations! He loves those, vines are short and he doesn’t have the longest short-term memory, but seven seconds is very doable for him. There’s also a lot of repeated vines across compilations, so by virtue of seeing it over and over again, he tends to remember more vines than he forgets, which is awesome! He loves referencing a vine and getting a chuckle of understanding out of someone, it’s been awhile since he’s been able to be on the inside of an inside joke! Another trend he likes is the rating/reviews of stuff, like emojis or animals. The glib tone and nonsensical criteria as to what makes an ideal XYZ is just really funny to him, and since those things usually also come in big, compiled posts, each individual review is short enough to read and move onto the next instead of getting so in-depth into a text-wall that he starts to forget where he started.

Papy (Horrortale Papyrus): Also doesn’t sleep much and spends a lot of his night on the internet! His personal taste in memery is a little mish-mosh though, because his big favorites are the translated Russian cat memes and any blog he can find that posts weird thrift store finds. The cat memes should require no explanation, but as for the thrift store stuff…If ever there exists a picture of an odd and/or utterly bizarre thing that makes you wonder how and why it ever came to exist, he’s both thrilled and delighted by it. He loves quirky and unique stuff and thrift stores are full of it! Seeing all the strange things people stumble upon makes him want to start doing some thrifting in real life to make finds of his own, but he also just loves to see what other people have discovered. He sends the most bafflingly odd ones to his brother… who usually responds with the Look What I Bought vine and the text, “its you.”

#anonymous #headcanons #undertale #sans #papyrus #underswap #us!sans #us!papyrus #underfell #uf!sans #uf!papyrus #swapfell/fellswap #sf!sans #sf!papyrus #horrortale #ht!sans #ht!papyrus #memes #old memes

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averics-blog · 6 years ago

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hey there demons, it’s me, ya ghoul -- bex. i’m twenty-fun years old. i use they/them pronouns. i live in est. some fun facts about me are: i can sing the alphabet backwards, i’m in a sorority, and i am a culinary major. i’m super stoked about this rp. below the cut is some facts about my darling avery stone, as well a few ideas for wanted connections. if you like this, i’ll come slide into your dms + we can plot.

( KIERNAN SHIPKA + SHE/THEY+ NONBINARY + ONE YEAR ) ━━ is that AVERY STONE from spooky squad? I heard the NINETEEN -year-old is totally MERCURIAL. Outside of the spooky squad, they’re a STUDENT. Which makes total sense seeing as they’re INQUISITIVE and OBSESSIVE. And apparently they feel NERVOUS about visiting the forest. Hopefully they can survive whatever they may come across …

fast facts

avery stone is the youngest child of alice and nathan stone. they have two other children, quentin and maggie, who are seven and nine years older than avery respectively.

she grew up, always being the oddball. she never fit in, she never saw the reason to. she did what she wanted to, when she wanted. she learned how to knit. she learned how to fold origami. for a while, she had a keen and uncomfortable interest in taxidermy. no matter if she was being laughed at or not, she kept at her little hobbies until she either bored of them or found something new.

they never had too many friends, preferring their own company to that of someone else. it was easy to find their own distractions in books or in movies. for the most part, they never found warmth or better feelings elsewhere.

as ave got older, they grew a little more quiet, a little more introverted. they didn’t feel the need to share everything they did or to get everyone’s attention when they had something to say. they learned about the world and understood that people were odd were never really liked. while they were comfortable with who they were, something that was instilled within them from a young age, they did ache for company. they were only human after all.

they’re studying literature at school, striving to get a minor in global languages. it’s engrossing and fascinating, and there’s always more to find and look at. they have a fondness for anna karenina. their favorite language to study and speak in is french.

for a while, they’ve loved spooky things. they love when things make their skin crawl, and gooseflesh rise on the back of their neck. if they find it in a good book or a movie, it’s great. when it’s in real life ... it’s a little less of their favorite. still, their quick to laugh off their fears with joke or smile.

avery one hundred percent has their own youtube channel. it’s really her reviewing weird pop culture media and saying whatever may have come to her mind. there are book reviews for books that have been out of print for the last twenty years. there are videos of her reading old high school essays with a dramatic affect. it’s a mish mosh, but people have come to like their airy demeanor and sort of ditsy nature.

ave loves pictures. from behind a camera, they’re a little less... noticeable. people aren’t likely to notice her quirks or oddities if they’re smiling towards a lens. they might be a little less in tune to grin at her if they knew all her favorite things to take photos of, but they don’t need to know everything about her. besides, everyone forgets the photographer after a few minutes anyways.

something about avery is that their mood changes quickly. one moment they’re laughing, the next they’re acting like the world is ending around them. they’re a little delicate, a little explosive. they’ve got a tendency to not react how they should to situations.

connection ideas

001. avery needs their best friend. maybe someone they grew up around, someone who always has known ave to be quirky and weird, or maybe someone that just met them in the spooky squad. maybe they’re like them. maybe they’re not. either way, they’ve got each other’s backs. they had sleepovers and played pretend when they were younger. they grew up and changed as people, but the one thing that stayed consistent within their lives was each other. this could just be really cute and fun, and i love it.

002. what about someone who can’t stand avery. maybe they don’t like how she doesn’t think before speaking. maybe they don’t like how she doesn’t hesitate in speaking every damned thought that passes through her mind. so maybe they treat avery poorly. frankly, she wouldn’t get it -- her social skills are a little lacking -- but i love the idea of tension and just ... pure disdain and annoyance.

003. give me a fake dating plot. maybe your character showed up on ave’s channel one day for a video ( maybe she was reviewing 1980s animated cartoons, or talking about all the plants she owns and doing a bedroom tour ) and someone asked if they were dating, and avery just ... couldn’t say no. instead, she said they were, and the next thing our characters know, they’re ‘dating’. it’s for the views entirely. maybe. maybe one of them has caught feelings. maybe one of them has feelings for someone else. anyways, there’s potential for drama and angst and ? i need this.

misc. exes ? could have beens ? friends when it’s convenient ? annoyances ? roommates ( my god, they were roommates ) ?

#theforest.intro #&. ❛ ooc. ❜

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hellyeahsupermanandwonderwoman · 6 years ago

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So the Death of Superman animated movie recently leaked online. And I saw it. This is my review.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

This movie is waste of time for SuperWonder, Wonder Woman and Justice League fans. It shoe horns Superman and Lois Lane’s relationship out of nowhere. Clark and Diana “broke up” because....I really don’t know. But it makes no coherent sense or has no emotional connectivity to the last 4 movies in this animated verse loosely based on the new 52.

Superman is a tad whiny and suddenly “loves” Lois who doesn’t even know he is Superman but he is dating her as Clark. Yet feels like Lois is on heat for Superman. LOL. Yeah.

Like how, when, and why she even is with Clark was not even addressed. So he is dating her and, lying his ass off as half his self...um yeah so honest and such a great thing to do. She says doesn’t know much about him, but he says she knows him better than anyone else...Yet we don’t know what the hell she truly knows of him.

By the way Peter J Tomasi pens this so he of course tries to dump the blame on Diana. Why? Apparently she likes being truthful and not lying. Yeah. Wanting REAL truth in a relationship and not hiding and living honestly is so bad. This Superman wants a woman do as he says and wants. Lois obliges for him. Easily. Because he tells her his little secret. She doesn’t have to do much else. But say she love him now.

The villain is a waste of time and looks like Jeepers Creepers on steroids. The whole JL is nerfed so Superman can punch real hard and make google eyes at Lois. Lois who should actually be dead given she keeps jumping in the middle of their battle.

The quality of the animation is not good. You just have to look at the trailers and see what I mean. It has taken a nose dive. If you like Batman or Flash or Cyborg or GL you see little of them. If you love Aquaman you see nearly nothing. Wonder Woman gets a little more than the others but she is not really respected in this movie much either. And Jerry O’Connell who voices Superman sounds younger than his wife who plays Lois.She sounds much more mature. I find they don’t really gel as a couple as he and Rosario did.

The movie tries to mish mash an old 90ties story in the modern era and fails. It ignores the original set up and the new 52 set up and even the new 52 verse these movies are based on and to me it fails.

This is really DC trying to Rebirth now on animation. They did their crapping of new 52 SMWW in comics now is time to do it in the animated movies. It lacks real emotion. You view Superman dying and don’t give a fuck. Like the DCEU.

And Tomasi steals the new 52 SMWW moment of “What a lucky man I was...” and gives it to Superman and Lois. Talk about disrespecting the new 52 fans who bought the books and the DVDs. SMWW can’t even have their own moments preserved. DCAU is renown for this, stealing from smww and giving it blatantly to SMLL or BMWW. They did in it in The New Frontier and For The Man Who Has Everything. And clois fans say we steal from them and our pairing is easy. Pfft. I think they need to get their eyes checked and see what easy means.

Anyway my suggestion? Go see if you can find that leak and look at it and save yr precious dollars. wait and download it free. It is not worth it unless you really don’t give a shit about organic story telling. WB are banking on using this JL and the new 52 look to try to get this tired, rehashed Death of Superman to sell. I don’t think they will succeed.

It’s such a waste of good, original material from the new 52 to force a tired story with little emotional resonance. As a pure Superman fan I don’t even know how anyone can find this remotely riveting unless you are a clois fan who does not care how yr couple hook up.

Also SuperWonder fans need to send DC a clear message: We are not chumps.

Keep voting with yr wallet, SuperWonder fans!

#superman #wonder woman #superwonder #death of superman #dc animated universe #justice league #peter j. tomasi #the new 52 #DC comics #batman #cyborg #the flash #green lantern #aquaman #martian manhunter

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mortasheen-reviews · 6 years ago

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Review #12 IKLIK - The Tongue Goblin

Review number twelve, Iklik. A weird cross between a bat, bug, and giant tongue today.

“Primarily designed for tracking, the Iklik's highly sensitive and incredibly large tongue can taste individual particles in the air and locate quarry from miles away. This same remarkable appendage is densely coated in paralyzing nematocysts (stinging cells) and can extend several times the monster's body length. If its tongue is not enough to subdue its prey, it tears into the victim with its small but powerful claws.”

An interesting take on the real life ability that certain animals can taste the air, with the extra feature of being able to paralyze with it’s tongue as well. I’m surprised it’s large ears aren’t mentioned at all in the description though. I like that it’s a tracking monster with an unconventional method of tracking.

The design is pretty good, it’s a nice mix of mammalian and insectoid features creating a goofy and weird looking monster. The forked tongue is a nice touch as well as the somewhat finger shaped legs. One thing I might say is that the mouth looks like it is facing the viewer while the tongue, eyes, and head imply it’s facing the left making a weird kind of dissonance.

I rate this a 3.5 out of 5, a very solid mish mashy design with some interesting descriptors

#Mortasheen #mortasheen reviews #Iklik

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calliecat93 · 6 years ago

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Callie Reviews: TMNT 2012 Season One (Part Three)

(Part One) (Part Two)

Here is where we look at the season as a whole. For this, I will be looking at four things: Animation, Voice Acting, Characters (Heroes, Villains), and Story. I’ll be going more into depths about some stuff I skimmed over here as well. So lets dig in!

Animation

This is the Turtles first CGI show... okay yeah the 2007 movie was CGI, but that was a movie. When I first heard this, I was reluctant as I felt like 2D was becoming more and more of a lost out. But the CGI was really good! Mind you it looks a tad bit dated now as every season they pushed more and more to improve it. But still, it’s very well done. I can’t recall any point where I thought it looked bad or cringy...aside form when they wanted you to cringe anyways. What helps is that the show does add in some 2D elements, There’s the comic-style flashbacks of course, but even past that. They use these anime-like quirks like the sweatdrop, blushing, wide blank eyes when reacting in shock, vein burst when a character is angry, all these tiny little things that give it a more cartoony feel. I can’t recall any other Nickelodeon CGI shows that were doing this prior, so it helped it stand out among the other shows.

Another plus side? The character designs. Aside from a few background characters they re-colored, none of the important characters look the same. Like I know that some don’t like April’s design, but at least they gave her and Karai their own distinct character designs. Then there are the Turtles. Something I don’t like about the upcoming show is how much.. accessorizing they add in to make the Turtles look distinctive. 2k12 kept it very simple. Different heights, eye color, shade of green, and of course body build. For example Donnie, the genius who is mroe invested with machines than training, is both the tallest and most slender. Raph, the strongest, is the most buff and Mikey, the youngest, has larger eyes and freckles to show his child-like nature.And even with Raph,a ll four boys have kind of high school athlete-like builds. Nothing over the top like say... the Michael Bay films. Basically, I can believe that these guys can do the ninja-like agility more than I can with the overly buff, giant versions that have been used.

When ti comes to the mutants, the animators get creative. There are so many unique mutant sin the show. Snakeweed, Spyder Bytez, Dogpound, Fishface, Splinter, Leatherhead, all the mutants have their own unique design that work for them. They also know when to get creepy, like with the mish-mash... thing... from The Alien Agenda. That was disturbing as heck, and it’s not even the creepiest one they come up with! Oh just wait for next season, haha... but yeah, mutant designs are great!

Now the settings are kinda... meh. I mean The Lair is cool, but it’s mostly just either the the Lair, the New York landscape, Shredder’s lair, or an empty warehouse most of the time. It’s nothing really... creative I guess is the right word. We also don’t explore new York much, mainly settling on skyscrapers as the setting. It’s understandable why since New York is the setting, but still it juts gets kind of boring after awhile. But for what it’s worth, they do try to do creative stuff when they can like in Baxter’s Gambit with the black and white screens.

And of course, there is the fight choreography. As I said before, it’s fantastic. All the fights in the series are fluid, well-paced, and fun to watch. If I had to give some examples off the top of my head, there’s New Friend, Old Enemy when the Turtles rise form the water. The mix of black and red is absolutely perfect. There’s the first fight against Shredder in The Gauntlet which despite the boys getting constantly knocked down by Shredder, they give it everything they have. It looks freakin’ badass. Then there is any Splinter fight scene. There’s not many, only about three in this season (It Came From the Depths, I, Monster, The Showdown two-parter) but they are excellent. I said that the Splinter vs Shredder fight was the best and nothing after ever topped it, right?

So yeah, if I was going to rate the animation on a 1-5 scale...

Rating: 4.5

Voice Acting

The series was voice directed by veteran Andrea Romano, so you know that the performances are gonna be solid. As far as casting goes, they got in a LOT of big names both in the voice acting industry and out. There’s of course Greg Cipes (Mikey), Mae Whitman (April), Nolan North (The Kraang), Kevin Michael Richardson (Shredder), Phil Lamar (Stockman), Clancy Brown (Dogpound) and of course Rob Paulsen (Donnie). Rob’s casting was actually a pretty big deal as along with being a veteran with nearly 30 years of experience, he was also the voice of Raph in the original 80′s show. So getting him back even as a different Turtle? Yeah... that’s pretty big!

Then you have more well-known on-screen actors, like Sean Astin (Raph) and Kelly Hu (Karai). Now they both actually have very solid VA-ing careers and still do voice work to this day, but if you’re say... a Lord of the Rings fan and known Sean only for that, this may entice you. The newcomers to voice acting are Jason Biggs (Leo), Christian Lanz (Fishface) and Hoon Lee (Splinter). There’s also guest actors like Jeffrey Combs (The Rat King) and Roseanne Barr (Kraang Prime), so a solid mix of professional voice actors and a few newcomers. The result?

The voice acting is fantastic. Like even as the show goes on and you see more and more mixed reception, the acting is NEVER one of the things you see go down. If anything, it is one aspect that continues to improve episode by episode. All four Turtle actors do an amazing job conveying their characters, able to go from comedic to dramatic in a split second. I’d say that out of everyone, Hoon Lee impressed me the most since he’s the only one aside from Biggs (and... e’ll talk more about him next season) I hadn’t heard of. And he gave a very solid performance. Everyone did. Even for just minor characters like Pulverizer (Roger Craig Smith... yes Pulverizer is Sonic the Hedgehog) or some of the villains like Snake (Danny Jacob who voices King Julian outside the Madacgascar films) or Spyder Byte (Lewis Black), they convey their characters perfectly. Like Black’s character is a rude slob you want to punch, and he does such a great job in making you feel that way!

So yeah, you got a strong cast, a veteran voice director, and a crazy group of characters for them to voice. All of them nail it. And just wait, this is only the S1 cast. Wait until you see who they bring in for future seasons!

Rating: 5

Characters

As I said in Part One, this is the best part of the show. I know a lot of people who fell off TMNT as it went on, but still kept interest because of the characters. To me, this is always the most important part of storytelling. Yes having a good story itself is important, but a good story will be nothing without likeable characters to move it. A cliched story may be annoying, but if the characters are likeable and strongly written, people are usually more forgiving because they care about the cast. This show is no different. To this day, the thing that kept me attracted to the show was the Turtles, April, and Splinter and what they’d get into next. All of them have strong personalities that get you to care about them, or at least see where they’re coming from. I could gush about each of them one by one... so on we go!

Lets start with Mikey because he is the least developed this season... and most of the show sadly. I’d even say that his focus episodes dropped massively in quality after this season as he was forced mroe and mroe into the comedy relief/designated victim/little brother role. It’s a shame too because this season did an excellent job in balancing out both the comedy relief and the more innocent side of the character. Mikey is the most naive of the brothers and the least serious among them. It’s not to say that he can’t take situations seriously, it’s just that he’s more easy-going and fun-seeking than the other three. His biggest problem is his inability to focus and goof around, which has caused several instances of accidentally setting off alarms.

While not the best of the four, Mikey is a talented ninja and the best at going off just raw talent. He doesn’t think through fighting moves, he can just go with the flow and be perfectly fine. His strongest skill hpwever is his empathy and desire to make friends. While this has backfired on him before, like in New Friend, Old Enemy, where Bradford used and then kidnapped him for a trap, Mikey is incredibly non-judgemental and open-minded. It’s why he could befriend Leatherhead so easily in It Came From the Depths. He saw that the Kraang were attacking him and decided to simply talk to him like he would anyone else, even pointing out that maybe LH only acts like a monster because that’s how he was treated for so long. Mikey may not be book smart, but he’s very emotionally smart. As I said, Mikey’s character sadly devolves into annoying comedy relief as it goes, but for this season he had a strong start. No meaningful development aside form slow progression on paying attention (Parasitica being the final payoff... also if you’re afraid of wasps then avoid that one), but his character is strong enough to carry him through.

Raph is the brawler of the group and the quickest to anger. Hie’s the strongest fighter and incredibly confident... unless he has to deal with bugs. His biggest flaws are his both his anger and his jealous towards Leo. The first half of the season has Raph frequently back-talks and argue with Leo all because he got made the leader over him. For example, in Never Say Xever he is unhappy with Leo using mercy because bad guys don’t deserve it. Leo does eventually use the more Raph-like approach when kidnapping Bradford... and it fails miserably. What saves them? Leo’s act of mercy causing the Purple Dragon to repay the favor sand saving their shells. While he does slowly get a better grip on his temper once Splinter tells him of how dangerous it can be (Turtle Temper), it takes until New Girl in Town for him to overcome his jealousy once and for all. It’s very well done too by having Leo finally get fed up and give Raph what he wanted. Ultimately Raph can’t handle the pressure once things get rough and comes to understand both what Leo deals with essentially every day and how his own actions made it worst.

After that, Raph becomes the perfect example of a follower. While he’s still question Leo, he has good reasons for it, like everything involving Karai for instance. But he actively looks out for him more and stops mocking him outside just brotherly messing around. And even during that point, while Raph could be an insensitive jerk, he does love his family and will make amends when he goes too far. When he mocked Mikey wanting friends in New Friend, Old Enemy, at the end he comforted him after the fallout with Bradford and assured him that he’s a good person. When he mocked Donnie’s crush in Operation: Break-Out and led to Donnie going on a mission solo, Raph was worried about him, realized that he way too harsh, and tried to make amends by giving Donnie all the credit once back home. While Raph doesn’t conquer his temper completely, over the season he does get a better grip on it, can admit when he goes to far, became overall nicer, and by the end is a much better person. It was good stuff!

Donnie is probably the most... divisive of the four. Not because he’s badly written per say. He’s intelligent, but also high-strung and prone to stress. He’s not a bad ninja, but because of his focus on machinery, he’s the least skilled. The two episodes that focus on this are Metalhead and Monkey Brains. Metalhead has an admittedly meh plot where he gets sick of his bo staff and therefore creates the robot Metalhead to act as his weapon. The ‘meh’ plot is IDT it addresses the message of ‘the weapon doesn't make you a good fighter, you do’ very well, ut still Monkey Brains does a much better job, demonstrating Donnie’s tendency to over-think everything and how that is detrimental in a fight. By the climax, he’s able to get himself to rely on his instincts against a mind-reading villain (we’ll get to him later) and kick his ass.

Then there’s The Pulverizer episodes, which are the most interesting but sadly don’t go anywhere after this season. It has Donnie accept Pulverizer as an apprentice of sort, mainly so the kid can have some form of self-defense if he’s going to put himself into danger. It’s ultimately ineffective, but mainly because of Pulverizer wanting to rush and not listening properly. The most important part though is Splinter telling Donnie that by doing this, anything that happens involving him after will be his responsibility. Which we see in The Pulverizer Returns where Pulverizer decides ot let the Foot mutate him to gain awesome mutant powers. Donnie tries to save him, but sadly he fails and Pulverier.. it’s not pretty. While Donnie does still save him after, he’s left with the guilt of ultimately failing his student. I’ll go into mroe about how horribly the writers wasted this next season, but here? It was interesting to give Donnie this plot since you’d expect t to go to say... Leo. I think it really worked for what it was worth and let us see a side of Donnie outside just being the smart one.

So with that said, why is he divisive? Well... it’s because another major part of his character is his crush on April. He doe snot... manage it well, to say the least. He is rather, well... stupid and kinda creepy with it. But I do want to point this out. Yes, it is annoying but I think there’s a good reason for it: he’s an awkward teenager. Yeah him asking her to feel his goosebumps (Metalhead), accidentally calling her ‘his April (The Gauntlet), accidentally saying awkward things when she acknowledges him (pick any episode) are incredibly facepalm worthy at best. And yeah, they should have done better setup than have him just find her pretty when seeing her once. However he does genuinely care about her and int he premiere, he was driven more because he saw an innocent girl scared and was unable to help than his newfound crush. The feelings are genuine and Donnie being awkward about is because... well, Donnie is awkward in general and he does slowly improve. Honestly I’ll have mroe to discuss about this next season cause haha... boy is THAT a clusterfuck. But ultimately while Donnie can be annoying, overall it’s pretty bearable and he has plenty of positive traits to balance it out.

Finally, we get Leo. He’s the group leader, but unlike the past series where he pretty much grew up with that role, here he gets the role halfway through the first episode. He starts as a goody-two-shoes with a mischievous side who had a very basic view of leadership. He see sit as a position of authority, greatness, and unstoppable. That’s not to say that he doesn’t take the role seriously, he does. He devises plans, does his best to keep his brothers focused, and frequently asks Splinter for advice on how to best do things. But he also frequently uses cheesy one-liners and does his best to be as over the top with his heroics as possible, thinking it’s cool when it isn’t. It gives Leo a more naive feel to him, someone who is serious but also is still a teenaged kid who has a lot of learning to do.

The pressures of leadership are Leo’s primary focus as a character. While he has some doubts, the biggest blow to his confident comes in The Gauntlet after there massive defeat against Shredder. The following episode has him unsure of if he can properly lead the team and feeling guilty when things go wrong. But the ultimate meltdown comes in New Girl in Town where Raph finally pushes him too hard and he quits. He’s realized at this point that leadership is not like it is on TV. it’s unforgiving, stressful, and you’re gonna be the one facing the consequences when things go wrong. His difficulty dealing with this is what attracts him to Karai. She’s fun, does whatever she wants, and doesn’t care about the rules. She offers him a form of freedom that he hasn’t had before. It’s why he tries to get her to change sides, he doesn’t want her to be an enemy. Unfortunately things end badly between them this season, but you can see where Leo is coming form no matter how naive he was about it.

Leo evolved a lot over the season. He went from a naive teenager who quoted old TV episodes to a serious, determined leader who was willing to do whatever it took to get his team through. He never quit being optimistic and he does still have his stress with leadership later down the road. But the season is about him easing not the role an understanding the weight of that role. It’s very easy to feel bad for Leo because he tries incredibly hard, but he doesn’t receive a lot of gratitude or payoff, and he just has to accept that. By the finale, he’s willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to ensure both success and his family's safety... something that becomes a bit of an issue in later seasons (looking at you Space Arc). I’d say that because we got to see Leo actually having to come to terms with the role, it makes this imo the best version of the character. We actually have to see him accept the role and how he hate show it limits his free time, something IDT the past versions really did. And all while having this dorky, idealistic side that keeps him likable and all the mroe relateable. Overall, I’d say that the leader in blue was handeled very well here!

April is my favorite character in the show, but her writing this season has some issues. Now as a character herself, she’s perfectly fine. She’s an independent sixteen year old and incredibly proactive. Whenever she finds info on the Kraang or about her dad, she looks into it. When everyone is ready to quit in Panic in the Sewers, she’s the only one who actively tries to do something and get everyone else to not give up. When Splinter offers to train her, she accepts it and we see bits and pieces of her progressing. But it’s done realistically as demonstrated in Karai’s Vendetta where it’s very clear that April is nowhere near her level. But it also demonstrates her determination and how she never gives up, getting back up after every blow and at east trying to put up a fight. While she’s forced to sit most things out and does on occasion get kidnapped, she still tries to be an asset and does very well as an intel gatherer. She’s also incredibly stubborn and can get in over her head without thinking things through, like in Metalhead and the finale episodes. But ultimately her proactiveness and need to take action are her strongest traits and what makes her a useful ally.

The issues with April are in the writing of the plot. I already mentioned how the early episodes could have done mroe in having her ease into the group. There’s also after Karai’s Vendetta where despite living with the guys, we don’t see her until the penultimate episode. We see her express hating it in that episode, but we don’t get to explore the fallout of her losing her normal life. In fact we...d on’t see April’s life outside Turtle stuff until next season, and even then not by much. Now of course the show is about the Turtles and you gotta keep the focus on them, but still we get a bunch of ‘show, don’t tell’ problems with April. We’re told things like she’s living with her aunt, but we never see them interact. Hell, IDT April’s aunt is ever mentioned outside the pilot. We also find out that April is the Kraang’s target... and we never see how she feels about it. If she’s scared, if she’s worried. We can assume that she has some stress about it, as indicated when she vents in Karai’s Vendetta, but little to no showcase of how she feels about it. Mind you we don’t with the Turtles either, but still. Still, overall April is a solid character imo.

That brings us to Master Splinter, the best written character by far. Splinter is the perfect balance of a mentor and a father. He’s firm, strict, and not afraid to dish out punishment when it’s necessary. But he’s also gentle, patient, knows how to give his sons proper guidance, and when to let them figure things out for themselves. He’s also snarky as Hell, so it’s good that he has a sense of humor. He’s also a flawed person. He lost his wife and daughter because of hat is essentially a sibling rivalry that went WAAAY too far and his own inability to control himself worsened things. He lost his family and then his humanity, ending his life as Hamato Yoshi. Since then, he’s hidden int he sewers and tried to focus his energy on raising and protecting his sons. It makes letting them go topside difficult, as it is for any parent whose children are growing up. He can make mistakes, like letting his fear control him and press his sons far too hard in Panic in the Sewers, but he can admit those mistakes.

Splintr’s largest plot in the season, outside mentoring the boys and April, is accepting his mutant status and overcoming his fears. Many epsiodes such as the premiere, Turtle Temper, Monkey Brains, Panic in the Sewers and the finale show how much pain the rat master carries and while he’s move don to a new life, it still haunts him. The episode that best displays this however is a filler episode called I, Monster. In it we get this version of the Rat King, the mind reading villain from Monkey Brains, who uses his power to swarm New York. When he senses Splinter, he proceeds to try and brainwash him too. The episode does an amazing job at showcasing all of Splinter’s fears. The boys outgrowing him, his past tragedies, ending up alone, and the Rat King slowly uses all of it to break him down. Splinter fights back, but the thought of the boys moving on without him is ultimately what defeats him until the boys remind him of who he is. He is Hamato Yoshi, Master Splinter, but most of all their father. They need him and always will. Which lets Splinter overcome the mind control and essentially Airbend Rat King through a wall. It was awesome~

Despite that episode being filler, it’s one of the season's best. It is a strong character exploration piece about a father who has gone through Hell and is faced with the fear of his kids not needing him. It is very relatable and makes Splinter all the mroe sympathetic. And we see Splinter truly embody who he is now when faced with the Shredder again and upon learning that his daughter had survived. He went into full rat mode and gave Shredder the beating that we all wanted. And the season ends on a perfect lead in for the next one. Splinter now knows that Karai is his daughter while she was raised to hate him. It’s any parent’s worst nightmare. He now has to deal with that revelation as well as how he’s going to break it to his students. Splinter has some solid growth int he season, something that a lot of mentor figures in cartoons don’t get, and it’s done perfectly. He has his flaws, but is still a strong father figure to his sons. Add that to Hoon Lee’s absolute perfect performance and you have what is in my opinion the best incarnation of Master Splinter in any TMNT series.

While the main cast is strong, the supporting cast and villains are... not so much. There isn’t really a supporting cast honestly. The best we have is Leatherhead, who is awesome. He’s a damaged character. One treated like a monster and tortured for who knows how long. It left him damaged and prone to trauma-induced outbursts. But he is a good person who knows that what happened to him was wrong and can be quite sweet when given the chance. He didn’t have to save humanity, especially since most would scream and run if they saw him, but he didn’t want anyone else to endure what he did. It’s best exemplified with his sacrifice in TCRI, going back to Dimension X and knowing fully well what’ll await him there. But he does so to save his friends and give them the chance to save the Earth. LH is freakin’ badass and I love him!

The villains though are... kinda boring. Most of the mutants, while the designs are cool, are incredibly one-note. Not all of them, like the Rat King is so dramatic and twisted and his VA does such a great job with the delivery that you both love him and want to strangle him. But others like Snakeweed or Spyder Bytez are just... well, evil for the heck of it. The Kraang are the worst though since at least the mutants are only in like one or two episodes. The Kraang are annoying as HELL. They can be dangerous but the redundant speech pattern and all fo them having essentially the same personality (aka none) is so... boring. Min you in Season 4 we kind of get an explanation to why, but it doesn't change how grating they can get. That being said in large groups they can be dangerous and with things like the Technodrome, they’re not to be taken lightly. Still, GAH I HATE THEM!!!

The Foot are somewhat better. Stockman is pathetic and remains pathetic throughout the entire series. Bradford is a pompous asshole. Xever is a little more interesting in that he kidn of was forced to work for Shredder or go to jail... but sadly after that reveal, he reverts to typical henchman status sadly. Shredder is the Big Bad and a no-nonsense leader. He has no empathy and is more than willing to inflict physical violence on his troops if they fail him. He even threatens to harm Karai, his daughter (kinda...) if she questions him. He is a very single minded perosn, his only goal beign to kill Splinter and his students by any means necessary. Hell. he only starts caring about the Kraang when he realizes that they can advance his goal, but has zero issues letting humanity fall to them. Oh, and there’s his glee when Karai tries to kill Splinter. WOrst? THis isn’t even the worst that he does int he show. Oh just wait for next season. JUST WAIT. Otherwise though, while a powerful fighter, he just mopes in his throne for most of the season, but Richardson’s badass voice acting was nice to hear.

The most interesting villain by far is Karai, and Thank God for it. While Leo is a good-good, Karai is a bad girl. She’s laid-back, does what she wants her way, and doesn’t play by the rules. She’s introduced as a competent fighter, but unlike the other Foot she’s more interesting in talking to the Turtles than killing them. I think she did become genuinely fond of Leo, but ultimately she’s going to be loyal to what she thinks is her family. She also started off realizing that there were bugger problems, like the Kraang, that required more attention over the vendetta until the Turtles betrayed her. Then she pretty much went ‘screw it’ and decided to go with the vendetta, which only got worst when she met Splinter for the first time. Still, ti was nice to have someone actually question Shredder and try to be sensible. She’s definite the most well-written of the villains, and the revelation about her being Splinter’s daughter means that there is MUCH more to come for her. Like I said, just wait for Season 2!

Okay, this section was a LOOOT longer than I thought. So I’ll just finish by saying that the villains aren't all that interesting, but the main characters are very well written. They have strong personalities, plenty of room for growth, and their interactions always gel really well. Very well done!

Rating: 4.5

Story

The main plot threads are the Turtles against the Foot, and the Turtles feud against the Kraang. All with some subplots, like Pulverizer and the mutant of the week stuff, and filler episodes thrown in. I say that the plots are handled very well. For example well go with... say two or three Kraang-centric episodes. Then we may or may not get a filler episode before shifting over to the Foot Clan for awhile. It never felt like we got smothered with one faction over the other, which is good. The plots also slowly intertwined and it felt like they came together at just the right time during the last six or so episodes. Hence hwy the finale worked so well, giving some kind of payoff on both ends.

Many of the episodes were very basic and outright bizarre. Like Cockroach Terminator having a mutant cockroach tr to murder Raph... it’s kinda gross, but entertaining! Every episode normally has at least something small that’ll carry over as the story goes along. For example, Donnie built Metalhead in... well, Metalhead and brought him back in the finale, plus it helped him learn mroe about Kraang tech. In Baxter’s Gambit, April finally gets her own weapon and she attempts to use it in Karai’s Vendetta. The episodes all play a part, even if just minor, in the larger narrative and I feel some of the later seasons kind of slacked on that. This season had a perfect balance.

That’s not to say that it was perfect. Like at the end of TCRI, we find out that April is the Kraang’s true target which makes us wonder why... and the next episode is about Raph’s fear of bugs! So TCRI was episode 17, we don’t even mention this fact again until Karai’s Vendetta, which is episode 21. Five episodes later, and even then we get one tiny hint (April doesn't get damaged by mutagen-laced water) and... that’s it. The.show has a bit of an issue with not exploring fallout, which is weird because Panic in the Sewers did and id it excellently. Maybe it’s because they have to make episodes to sell toys, IDK. It doesn't do too much damage, but it makes it feel like they both wasted character opportunities and like there’s something missing. But at the very least the episodes remain entertaining, so there’s that.

Rating: 4

Final Thoughts

You know what I like about this series and why I ran it above the other ones? Well it does something that I feel that the previous incarnations lacked: The Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles felt like teenagers. They felt like a bunch of kids truly entering the world for the first time. They screw up, they have problems to overcome, and they don’t always learn it immideatly. Like their cockiness is a frequent pain in the shell for example. But the reason that I like pretty much all of the episodes aside form Episode 11 is because it feels like we’re watching a group of kids truly starting to grow up and learn about how rough life can be. How they have to change, how they have to fix their mistakes, and just become better people. As a nineteen year old who was just staring to figure my life out, when I started the show, that drew me in. I related to these characters so much. I felt like I was growing with them and coming to understand who I was due to it.

It felt really nostalgic to go back over this season. Imo, it still holds up big time. It’s funny, action-heavy, well animated, and the characters are just as enjoyable as I remember. Would I call this the best season? Hmm... maybe. I still have three more to look over. But it was a really fun ride and it got TMNT 2012 off on the right track. Can they stay on it during Season 2? Come back next week, and we shall see!

#tmnt #2k12 #tmnt 2012 #callie reviews

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empressapprentice · 3 years ago

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quick psa

I changed my tumblr url--this blog was formerly @urgonnacarrythatweight. I decided I wanted to create a music blog where I will share playlists and song/album reviews (and maybe some other things?). this blog is a bit of a mish-mosh of fandom posts to begin with and I felt adding more to it would just be confusing.

I decided to use my old username on my new blog so that I could update this url with something more arcana-themed. for those who don’t know, “you’re going to carry that weight” is a reference to cowboy bebop, an anime with one of the greatest soundtracks of all time. it also refers to the title of the last song the beatles wrote before breaking up, so i felt it was much better suited for what i have planned on the new blog. hope this isn’t terribly confusing :P

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pixelgrotto · 7 years ago

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Three free games on Steam, part one

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been scouring the Steam store for free stuff. And by free, I don’t mean free-to-play online games like DOTA or Smite, which are all well and good and certainly deserve their place on the world’s most ubiquitous online storefront, but rather the weirder, experimental indies that exist within the cracks. I was inspired to do this by the trippiness of Doki Doki Literature Club, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. Doki Doki is certainly one of the most interesting projects on Steam that managed to spawn quite the considerable fanbase, all without charging a cent, and I noticed that if you take a deep dive, there are a few similar games out there also worthy of notice. Not all of them are great, but they’re all at least interesting, much in the same way that short stories and student movies are. Many of them are also text-heavy games with the same dark flavor as Doki Doki Literature Club, probably because the visual novel and horror genres mesh well with these small, self-contained free projects. Anyway, here are my quickie impressions on three of the ones I’ve tried out so far.

Cupid - I really enjoyed this one, and I’m quite surprised that it’s free. If Doki Doki Literature Club is a visual novel that plays on anime harem tropes and then subverts them by going down the path of psychological horror, Cupid is a visual novel that’s also filled with unnerving moments, but more rooted in a dark Gothic sensibility. You play as an 18th century French girl named Rosa who’s grown up under the guidance of an abusive mother and has quite a lot of issues to work through, including crippling self-doubt and a tendency towards self-mutilation. After becoming an orphan, she falls in with a young piano prodigy named Catherine who’s being sponsored by a strange nobleman named Guilleme. Eventually, a death occurs, and we learn that Guilleme isn’t exactly what he appears to be - and the nuances of his reveal actually make him one of the most interesting characters I’ve seen in a game in recent memory.

I’m perhaps not the target audience for Cupid, since in some of the unlockable development notes, the creator states that she catered towards the needs of queer female players and straight female players who wanted to question their sexuality first. But I can enjoy an intriguing story as well as anyone, and Cupid ended up addressing the nuances of love in a mature manner that really impressed me. And when I say love, I don’t just mean romantic or sexual love, though there’s at least one (very well-written) sex scene along the way - Cupid also deals with parental love, the love between friends and the love that one can have for life. There’s not too much online about the main creator behind this game - all I can find is that she’s an illustrator in Asia and has a team website here - but she wrote a compelling script that reminded me a bit of a cross between Dracula and Fingersmith, a novel and BBC serial from 2005 that I watched with an ex a few years ago and enjoyed. Pretty unique combination, really.

PRICE - This one’s an “escape the room” horror game that kinda feels like something you might find on a Flash website, but it certainly has higher production values. You play as a Dane (or German?) guy named Ivry who wakes up in his sister’s room and has to get out, and he just might not be alone in there. It was made by a tiny Chinese team, and the voice acting and sound design is surprisingly great at creating some spooky vibes. It’s even got some degree of replay value, since you unlock a second area after you beat it the first time, and the true ending doesn’t become accessible until then. The gameplay’s of the point ‘n click variety, and it’s a tad hit and miss since the game is very dark and it’s not always clear what you can interact with and what you can’t. The story’s also something of a mixed bag - it’s certainly got great style, but at times it feels like a mish-mash of random concepts borrowed from shoujo and horror manga that the creators thought were “cool,” ie - a brother and sister who are a little too close, a flowery European setting, and lots of macabre paintings featuring skeletons and other vaguely devilish characters. There are some references to Hans Christian Anderson that caught me by surprise, though, and the game is great deal better than an actual escape room that I recently went to in real life, so there’s that!

Yume Nikki - Yume Nikki (the title translates to Dream Diary) might be the most well-known game on here, since it’s one of the more famous projects to be created with RPG Maker 2003. It first came out in 2004, and was actually one of those rare indie gems that accumulated a substantial following in the days before indie games were mainstream. In the years since, it’s inspired light novels, lots of comparisons to Earthbound and Undertale, and quite a bit of speculation on who its mysterious creator, known only as “kikiyama,” actually is. (It’s a secret to everybody!) When it was released for free on Steam a few weeks ago the reviews quickly shot up into the very positive range, largely thanks to old devotees gushing about how they’d loved it when it had first come out. Later, it was revealed that the game’s release predated a remake/semi-sequel of sorts that is decidedly not getting the same glowing reception, so it’s clear that the original Yume Nikki means a lot to quite a few people.

For me, someone who didn’t experience the game upon immediate release, this one falls squarely into the “interesting, but I’m not sure if it’s for me” range. All you do is control a little girl who’s wandering around surreal dreamscapes, and the experience is meant to communicate the strange and often horrific nature of the things our minds create when we’re asleep. It’s purely about exploring and drawing your own conclusions about the stuff you see around you, and while I can appreciate the intent here, the actual execution left me a little bored. I guess I’m one of those people who just likes to do stuff in games, though I can see how a moody exercise in wandering around and occasionally encountering frightening imagery might be appealing to some people. It’s certainly impressive considering the limitations of RPG Maker 2003, and I have a feeling I might’ve enjoyed Yume Nikki more if I’d first played it in 2004, as an impressionable 16-year-old who was also messing around with RPG Maker and had more time on his hands to simply explore.

I’ve got a few other free titles queued up, including a game styled like a 16-bit RPG that tells the story of a Syrian refugee, and will likely write a part two to this post once I’ve worked my way through them. Overall, it’s an oddly enjoyable experience investigating the often unnoticed free section of the Steam storefront. It feels like getting a glimpse into an underground subculture, or at least like attending a university’s niche film club weekly gathering. (Actually, it’s better than the one time I did attend my college’s niche film club. I nearly fell asleep watching Death in Venice, ugh.)

Screenshots all taken from each game’s respective Steam page.

#pixel grotto #video games #now playing #cupid visual novel #visual novel #yume nikki

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droneseco · 4 years ago

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Lanq PCDock Monitor Stand Tries to Do So Much, but Fails at Nearly Everything

Lanq PCDock

5.00 / 10

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