#this is inspired by the digimon adventure dvd art

[garmmy]

2023.7.29 - happy global 1st anniversary digimon survive!! 🎉

[shihalyfie]

This is a remake of my old chart about color palettes, because, inspired by a post by @citrus-cactus​ and after extensive personal discussion with @digitalgate02​ (who, being an artist and somewhat of a color enthusiast, is a lot more experienced in these things than me), we decided there were too many inaccuracies and skewed baselines on the old chart, and thus I decided to try again one more time. This is a chart I made to kind of give a quick look at the color palette approach for every Adventure-branded work, and how they differ. To have somewhat of a consistent baseline across all works, I used hair color pulled from neutral lighting, which in most cases were consistent, but there were some exceptions (see below for elaboration).

The biggest change in this chart is that the Adventure and 02 reference colors are pulled from the Blu-rays instead of the DVDs. My rationale for why will be in the analysis portion below.

Anyway, let’s go into this in more detail!

Why I’m pulling from the Blu-ray colors

Despite the fact I own the Japanese 02 Blu-ray box, you might notice I don’t actually use it for most of my screenshots. There’s of course multiple reasons for it, but one is that it’s an artificial upscale of an anime from 2000, and some weird things happened with the line quality. Look, it bothers me.

However, after extensive discussion of this topic with my group chat, especially with color enthusiast Ni, I am forced to begrudgingly admit one thing: the Blu-rays seem to be more accurate to the intended palette when it comes to color. Early Digimon anime was produced right when digital coloring started to be a thing, which means shots in neutral lighting should ideally be consistent with the standard palette used for the series. With the Blu-ray colors, the palette matches the exact hues used for official art, whereas for with the DVDs they’re generally a few tones off and much more faded.

In Adventure, this mostly impacts scenes with unusual lighting; see how the DVD (top) is a lot more faded, has less proper contrast, and doesn’t quite get across the dimmer lighting in the scene compared to the Blu-ray (bottom).

In 02 it’s much less noticeable in most cases, but still there if you look closely; look at the blue on Daisuke’s jacket and both Daisuke and Ken’s hair, and compare how the colors are much less vivid on the DVD (top) compared to the Blu-ray (bottom).

The really damning ones, though, are the movies; Diablomon Strikes Back especially has the biggest disparity. Looking at the DVDs (top) and the Blu-rays (bottom), you just cannot tell me that the DVD colors were the originally intended ones. Sure, the weird grey dinginess over it may make it come off as some kind of vintage filter, but the problem is that the movie taking place mostly at night means that in the DVD, large chunks of the background are barely even visible, and it’s hard to believe the daytime scenes are even in daytime -- which makes the movie ending on a clear new morning just not hit nearly as hard (and, really, I myself wondered for ages why this movie looked so dingy and daytime never looked like daytime until the day I first saw the Blu-ray footage, where everything finally felt like it clicked).

The movies alone are a big reason I’m making this post, because it really does change everything, and the old post was completely reliant on the palettes being way more faded and desaturated than they really should have been. Mind you, I do admit that the Blu-rays may not be the entirely correct colors either (they do feel a bit overly brightened and oversaturated at times), but I dare say they certainly seem like they’d at least be much more accurate to the original intent than whatever was going on with the DVDs there.

So, bringing up the new chart again:

Compared to the old post, you’ll notice the Our War Game! and Diablomon Strikes Back palettes are actually much closer to the original Adventure colors, instead of weirdly sticking out like they have some kind of filter on them.

(Also, yes, I did turn the chart 90 degrees sideways. I felt it was easier to get a proper view of it this way.)

Okay, let’s move onto the analysis portion!

Adventure and 02

Early official art for Adventure seems to be kind of weird and frankly all over the place, but things mostly iron out when you get to 02 (which used the same palette as Adventure when it came to the actual animated footage), so I used 02 as a basis here. Adventure and 02′s color palettes involve a lot of surprisingly bright colors, so I think it lends well to why their colors have aged well even into the modern era, especially compared to other anime of their time.

Note that while it’s not entirely visible at first glance, Takeru’s hair is ever so slightly darker than Yamato’s in the original series. Interestingly, while Hikari’s hair is consistently lighter and more desaturated than Taichi’s, whether Takeru’s hair is darker or lighter than Yamato’s seems to really vary depending on the work.

Movies

Two notes: firstly, I didn’t include the first Adventure movie because it was impossible to get a fair baseline for anyone not named Taichi or Hikari (due to the fact most of it takes place at night). Secondly, the colors for Yamato and Koushirou in Hurricane Touchdown may not be entirely fair; they were sampled from scenes where the lighting state wasn’t quite clear. Koushirou’s and Mimi’s in Diablomon Strikes Back may not be fair either; they never leave the presumably dimly-lit room.

It’s interesting how you can see a slightly different approach to all three movies’ palettes, even though all three of them are roughly close to the original series palette. Considering that the original series is surprisingly desaturated for an anime of its time, both Our War Game! and Diablomon Strikes Back go ahead and up the ante in making the colors a bit more bold and vibrant, the latter especially so (look at Yamato and Ken!). Diablomon Strikes Back may have taken this approach primarily because most of the movie takes place at night, so it was probably important to make the colors stand out as much as possible despite the dim lighting.

Hurricane Touchdown is hard to get a read on mainly because not only does it not have a particularly consistent pattern if you're just doing sheer comparisons with the original series, more pertinently, the movie also cycles through a lot of stylistic palettes and doesn’t actually have neutral lighting all that often, so it's not even clear what the baseline is to begin with. If you were to describe Hurricane Touchdown's palette as a whole, a more accurate answer would really just be "...everything?"

tri.

While merch and official art not quite lining up with the anime is fairly common (I mean, this happened with Adventure itself), tri. sticks out a bit in that if you’re particularly discerning about art style, there’s actually a huge difference between the style used in art that was actually drawn by character designer Uki Atsuya himself (the character designs on the website and several pieces of package and promotional art) and the style used in everything else including merch and, well, the anime itself. If you want a quick glance, take a look at Cencoroll Connect (which was almost singlehandedly produced by Uki himself) or Tsuritama, which are closer to Uki’s style; you honestly could make a good argument that the tri. anime itself doesn’t actually resemble any of these all that much. This leads to a fairly huge disparity between a good chunk of the promotional materials and the actual anime, and it’s easy to spot what was actually by Uki and what wasn’t as a result.

(Note that although this is rather drastic for Digimon standards, it’s hardly unusual in the overall anime industry, especially when it comes to artists with styles that are difficult to replicate in animation instead of as still art. In one particularly extreme case, the official character art for Fractale does not resemble the anime in the slightest, down to multiple characters having completely different hair colors. If anything, in this case, the part that’s probably more unusual is that Uki’s art style is already fairly well-adapted for animation, but tri. has pretty strong divergence compared to other anime that use his character designs.)

This extends to the colors; while Uki’s art generally uses lots of soft gradients, the colors used in the actual series have a pretty huge departure from his original draft work, which you can see in the palette samples above. Overall, while Uki’s original colors are generally somewhat paler and more desaturated than the original palettes, the actual anime seems to be even more drastically desaturated (it’s the most desaturated lineup in the list). Allegedly, according to color designer Urushido Sachiko, there was some instruction to avoid bright colors in order to make it more “mature”, but I feel like I don’t actually want to think too hard about what “mature colors” are supposed to entail...

(Also, please forgive my morbid joke there. I couldn’t resist.)

Kizuna

When the advertising for Kizuna tells you that Nakatsuru did the character designs, that’s actually somewhat of a lie. That statement is only true if you consider the character designs in the movie to be very, very loosely based on Nakatsuru’s drafts. In practice, the character designs/models used on the website, merch, and of course in the actual movie are by Tachikawa Seiji, who used Nakatsuru’s work as a very (very) rough base in adapting them for animation. (But of course, the fandom was demanding that anything Adventure branded have designs by Nakatsuru, so he’s the name they advertised with.)

I did initially consider making a separate row for the original Nakatsuru drafts in the same way I had a row for the Uki ones, but I decided against it for two reasons: one, because the draft designs for the 02 quartet were never uploaded anywhere digitally (they were only ever released in print material, which means I can’t really eyedrop them), and two, because the Nakatsuru draft designs have only ever really been treated as draft/beta designs by official marketing, and in practice, the Tachikawa designs are the ones associated with the movie in everything ranging from promotional art to merch to (of course) the movie itself.

Like with Hurricane Touchdown, Kizuna's actual palette in practice is "everything" due to the huge range of dynamic lighting used in the movie, meaning that you can’t really extract a baseline from the movie itself due to the fact neutral lighting basically does not exist at any point in it. (This apparently made color designer Gouda Saori go through quite the wringer.) However, merchandise lines and promotional art have all been fairly consistent about following a baseline, so I felt comfortable extracting directly from those for the above palette, and I would say we’re probably expected to imagine those as neutral colors through the movie’s dramatic lighting. For the most part, the palette is actually pretty close to the original in many ways in terms of hue/saturation, mainly being brighter and more "pastel" across the board (and although the original colors haven't really aged badly anyway, this trend towards brighter, more "pastel-ish" colors is pretty endemic to modern anime trends).

Adventure:

While I was watching the reboot, I could have sworn the colors used for the characters were very different from those from the original series right down to hair colors, but...nope, they’re actually quite similar to the original! I am shocked, frankly.

I think what made me think this was that while the base character hair colors are the same, everything else is significantly more highly saturated (look at the difference between the stark bright blue and orange on Taichi’s outfit compared to the more muted blue in his original Adventure outfit). Add to that the fact that the reboot uses a lot more shading in general (the original Adventure, whether due to deliberate style or low budget, would leave much larger areas completely flat-colored), and you get the overall impression of the reboot coming off as having much bolder contrasts and saturation compared to the original series, even though the baseline colors for hair and skin seem to be the same.

Incidentally, the advertising for this also lied in saying that the character designer was still Nakatsuru; that’s technically true in the sense that the reboot character designs are lifted from the original Adventure, but the animation character designs (i.e. the new clothing designs) have been hinted to actually be by Asanuma Akihiro, a longtime animation director for the Digimon franchise as well as the character designer for Xros Wars.

[metalandmagi]

August Media Madness

Well, August may have sucked for me personally, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t keep track of all the media I consumed this month! And spoiler alert, I watched a lot of movies involving adorable talking bears. Although, I have a feeling that as soon as the fall television premieres start, I’ll be watching a lot less movies.

July’s media

Movies!

Dear Evan Hansen

Thank you bootlegs. This isn’t a movie, but I didn’t want to make a separate category for plays when I’ve only seen one this month. Anyway, if you haven’t heard of it, Dear Evan Hansen involves an incredibly anxious teenage boy who is tasked by his therapist to write motivational letters to himself. Unfortunately, Connor Murphy, an angsty boy who goes to Evan’s school sees one of the letters, takes it, and promptly decides to kill himself, with the letter still on his person. Everyone ends up thinking he and Evan were friends and that this letter was a suicide note that Connor wrote to Evan...and a beautiful fake gay relationship friendship was born. Call me basic as hell, but I’ve watched this show twice now, and listened to the soundtrack more times than I can count, and it’s turning into my favorite musical. There are so many important messages in it, and it takes you on a roller coaster of emotions. Every character does good and bad things, and no one is blameless or innocent...except maybe Zoe Murphy. If anything just listen to the soundtrack. 10/10

Night on the Galactic Railroad

Cats...on a mystical train...This seems like the kind of movie they would show you in film school. Very dull plot and characters with the themes being the main takeaway. What even is the plot of this movie? Darker, grittier, furry version of the Polar Express? Incredibly boring slightly more religious version of Over the Garden Wall? I just kept watching it because the main character looks like a cat version of Kagayama Tobio in middle school...cat-gayama. 4/10

Paddington

An adorable bear from South America travels to London and gets into all sorts of trouble with an English family. It’s very charming and sweet, and the aesthetic in this movie is on point, like Wes Anderson directed a children’s movie. This is one of those movies you hear about where everyone loves it, and you think it can’t possibly be that good, but then you watch it and you were wrong! So wrong! 10/10

Paddington 2

Naturally. This time an adorable South American bear goes to prison, and his family tries to clear his name. Again, A+ aesthetic and imagery, but I think I preferred the plot of the first movie a little more because everyone was all together. 9/10

Christopher Robin

Do you like Winnie the Pooh? Do you like jaded adults finding happiness in their lives again? Do you think the movie Hook had a good premise but was extremely long and kinda boring and could have been a better movie with a little tweaking? Well this is the movie for you! Christopher Robin has grown into an overworked adult, and his old friend Winnie the Pooh inadvertently helps him reconnect with his wife and daughter (and also his inner child) just by being the sweet, clumsy, dry humored bear we all know and love. I was so skeptical of this movie at first, and I was absolutely blown away by how funny and meaningful it was. 100/10

The Road to El Dorado

Two lovable Spanish con men named Miguel and Tulio are accidentally swept away on a journey to the fabled city of El Dorado, where everything is made of gold. Once they reach the city, the locals believe they’re gods due to an (un)fortunate series of coincidences, and the con men try to keep up the charade with the help of the best character in the movie, Chel (who I’m pretty sure caused an entire generation of lesbians’ sexual awakening). This is one of my favorite animated movies of all time and one of the reasons I wish Dreamworks would go back to their 2D animation days, where the visuals and music were just as stunning as 3D movies are now. This movie is a classic, and I desperately want a sequel! 10/10

To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before

When Lara Jean thinks it’s a good idea to write 5 secret love letters to 5 boys that she’s had crushes on over the years, everything is fine until her little sister mails the letters to all the boys (because even a 6th grader knows Lara Jean is lonely and emotionally stunted as fuck). This is a Netflix original movie that was adapted from the book by Jenny Han...which I haven’t read, but now I really want to. Overall, this was super cute, but I wasn’t really crazy about the boys. They weren’t horrible people or anything, and they never pressured Lara Jean or made fun of her for being “innocent”, but they were just kind of bland. I’m much more interested in the other boys we didn’t see in the movie! But the family relationships were so heartfelt, Lara Jean’s fashion sense is AMAZING, and the acting/casting was awesome. 8/10

Summer Wars

I...don’t even know how to describe the plot of this one. A teenage boy named Kenji goes on a country holiday and pretends to date an acquaintance of his in order to impress her enormous family...but it’s really about an AI that becomes sentient and wants to mess up the world through this universal internet program called OZ that’s kind of like a mashup of Facebook and Second Life...but actually no it’s about family sticking together and using a Japanese card game to save the world…but apparently it’s got the same plot as the Digimon movie because they’re both directed by Mamoru Hosoda. Yeah...

Guys, I have a confession to make...this has always been my favorite Mamoru Hosoda movie. Everyone falls all over themselves saying Wolf Children is the best Mamoru Hosoda movie, and that’s great for them but it doesn’t even come in second for me. Summer Wars means a lot more to me personally because I come from a big extended family, and when I first saw this movie, I was blown away by how accurate the family dynamic was. There are so many characters, but everyone has their own personality. Not to mention the music makes the summer atmosphere so on point. And I’m not going to lie...I bawled like a fucking baby the first time I saw this movie. So anyway, I like Summer Wars more than Wolf Children, thanks for coming to my TED talk. 10/10

Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Unappreciated researcher Milo Thatch goes on an expedition to find the lost city of Atlantis.

Okay, there are two kinds of Disney fans in this world: Treasure Planet fans, and Atlantis fans. And I will support Treasure Planet as the best underrated vaguely steampunk inspired Disney movie until you can pry my 15 year old dvd copy away from my cold dead hands. But Atlantis is pretty good too. I could write essays comparing the two and why both of them should be successful but weren’t. My main problem with it is that the characters are great, but I feel like we don’t see enough of them, and as a kid a lot of the humor went by so fast that I completely missed it. Also the glowing eyes and spirits taking over the Atlantian princess’s body freaked me the fuck out as a child. NEVERTHELESS! This really is a great movie, with extremely well developed lore and well designed characters that chills me to this day. 8/10

Deadpool 2

The merc with a mouth is back, and man there’s so much going on in this movie I won’t even try to explain the plot. I literally had to go back and add this in because I was so into this movie when I was watching it that I forgot to write it down! Even though I really liked this sequel, I think I liked the first one better, just based on how much I laughed. There was so much going on plot wise, but it really seemed to work for this movie. There were also a lot of great new characters (Domino is my favorite character of the franchise now), but since there was so much stuff going on, a lot of jokes and plot lines were sort of hit and miss. Anyway, I’m sure everyone’s seen this one by now but just in case, I highly recommend it. 9/10

Books!

The Adventure Zone Graphic Novel: Here There be Gerblins by Clint McElroy (technically all the McElboys) and Carey Pietsch

Yeah yeah, for anyone who doesn’t know I’m Adventure Zone trash okay. TAZ is a DnD podcast where 3 brothers and their father create one of the most famous campaigns in history involving three idiot adventurers going on a quest to find a missing person and getting sucked into a much larger grand plan to protect the world. This graphic novel is a visualization of the first arc. I don’t even really like Here There be Gerblins all that much, and yet here I am. Oh well, the art was amazing, and of course I already knew the story. But it was kind of hilarious to see the name changes they had to make to some of the characters and places. I was a little disappointed that the ending was so rushed, and we don’t really spend time around the moon base before The Director is in our face changing the Lunar Interlude parts but whatever. 10 dead gerblins/10

The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

When a disease that only affects children kills off nearly all the kids on the planet, the survivors are left with supernatural powers and are taken away to concentration camps in order to “protect” the public. I’ve been wanting to read this for a long time, and since the movie just came out I thought it was the perfect time. This is one of those books that some people adore and some people hate. I thought it was just okay. For everything that I didn’t like, there was something to make up for it. Personally, I felt that Bracken focused on the wrong part of the story. Everything takes place years after this disease has come, and I think it would have been more interesting to see everything from the children’s points of view when this disease was first starting. I would focus on each different character as a child and how they wound up in their respective camps. Oh well, there’s way too many pros and cons  that I could delve into, but you like the YA dystopian genre then I say go for it. I didn’t like it enough to read the other two books (not yet anyway). 7/10

TV Shows!

Camp Camp

You know how there are summer camps that specialize in science, or acting, or space, or whatever? Yeah Camp Camp is about a summer camp that throws literally everything you can think of into one summer camp. If you don’t believe me, just listen to the theme song. Seriously though this is one of the best shows I’ve watched all year, but boy howdy this is not one for young children. It’s like Gravity Falls and Rick and Morty had a baby! Anyway, the characters are both surprising and hilarious. David the camp counselor (voiced by Miles Luna) is genuinely likable when you think he’d be the most annoying person on the planet, and the kids are so accurate it’s scary. Also Yuri Lowenthal is in it. And Griffin McElroy has a recurring role where he plays A GHOST! I’ve never been into Rooster Teeth stuff, but they have a winner with this one. 10/10

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

After her husband leaves her, Midge Maisel gets super drunk, goes on stage, and gives a hilarious rant about her relationship at a small comedy/talent club and somehow gets sucked into becoming a rising comedian as a woman in the 1950s. It’s good. Great acting pretty funny, but Midge and her agent/manager Susie are the only likable characters. Everyone else just kind of...sucks 8/10

Voltron Season 7 (spoilers)

Okay, I know everyone had mixed feelings about this season, but I did come out liking a lot of it. It had a lot of flaws (I really thought it would be Shiro’s season, and man was I wrong), but this is the sort of thing we can’t really judge until the last episode of the series is finished. I like to think of the positives: the action was amazing as usual, HUNK IS GETTING MORE AND MORE DEVELOPMENT EVERY SEASON, I refuse to believe the team introduced Adam just to have him killed off immediately so he’s still alive in my mind, we get to see everyone’s reunions with their families, the lost in space episode was cool, and say what you want about the game show episode, but I loved it! There were a lot of good things so it was easier for me to look past the...not so great aspects of the season. 7/10

Galavant

A musical comedy mini series involving a renowned medieval hero named Galavant on a quest to rescue his ex girlfriend from her “evil” husband King Richard. But maybe she doesn’t want to be rescued. Well, that’s just the first season. It’s best to go in knowing as little as possible. I remember liking it when it first came out, and it’s still pretty cute...but sometimes I feel like it’s trying too hard. A lot of the music isn’t really...memorable, but the characters are likable so it’s still worth the watch. 8/10

Disenchantment

Speaking of medieval comedies...Princess Bean doesn’t want to get married, mystical elf Elfo doesn’t want to live in an enchanted forest where everyone is happy all the time, and Bean’s personal demon Luci just wants to watch people suffer. Honestly, I wasn’t very into this show at first, but something compelled me to just keep watching, and by the end I was totally into it! This is one of those shows where you think there isn’t going to be a plot, but then the last few episodes come up and smack you in the face! 7.5/10

Round Planet

A documentary parody...mockumentary...satire...That’s really not a great way to describe it. It’s a nature documentary with funny commentary. I like nature shots and animals so I liked it, but there’s a lot of tangents and running jokes and British references that sometimes don’t land. Oh well, if you like unconventional documentaries, just watch it. 8/10

Honorable Mentions

DnDnD: I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this podcast before, but there’s a DnD podcast made by Practical Folks (aka the Drunk Disney youtube channel). It’s pretty good! I want an Adventure Zone crossover now!

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Every time I think I’m out, it pulls me back in. I finally got the DLC and spent most of this month playing this freaking game AGAIN!

The Heathers soundtrack: I finally listened to the Heathers musical soundtrack...and I didn’t love it. There are some good songs in it, but overall I’m unimpressed. And I never could really get into the plot, I’ve always thought it was really weird and over dramatic.

Legendary by Stephanie Garber: I’m about halfway through this book, which is the second in the Caraval series. And it’s pretty good! More on that next month.

[thatguysamaniac-blog]

Every now and then a conversation sparks up round the water cooler at TGAM Towers that goes along the lines of someone asking "So is gaming mainstream yet?". Hours, insults, fisticuffs and a reminder on policy on worker in the work place later, inevitably the conclusion is a firm not yet.  We're not expecting an overnight transformation. But what would it take?  We have game inspired video games at the Box Office (okay so they're rarely great), Final Fantasy menus in restaurants, Splatoon and Pokemon collaboration ranges with Uniqlo, LEGO collaborations with Blizzard, Midway and SEGA. Museum exhibitions on video games, design and art. Gaming content seemingly dominates large swathes of the Internet from Youtube through to Youporn. Yet admitting that you choose to spend your time playing video games every now and then still feels, in the UK at least, akin to admitting that you strictly only eat the faces of babies because that's where the softest meat is.    When Does This Pre-Amble End? When it comes to the real world, specifically the high street, video games themselves have virtually no presence at all. In fact it's got worse since our budding interest grew in the 1990s. Arcades are all but dead, few cities have a dedicated game retailer (you might be able to find a grotty copy of NBA 2018 in one of those laptop/mobile repair shops), major supermarkets stock perhaps 4.5 games and media stores in general are critically endangered. TV never manged to 'get' gaming and even though Esports is making huge strides it's still not managed to topple the likes of darts, snooker and cricket from their prime time perches (or even get broadcast at all away from the Internet).  When we first got into gaming we'd wet our pants even when video games penetrated the mass media in the lamest ways from those Lucozade Tomb Raider ads. to the awful why-can't-anyone-crack-gaming-content-on-TV shows and even feigning support for those Resident Evil films when there was frankly nothing else on the horizon. However, now that Netflix is a national sport we're almost drowning in a rich and diverse soup of game-related content. Most of which is total pants. Some of which is bonkers and dare I say some might even have appeal beyond those who would call themselves a gamer (and cringes at the same time because nobody over the age of 12 unironically calls themselves a gamer). Gaming content is so prevalent on Netflix, it even has it's own category, two in fact! Does this mean gaming is mainstream yet? No you babyface eating monster it doesn't are you mad?  Gaming Shit Currently on UK Netflix (Alphabetically) The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 Okay so for all the hype up top, a lot of this stuff is cheesy kid's cartoons. This is a 30 year old cheesy cartoon loosely based on that hot new video game release Super Mario Bros. 3 and although a smidgen better than the Super Mario Bros. Super Show.... it's amazing this franchise didn't just die in the 90s. Remember King Koopa and Princess Toadstool? 13 episodes. 13 episodes too many.  Angry Birds Can any lawyers out there help? Is there some EU mandated law that means video game tie-in media has to come out decades after the thing it is based on became culturally irrelevant? Three seasons of this steaming mess and I've not got to the will to work out if this is related to the movie, the sequel movie out THIS YEAR(?), the toons series or how it will fit in with the WHO IS ASKING FOR THIS CONTENT 'long form' cartoon out in 2020. For those of you younger than 10, i.e. the target audience for this stuff, Angry Birds used to be a video game. Black Mirror Sometimes very video game inspired, sometimes not, this series makes us question our relationship with technology makes us feel even worse for prodding a phone screen and writing swears to other 14 year olds online. Recommended watching but not all in one go mind.  Castlevania Supposedly a decent anime version of the games. I've not watched all of it because I only played Castlevania 64 and Dawn of Sorrow and if you don't understand who any of the characters are, it's reaaalllly slow and boring. Worth a try if you actually have engaged with the critically acclaimed series unlike us.  Digimon Fusion Ergh. Dirty. No. Bad Mega Bloks. No. Dinosaur King Ahhh dinosaur games. Archaeologists have found ancient scrolls that record the Dinosaur King was actually a video game and collectible card game from 2005. This is the series from 2008 that absolutely is not based on Pokemon at all and mixes anime style and really really bad looking CGI.   Final Fantasy XIV: Dad of Light Okay, this series is actually brilliant. Remember how Pinball Wizard was a feature movie advert for Super Mario Bros. 3? Well this is a series length advert for Final Fantasy XIV told through the heart warming story of an awkward Japanese man and his awkward relationship with his awkward recently retired Dad and he tries to rebuild that relationship by getting him into Final Fantasy XIV because they used to play Final Fantasy together. Each week is a new challenge as his Dad quits because of a mechanic he doesn't understand that helpfully his son and his guildmates help explain. Passable on it's own but elevated to must watch by a few scenes that use familiar Final Fantasy sounds that get this glorified advert tugging on the heart strings.  Halo Shit Includes Halo 4: Forward Until Dawn, Halo Legends and Halo Fall of Reach. The first one is live action and frankly awful. Legends is to Halo what Animatrix was to the Matrix and worth a watch. I've watched Halo: Fall of Reach six or seven times and I can't tell you what happens so try it perhaps? Hi Score Girl Weird anime homage to early arcades told through the relationship of a nerdy arcade kid and an aloof posh girl who is very good at video games but not allowed to play them at home. Watch if you you always wondered about turtling in Street Fighter 2 but didn't actually look it up in the last 30 years. Probably very nostalgic for 30 something Japanese gamers. Which isn't us.  Ingress the Animation I've impressed myself that I didn't miss this. Remember Ingress the AR mobile game that nobody had heard of  until it got a Pokemon Go reskin? No neither did I. Well apparently someone along the way believed so strongly in the Ingress vision that they commissioned an anime series in 2018. Really slow. Extremely Japanese. If the game was anything like this then we can understand why nobody has heard of it.  Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV (NO LONGER AVAILABLE) This appears to have been pulled which is a shame as it was alright. Apparently, I'm reliably told the events of this film are really important to the context of the game and only told in this film. Errr tough anyway you missed it here.  Minecraft Story Mode Fuck off. Pacman and the Ghostly Adventures Perhaps takes the award for being the least relevant television tie-in ever. We got two seconds in before reaching for the revolver and the sweet release of a bullet kiss to the brain. All the tropes of Saturday morning cartoons with none of the charisma. Remarkably there's also a Halloween and Christmas Merry Berry short to make both of those holidays even more intolerable. Brilliant soundtrack though.   Pixels Probably the best worst video game related movie of all time. I'm not sure who the audience was when it came out and with each year gets more and more obscure. It stays the same amount of crap though which is a lot of crap.    Pokemon Want to watch only the first and last series of the anime and whatever random films seem to be on Netflix at the time? Knock yourself out. For us this is the UK being shit at commercialising this shit at its worst. Its very worst. The entirety of Pokemon has never been available in the UK at the same time ever. We never got VHS/DVD releases for most series or cinematic releases for some of the films. The Pokemon TV app frustratingly cycles episodes in and out and bizarrely Netflix is missing the middle 91 seasons and the first 38 films. It doesn't fucking matter anyway every episode is the same except the latest season where every episode is the same but set in a school BECAUSE WE'RE ALL CHILDREN AND WE FIND SCHOOL SUPER RELATABLE. There's also a creepy birthday video, hilariously with characters from a season otherwise not available on Netflix. Is it too much to ask to employ one person part-time to curate this shit? Rabbids Invasion File under striking whilst the iron is... you know what, I can't hate on the Rabbids. I really want to but honestly they're brilliant and most of their games are too. Probably brilliant. Strangely only the 4th season is available...?  Red Vs Blue The series that built the house of goofing around in games. Early seasons have not aged well at all. How did we put up with the awful sound and even worse 'plot'? 124 seasons of this madness though so if you're in palliative care and want to speed things along...   Resident Evil: Afterlife Hysterically, only the middle film is available serving the incredibly niche audience of people who like the Milaverse Resident Evil films but are four films behind.  Skylanders Academy Remember the smash hit wallet biting Toys to Life game series that ran itself and all the imitators into the ground from 2011 to 2016 and now fill attics and sheds the world over? Well now you can enjoy the 2018 animated series with all handfuls of your favourite characters. Set in a high school. There's also a weird 1 minute long happy birthday message thing that a lot of the kid's shows have done on Netflix so if you really hate your kid and want to let them know you should show them that on their birthday I guess.  Smosh the Movie Is this video games? They look cuntish enough to be Youtubers and this movie is exactly as awkward as you'd expect when Youtubers try to do something proper with make up, production values and nice cameras. Like that *cringes* Game Grumps series. Or when that *mega cringes* green haired kid did that Fortnite dance at that thing. Suggested watching if you're need that extra push to do the right thing and end yourself before it all gets a bit Fallouty round here. Sonic Boom This is the weird one that all the furries like. Tomb Raider I think the rebooted film before the current reboot? Is casting ladies from the North of the UK to be Lara Croft still a thing? In this movie Lara Croft, I kid you not, is a Deliveroo driver and... it does pick up from there but in a very formulaic and inoffensive kinda way. Video Game High School (NO LONGER AVAILABLE) And be fucking thankful. What if instead of lessons at school you played different video games? Live action series with hands down one of the worst cast of actors of all time. Ridiculous premise (which of course later sort of became real with several Universities running esports programmes) glad it got removed to be honest. Yokai Watch The new new Pokemon with 80% less appeal. Not 100% sure the game series is still going. Children's Shows and Toilet Contents So there we have it. No doubt there's a few I missed and some of this may have disappeared by the time you're reading this. A rich smorgasbord of children's cartoons and questionable content that got a pass because it's video games. At the time of writing, there's virtually no adult content and currently no documentaries. Which is a shame. If they wanted, Netflix could become the de facto place for curated traditionally produced gaming related content from Street Fighter live action movie and animated series, the CG Resident Evil Films, Pinball Wizard, King of Kong, Silent Hill one and two, the Dead Space films etc. etc. Instead it seems that they're content to maintain this weird ever changing half complete line up of irrelevant at launch factory manufactured kid's shows and single films from a series. Perhaps they are right though, there's no point competing with YouTube and Twitch which now host infinity hours worth of quality content that gamers are already spending millions of pounds on supporting. Is gaming mainstream yet? Looks like we need to wait until one of the grumpy white middle class hacks at the Guardian produces an op-ed on why they're giving up on Rabbids Invasion despite everyone at dinner parties talking about it or how Smosh the Movie made them bicurious one evening.  It's perhaps better to stay in the margins of the old media whilst defining new media (at a ripe young 40), after all REALLY PUNCHY FINISHER. Right?

http://www.thatguys.co.uk/2019/07/gaming-shit-on-netflix.html