#whose job it is to just float around and have other characters exposition at her

[otherpens]

Ever just kill an entire child offscreen just so you can re-set a character to their early season one state but this time without their Mysterious Secret In Their Past?

[mysterylover123]

BNHA Rewatch: Two Heroes

mysterylover123

And before we start Season 3, one more road stop: The Big Freaking Movie, Two Heroes, last year’s surprise anime blockbuster and HeroAca’s first excursion onto the big screen. Time to share my thoughts and rewatch this very entertaining film!

We open with bald eagles, deserts, and cowpoke themes, to make sure we know we’re in America. We fly into “California” which looks more like Las Vegas (not really complaining, I loooove that they picked my hometown state for this) to find young, white schlera eye-having All Might and his hunky bro David Shield kicking ass and taking names. My state’s name, to be precise. 

Some exposition follows, basically recapping the premise of HeroAca, as I’m reminded of what a stroke of genius Hori had when he decided to make the MC an easy expositor thanks to his geeky knowledge of all things Hero. Deku will always be Captain Exposition.

Melissa! She’s fun and adorable and amazing, and I just love that the first HeroAca movie chooses to focus on a geeky, kind and energetic lady. 

Deku looking back and forth between Melissa’s breasts and All Might’s crotch belt is peak Bi energy.

I’m so jealous that Melissa gets to touch Deku’s hand.

Melissa describing All Might as someone David ‘loves’ is just throwing away all pretence of his heterosexuality, if it ever existed. How the hell did this guy end up with a kid?

Deku blushing around and enthusing over both Melissa and David is max bi energy.

Uraraka’s Annoying Crush Counter: 5

But I’m glad the girls are here! The Bones animators clearly know well what the fanbase wants to see, choosing to give all 6 class 1-A girls at least a cameo in the film, and three of them involved in the main plot. I especially love that, despite being initially pitted against each other, Uraraka and Melissa develop a bit of a womance in the film. OchaLissa ship!

My one major regret about this film is that Mineta is included in the Main Cast. I wish either Mina or Tsuyu had come along for the ride instead - one, they’re better, more lovable characters who could do the same job he does, and two, then we’d have a nearly gender-even cast! (6 Boys: Deku, Katsuki, Tenya, Shoto, Kiri, Kaminari; 5 Girls: Ochaco, Momo, Jiro, Melissa, Mina or Tsu). 

Kacchan makes his appearance! This bit was leaked online before the film’s release and drew quite a lot of ire from BKDK shippers and Bakugo fans. I’m mostly annoyed that Deku is acting OOC here; this is Post-Final Exam Deku, post Hero Killer Deku. Would the guy who punched All Might in the face and Bakugo in the face and the Hero Killer in the face be cowering in fear behind Iida, the guy whose life he saved, from the guy he, only a few weeks ago, punched in the face?! Badass Deku Rights!

Ooh a wild Todobaku moment! I always love when they bicker. Or rather, Katsuki bickers and Shoto ignores him.

OH NO you cannot slap me with the Ingenium OST theme and hardcore feels out of nowhere! God this scene is heartbreaking. I love, however, the cut to the whole of Class 1-A and Melissa when they talk about the future.

AH Bakugo’s feet! Why are we staring up his crotch? So this movie has a lot of KiriBaku scenes, and I should probably talk about them a little, since their friendship is a big deal in S3. They’re the only major HeroAca ship I’ve never shipped as a romantic pairing, per se. Like, in this scene, I see Kiri as Katsuki’s wingman, his bro, the guy who teases him about his obvious feelings from someone, not as the guy he has feelings for.

And for Kiri’s sake, I kinda dislike making him basically Bakugo’s sidekick. He willingly hangs out with the guy, when he wants to, in canon, he doesn’t follow him around and become the butt of the joke, and he has lots of other relationships in canon to draw from, so this dynamic between them doesn’t appeal to me.

Melissa being a quirkless kid like Deku is a great idea for the film, especially since she and David still find a way to help others. They’re a brighter image of the person Izuku could have been. 

Full Gauntlet is pretty cool

Everyone dresses up pretty! The movie suits/dresses are awesome and (almost) everyone looks great. Why Deku is wearing a baggy zoot-suity mess is beyond me, but hey, he sheds it pretty quickly so I’m not complaining. 

If by ‘female assassin’ you mean Beauty Queen. Jiro is gorgeous.

OK the plot ensues! Darn, I could’ve easily enjoyed a movie that was just everyone hanging out and goofing off...ah well, I still love what we got.

This villain does what neither Tomura nor All for One could ever do! Subdue All Might! My god he’s a criminal mastermind!

Deku wants to help, and everyone but Shoto basically piles on the bandwagon afterwards. “And me!” “And me!” “Me too!” “And Me” “Nobody cares Mineta.” I like how they bring up the Powers dilemma, since that’s a big deal in Season 3.

I was pretty impressed by the amount of level grinding our heroes had to do to make it to the top floor. 200 freaking floors, that’s impressive.

Todoroki saved Bakugo! Yay! BTW I love all the tactical planning stuff in this portion, and how lots of characters get to contribute.

10 little superheroes, trying to save the day. Two got lost and then there were eight.

8 little superheroes, escaping from the garden. One saved the others and then there were seven.

7 little superheroes running against the sea, four were trapped by robots and then there were three. (i don’t count mineta). 

Three little superheroes, reached the top and flew; one had to float them so then there were two. (she’s fine, Bakugo saved her. Save to win!)

Two little superheroes, faced with a gun. One fell out the window and then there was - never mind, she saved him, he’s fine.

That was fun. Anyway, to sum, the group gets split up as they work to get to the top, leaving only Deku and Melissa to reach the final boss dungeon. Highlights include the usual Kamijiro bantering, Todobaku making an awesome combat move, Uraraka standing against the coming onslaught of robots in a weirdly dramatic scene, and Reciproburst.

Dislikes include Kirishima being portrayed as not much use and kind of stupid (c’mon, he can do better than that!) and Uraraka not getting to kick any real ass other than floating Melissa and Deku. 

So we make it to Dramatic Plot Twist Tower and find out that David set up the whole thing. I joke, but I actually didn’t see this coming the first time around and was genuinely surprised. I also think it fits really well with the story they’re telling here: about trying to hold onto the past and forgetting to look to the future. I usually measure good plot twists in terms of how they change the story, characters and themes, and this one does.

On the other hand, Sam betraying him is just kind of silly. “Oh no, not...that guy!”

The villain being named Wolfram makes me wonder if there are any secret Buffyverse fans on Bones’ writing staff. With the next movie’s villain be named Hart?

I love how Melissa is a quirkless character who gets to save the day every bit as much as the powered ones. Also, Deku is freaking awesome in this scene, ngl. It has vibes of his fight with Muscular, that “pinned by an unstoppable wall” thing.

And this has vibes of Deku vs Overhaul trying to save Eri. OMG S4 IS GONNA KILL ME. Anyway Deku tries really really hard to save David Shield and does lots of cool leaps and gets beaten up while doing it, enough to earn some of Wolfram’s respect, but is unable to. Fortunately...

Watashi Ga Kita!

But then...duh duh duh! Wolfram has that power-enhancer-plot MacGuffin! Actually, it’s not a MacGuffin now, because now we the audience kind of care about it. It has weight, it’s significant. The characters care about it, but there’s more to it than just being an interchangeable object.

I LOVE how they animated the metal on this guy. That’s Metalbending. OMG. 

Class 1-A showing up and kicking ass as always. I just wanna quibble for a second with how this movie uses Howitzer Impact: a giant mind-blowing explosion in manga canon, a small underwhelming fizzle here.

DUH DUH DUH DRAMATIC PLOT TWIST. Again this one floored me the first time around. My jaw actually dropped when AFO’s theme started playing. Holy crap WHAH How what how. I’m not as excited about this plot twist, as it basically just happens for the sake of being shocking, but hey, that is clearly something AFO would do, and I like seeing him and hearing his theme here anyway, so who cares. Just roll with it!

And now, the reason this movie was made and the premise behind it. We never, in the canon of the manga, actually get to see All Might and Deku fight the same villain at the same time, so the movie I think was made for that purpose: DOUBLE DELAWARE DETROIT SMASH + YSR

OH YOU SAY RUN. You could soundtrack a scene of people sitting around staring at the wall and turn it into the most epic thing ever. I will never get tired of this beautiful, peerless, impossibly good composition. And this is honestly one of my favorite YSR scenes, because dayum, you can’t get much cooler than the Double DD smash. 

Visual storytelling here is on point. David Shield’s image of All Might turning into Deku is perfect.

We end on a sunrise, fittingly, and Long Hope Philia sountracked credits - with a small bit of depressing to end on, as we see David is probably gonna get arrested and All Might can’t do nothing about it.

Two Heroes is great. My quibbles with it are all minor. It’s the perfect first movie for BNHA; it is big and bombastic and action-packed, but more important, it gets what MHA is about at it’s core. BNHA is a story about the prior generation of heroes (and villains) passing the torch down to the next one. You know, like how teachers pass info onto their students in Academia. The movie gets that, and it delivers it with aplomb. It’s a great script, every scene and moment is necessary and everything happens in the right place and right order. It’s a thrill to watch, and I can’t even begin to imagine what insane stuff they’re gonna put in Movie #2 BKDK Boogaloo. Starting S3 tomorrow!

BKDK CORNER:

On a rewatch, I’m a little more OK with this scene, because Deku pretty quickly bucks up and takes the challenge - and he doesn’t exactly cower from Kacchan, Iida just gets in the way. I also love that gay sounding “Kacchan, people are watching!” line in the sub. 

All of Deku’s Love interests where white flowers on their fancy wear.

NGL this is my favorite part of the movie. That is the sweetest, softest, most endearing smile Bakugo has ever had, and Todoroki seeing it and smirking is just perfect. Baku is peak Tsundere in this scene.

RANKER: The Formal Wear

Girls:

4. Momo - I like the tiara, and the dress is kind of a nice color.

3. Melissa - pretty but a little birthday cake-y.

2. Ochaco - Very cute and well-tailored. The tights really sell it.

1. Jiro - unconventional is the winner of the day here.

Boys:

6. Izuku - Deku where the f did you get that suit? Take it off, please. Why is your taste in clothing so bad.

5. Kirishima - it’s ok, but a little generic.

4. Kaminari - the waiter look isn’t half bad on him

3. Iida - sharp dressed, of course. It looks nice!

2. Todoroki - perfectly handsome, and of course his suit is white.

1. Bakugo - that vest tho. damn. 

[popculturebuffet]

Giant Days (Boom) #1 “Like A Sexy Moon”

In honor of Giant Days grand finale one-shot this week, we go all the way back to the beginning of it’s long and storied ongoing where three first year university students consisting of a flighty energetic goth, a hardboiled detective metaphorically in the body of a med student, and a cheerful and naive small town girl whose mostly hair try to make it through lunch without chaos ensuing. Spoilers: Chaos ensues. Class, and a heartfelt mega-paragraph about my love of the series, is under the cut. 

A few years ago, i’d say about 2016, my mom had her annual oscar party. This isn’t all that relevant to the story, and reveals that even at 27 (I kept forgetting to correct my age on my blog), soon to be 28, I still live at home, but it’s important because it’s where I first read giant days. Buying the first volume during a comixology sale that had it for all of three bucks, I lapped up the series almost immediately,  then when I got home got my hands on every issue that had been out at the time and caught up asap, following the series since then to it’s conclusion this week. , only missing the “Where women blow and men plunder” special. For the past few years, in an ever changing comic book landscape where titles come and go, start strong and peter out or are just plain great or foul from the start but leave all the same , i’ts been my rock. My mountain in a sea of ever changing titles... and Wednesday said mountain breaks off and floats off into the either, maybe to become a new campus for the university of north carolina in the sky I dunno. The point is the series means a lot to me and it’s sad to see it go, even if it’s writer John Allison probably won’t leave my life and knowing him our heroes probably will return, or at least one or two of them will, someday, it’s still a sad end to a heartfelt, ungodly hilarious, sometimes rediculous but always intresting journey. My intrest may of waxed and waned, as is expected when a book runs 4 years, but it never left  my heart. So join me won’t you as I go back to where it all began.. not with the whole volume, but with the first monthly issue of giant days. 

------------------------- Giant Day is the creation of John Allison, who before creating this and other print works By Night and Steeple, which having not read past issue 1 or read it yet respectively will certainly pop up here eventually, was the creator of a large number of web comics, all of which I discovered thanks to Giant Days, in part because Giant Days itself is a Spin-Off from Allison’s second comic strip, and his most famous work pre-Giant Days: Scary Go Round

Scary Go Round itself was a spinoff/sequel to Allison’s previous comic strip Bobbins, originally following two minor characters from that strip before they were slowly shoved out of the strip in favor of Shelley Winters... and yes the name i intentional, not the actress from Cheers but a bubbly red head with a skewed sense of reality and a can do spirit and her two best friends: local layabout with a heart of gold Ryan, one of shelly’s old friends and Amy, the daughter of Shelley’s ex-boss, a sharp tounged young woman with a healthy libidio who grows from a spoiled princess to a responsible buisness owner. The three deal with relationship issues, wacky shenanigans.. and the supernatural stuff that happens in their town of Tackleford because it’s a hub of spoopy shit Just in case you thought it was just his other print works that were kinda weird in comparison to the mostly grounded Giant Days, nope. While his stuff post the original bobbins is well grounded in character work, it’s all got a tinge of weird to it. If you have the time check it out. While some things may fly over your head unless you read the original bobbins, and I strongly suggest you don’t, it’s otherwise a very good read and very much the blue print for his stronger later stuff. 

And as noted it’s from this weird and wonderful early goop we get the protaganist of this book: Esther DeGroot, a perky goth girl who intitally showed up with her best friend Sarah and their muscle Big Lindsay to have LIndsay beat amy into the ground for chatting up a singer they liked. Thankfully she quickly grew out of having her friends beat up college drop outs and instead became a weird, snarky goth and rival to Shelley’s snarky buttoned up sister Erin for the heart of local shy awkard lab assitant Eustace “The Boy” Boyce, himself introduced as fumbling assitant to local inventor and longtime pal of Shelley’s Tim. And you can now see why I had to get into everyone else as SGR’s characters tend to intersect and that web only widens. 

Esther would eventually win, and Erin would eventually end up in hell then forgotten from everyone’s memories shortly after, with Esther and Eustace staying together for the duration of the strip and through many shenanigans and were actually a rather adorable couple. By this time Esther and Eustace were just as much leads as the main three and Esther was a close friend of Ryan’s to the point he and Sarah went out briefly in their Senior Year.. when Sarah was 18 thankfully. Though Ryan did get punched over it by a drunken awkard teenager so things sorted themself out. Big Lindsay quitely disappeared and was revealed to have gottten pregnant. Both would later show up in Giant Days. The strip ended, after a soft launch for the next strip which we’ll get to in a second, with Esther and freinds graduating, Ryan and Sarah breaking up, Shelley leaving town (She’d later return but story for another time), and Ryan and Amy, who had a whole will they or won’t they thing, getting together. 

Allison did this for a reason: He felt Scary Go Round was collapsing under it’s mound of Continuity and thus decided to switch to a fresh cast. Same continuity but with less ties to the old so new readers wouldn’t be turned off. Thus came Bad Machinery. Set up during the waning days of SGR, it followed Sarah’s weird sister Lottie, her sluthy best friend Shauna and a bunch of other bright young kids i’m only not getting into because i’ve introduced enough characters and most of the ones i’ve introduced are either vital to SGR or show up in Giant Days , but are all fantastic, focusing more on the mystery while also having some coming of age stuff of it’s own as by the series end years later, the characters all grew into their late teens. It’s an excellent read and again worth checking out if you haven’t and unlike SGR is in print with the print versions adding more pages to the story and revising bits. I haven’t read them but I intend to eventually because of the revisal, but if you can’t afford them the entire originals are online free. 

Bad Machinery would later be a hit in it’s own right, as the print collections show, but in it’s first years it was actually a shaky proposition to uproot everything, replace almost the entire cast (Though Ryan and Amy, now married, stayed around as supporting cast, with Ryan being the kids teacher and Amy eventually mentoring Shauna), and change the genre from 20 somethings and teens slice of life to a bunch of 11-12 year olds coming of age and solving mysteries. And at first things dipped a bit apparently and Allison panicked and started working on a backup plan. And that backup plan was where Giant Days comes in: A Spinoff following esther and two new characters as they navigate college. He did three self published issues of it, the first put online, before focusing back on bad machinery as it picked up, and many other projects we’ll cover some day. Esther as a result was kinda left in limbo while Erin and Eustace’s stories moved forward. It seemed Esther and her new pals Daisy and Susan were lost to time...

Until 2015 when Allison agreed to do a mini-series for Boom! Studios that picked up where the original series left off, eventually getting picked up as an ongoing that lasted all the way to last month, with 2 winter specials, a one shot trip to Australia, and a final one shot finishing the series Wednesday.  As for said series I do own it, Boom has since republished it, and we will get to it.. but I felt given this is where I and probably most other fans of the series came in, it was the best place to start and issue #1 of the boom series recaps what’s come so far and re-introduces the cast well. Kinda like the second episode of a series after the pilot: some things have changed, including the series now having Artist Lisa Tremain on board to draw instead of Allison himself, some new characters have been added, but it’s still the same show and still a good point to start. And with ALLL that exposition out of the way, including exposition to set up characters for ISSUES down the line, and a little more to go, let’s dig in.  As seen at the top, the first cover is great. The yellow and red works well, as does the simple image of a morose Esther fiddling with her phone, boxing gloves on the back for reasons we’ll see shortly. A good genre setter and an excellent cover, something the series always delivers with. 

We open on our three Heroines, on their third week of college,  with a helpful narration that does a good job summing each up, so I don’t have to and you know how I like to jabber, the giant barrage of paragraphs before should be proof: Naive cheerful Daisy, dramatic and funloving esther, and serious and sardonic Susan. There will be, and already is, more to each as they grow and we learn more, and Esther of course has a few years of comics behind her to start, Giant Days even being named after a Esther and Eustace centric arc from Scary Go Round, but not something I could fit into the exposition wall. 

As you can see the ladies are having a nice talk about if they would be friends without living in the same hall, with Susan bursting Daisy and Esther’s bubble.. but it fits her personality. Susan is a realist, she sees the world how it is. Daisy is an optimist seeing the world how it SHOULD be and Esther navigates the space between, as she can be realistic once in a while but mostly tries to avoid reality like the plauge in this series. She had a tad of this in Scary Go Round but it’s really dialed up here, but there’s a good reason for why i’ll get to after Susan helpfully outlines the indie issues for me and new readers.

See this is why I went here first: while I will cover these issues, themselves covering their first three weeks of college, eventually, it covers most of what happened pretty well and makes it easy to fill in the blanks that it glossed over. The first issue did indeed turn into a scott pilgrim style brawl where Esther boxed her way to victory, Susan set someone on fire and Daisy tried to use meditation to fight but Paul Mcartney’s ghost said no. It’s not a bad issue but tone wise the series would be something much more diffrent. 

Issue 2 is where I need to go into more detail: Esther cheated on Eustace with the douchebag you rightfully see in a heap above, who then spread their night around and got his commupance. Esther told Eustace.. who dumped her over it and drove her into a depressive state, a weird heavy metal society, and booze, which she can drink because you can drink at 18 in England. She was saved from it by her new galpals.. and Erin, who was supposed to likely be a recurring character, possibly on the same level as two we’ll get to soon, and definitely figured into a major plot with Daisy, as Allison admitted. But with the gap between issues and having other plans for Erin, he decided to write her out.  Susan pegs Esther as a drama queen soon after, a “sodding drama magnet”, attracting attention like I attract X-Men comics and Kirk Cameron attracts terrible Christian movies designed to stroke his own ego. She proves this by handing her a piece of paper and well....

Well look on the bright side Esther, you have a good career as the bride of dr.doom with those skills. I mean he’s single, has a spooky castle, does magic.. he’s basically a goth’s wet dream he just needs to black up his uniform a bit. Or put on that awful leather made out of a human armor he had. Yes that was a thing. Comics are weird. 

The rest of the group chase after an angry Esther who after this immortal line, challenges Susan to a bet: if Susan wins she gets a nice massage, if Esther wins she gets to dress Susan up however she likes to torment her.

 And somehow DAISY is the one who has a coming out story in a few issues. Jokes aside I do like the friendship here: They’ll razz each other, give Daisy time, and poke at their flaws gently, or be brutally honest, but their truly and honestly friends and it shows. It feels real and it’s one of the series big draws.  The girls run into Esther’s friend Ed. Ed has a huge crush on Esther, even when she had a boyfriend something to the series credit he was called out on, but not the nerves or charisma to actually try and ask her out. Shockingly, I liked, and still liked, Ed a lot as he reminded me of well.. myself in college. Pining after girls or starring without actually going anywhere and the series will deconstruct this as we go. He’s also basically the fourth main character, getting issues focusing entirely on him and arcs of his own, but the girls are still the main focus. Susan freezes however upon seeing his friend...

This is our fifth lead, McGraw. Basically a more emotive and british Ron Swanson who as you can see clearly has a history with Susan and Susan splits before they can say more. While McGraw falls back on the old men streotype of “We don’t have to talk about it”, though unlike say Tim Taylor it’s less “I genuinely believe this nonsense, as well as that men are  incapable of commuincating unless my neighbor tells me otherwise and all loves sports. I unsuprsingly got divorced once the kids all left the house, aug aug aug”  and more “I don’t want to talk about this nor do I want to force my new friend to talk about a touchy subject yet. “ Susan is likewise closed off but in her own special Susan way and Esther reveling in Susan having drama after accusing her of being a drama queen. This ends about as well as you’d expect. 

Daisy has had best friends for all of three weeks and she’s already figured out lies are a key part of friendship. Good for her. Esther heads off for the Gym, and while Daisy declines due to, and i’m not making this up this is a genuinely good joke of john’s, worrying she’ll become a killing machine. Esther however needs it to work out her feelings over Eustace because punching shit is better than wallowing in her misery over loosing the love of her, at this point, short life. 

That panel on the right... that’s a blessed image. And really this image showcases the true heart of the series: as I said the girls are there for each other but it dosen’t feels schmaltzy or forced, it feels real and has plenty of great lines to add to that. Daisy goes back to try talking to Susan, but Susan takes a bit and when she finally works up the energy to visit daisy. 

I I understand that feeling. It’s like the realization Mr. Rogers had sex at least once. You don’t WANT to know something that pure and innocent is capable of fucking, but you do now and it will haunt you like that ghost that won’t stop stealing my soap. BUY YOUR OWN SOAP JEREMY I’M BROKE SON. Of course this wasn’t actually sex stuff as Susan soon relays to Esther as she fears she upset the poor humanoid afro lesbian. 

Side note I love the phrase having a fiddle and will save it for future use. But yeah with Susan somehow spooked, she suggests Esther change the subject as soon as they get in there. 

Susan.. ya brought this on yourself. Naturally she tries to avoid getting into the subject until eventually this happens. 

I’ll be saving this for future reference of course. And Susan gives us a LITTLE to go on... about two panels worth of ominus foreshadowing to the eventual reveal without any actual info about what in the bloody hell actually happened. 

Of course Susan calls for dinner time and says they’ll have to earn the rest later. Naturaly McGraw is also going in for dinner and Susan once again tries to deflect as her friends bascially call him a snack. I mean he is ron swanson crossbred with berkely brethead. who wouldn’t?

I love the line above.. especially since really the comic DOES pass. While there is boy drama, and girl drama for Daisy, this issue has plenty else going on besides wanting to bang someone, though given Esther won’t shut up about McGraw while talking to the human equilveant of an active volcano.. 

She’s lucky she didn’t instead bash her face in with a tray, but she’s a friend after all. Susan saves the savage beatings for her enemies and McGraw is wise enough to not let his tray anywhere near her and to duck if she tried her own. Natrually given her Drama Magnet powers Esther somehow finds the one cowboy in all of England. 

His chivlary, genuine or dudebro wise unfortunately causes a chain reaction. 

Naturally Susan was hoping for something like this, loudly gloating at activating the drama field and at having won the bet and tries to use the high that being right gives a person to run McGraw out of town. 

Unfortunatley for her, while her speech is awesome i’ll admit, it’s also entirely unfair: She expects him to change schools, and given his focus on architecture and general no nonsense nature he choose this one for a reason. Just because you two have a history dosen’t mean you can just make him leave and McGraw, as seen above, isn’t taking it. And he responds just as badassly. 

Gross? A little. But worth it to basically win the argument without even invoking the fact you have the moral highground. Yeah he had to know she was going here too, but again he came her for a reason and has no reason to leave. She can be an adult about this and work past it or just avoid him, also like an adult. Esther, not wanting to deal with Susan’s smug or her rage both of which are probably ping ponging back and forth, sits with Ed and talks about her dramatic nature. She really dosen’t intend to call it on herself, but does like not knowing what will happen every day. 

This really sums up Esther’s character to start: She enjoys life, loves the hell out of it, but often fails to see the consequences of her actions. The drama field sometimes is just shit happening to her because she happens to be young, attractive and entergetic, but other times it happens, like with the blow up of her relationship, because she does something impulsive and it blows up in her face. Speaking of character insight we get a character defening inner monologue from ed. 

And that’s Ed’s pain:  To Esther she sees it genuinely as him just being her friend. And I do think even with his massive crush he genuinely cares about her more than just wanting to be with her, but worried she’ll reject him, as I can again relate. And even worse is the worry of not wanting to make their friendship weird. And i’ve had crushes on female friends that have gone both ways: it’s made things toow eird to continue, but i’ve also had plenty where I was gently turned down and we’re still on good terms to this day. One of my best friends was a result of this. What makes it work, when we’ve seen this plot a thousand times before, is that both the narrative and Ed don’t think he’s ENTITLED to Esther. Yes the above has him asking god to make her love him.. but it’s not in a forceful sense.. it comes off more as a desperate want for them to end up together or for him to be able to move on. It’s what seperates ed from a “nice guy”: Sure he’s into Esther, but he dosen’t think he deserves her, or that because their friends he’s earned her or any such nonsensical bullshit. He’s just hopelesly infatuated with the first girl he met in college and wants to either see where it goes, or have the feelings end so he can move on with someone he does have a future with. I”ve been there. Shit sucks and Allison handles it well without falling into entitlement territory, and given just HOW many geek gets the girl storylines have been written, having it treated realistically with it being treated with him having to get over her instead of her just being oblvious is refreshing and I wish i’d had a narrative like this when I was Ed’s age to smack me in the face and tell me “No it dosen’t work that way, say something or move on man. “ With that monster of a pargraph done let’s check back with the girls. 

Again, I love the character interactions and how that’s the focus here over anything else, even my word sandwitch up there. But speaking of things, Esther just up and asks Daisy what she was watching. Turns out...

Yup, Daisy just likes ASMR, which I now know just what it is, just a static reflex people get. Susan tests it to prove Daisy is normal and it’s just good clean fun. Esther tries to put nosepicking under the same, Elbow’s susan over it and we get this to close out our main trio for the issue. 

I am glad he showed off more lady friendships, but they would’ve been a hell of a couple had Allison went that way. Could be an intresting AU, especailly if you keep Daisy gay and have their being bi or pan, dealers choice, affect things. HOw would that effect their relationshpis, how long would it last, would the McGraw thing impact stuff.. it’s some food for thought is all i[’m saying. We close however on Ed and McGraw as Ron Jr. unpacks his stuff and helps ed with his key sticking by rubbing a pencil on it because Graphite is a lubricant. Huh. Neat. And then we end on this. 

And on that note, we end issue 1. No write in contests though i’m damn sure given he’s mentioned he’d want a ROM/Giant Days crossover for the absurdity John Allison would love that. 

Final Thoughts;  An excellent start to the BOOM! series and a good second pilot. It’s clear stuff happened but the series helps you get the gist well enough to not have to buy the collection of the first three issues, and the characters are all dynamic with plenty of laughs as well as genuine moments. Susan and Esther’s banter is hilarious and both Esther and Susan are given plenty of layers: Esther’s grappling with her sorrow over her nuking her first romance and Susan being sharp witted, quick to be smug with Esther, but still gentle with Daisy and trying to careful with her given her sheltered life before College. Daisy isn’t given much layers in this issue, but is sitll shown to be incredibly sweet and realstically naive. McGraw is a welcome addition, his past with susan providing an intresting mystery for what was intended to be just 6 issues and solved by the end, while also having some intresting swagger to him enough to not make him JUST her love intrest or Ed’s best friend. Tremain’s art is also great, diffrent than what most of the series would end up being, a bit sketchier with more dot eye, but still nice and stylish. I’ll also confess the cafeteria scene is what let me know the book existed as I read it in the back of another boom title, I can’t remember which honestly, wher eit was featured as a preview and was intstantly intrigued. Overall a strong start. There’s a reason the series both caught on and lasted as long as it did and i’ll miss it terribly. I won’t be reviewing as time goes by this week, though I may post some quick thoughts on it, but I intend to review the full series, including the 3 indie issues and specials, so i’ll probably get to it at some point. An excellent series that I can’t recommend enough. 

If you liked this review, feel free to reblog it, follow me for more, or comisson one for a comic of your choice for just 5 bucks. Until then, have some giant days of your own. 

[firstpuffin]

Changing elements of existing characters; race, sex etc

I remember when the F4ntastic Four movie came out in 2015 (and seriously, F4ntastic? What is this, the 90’s again?) and we saw that the new Human Torch was… different. There was some concern, admittedly even from me, about this change. I mean, Johnny Storm is white, right? Why cast a black actor?

  Well I could have let that slide without issue as long as they explained, even with just one sentence to not take up too much time, why his sister is white and him black. Yes, there could be a hundred-score reasons why, but it is unintuitive. Since then I have grown up and don’t mind nearly so much, but this “issue” comes up again and again. The new Doctor in Doctor Who is a woman and there has been rumour about a black James Bond floating around for a while. My favourite superhero died and there was a fuss when he was replaced by a black kid; Tony Stark let a black girl replace him as Iron Man (or whatever name she went by) and there was a fuss both times. Are you seeing the pattern?

  Established heroes are being replaced by children!

  I’m kidding.

  But there is always a fuss when a beloved character is changed and I must admit, a black James Bond would bother me. A female James Bond would bother me; the first and least important reason is that James Bond is an established white male character and a lot of his stories would be different if he wasn’t. The other characters in his stories would treat him differently, he would have had different experiences and would not be the same person.

  More importantly though, it’s kind of insulting (not to me mind, I’m a white male) that people seem to think that the James Bond brand is what’s needed to carry a black or female lead. Seriously, we already know that’s not the case, so make a brand-new character who fits your criteria. If you have the rights then put them in the same world as James Bond, sure. That could be fun.

  A female Doctor doesn’t bother me because it works in-world; they established long ago that it was possible to regenerate into a different sex so it’s cool. It works.

  It’s just a shame the writing was crap. Fingers crossed for the 2020 series.

  There were rumours for a while that Spider-Man, no cross that, Peter Parker was going to be gay in an upcoming movie. This didn’t happen and I’m glad. I probably shouldn’t be but I am. See, I let a lot slide in comic book universes because there is the multiverse and as long as we don’t know which universe exactly the story is based in, there is nothing wrong with Peter being gay. But again, why not make a new character who happens to be gay?

  Isn’t it offensive to think that a gay Spider-Man has to be the original?

  This is where Miles Morales comes in. He’s not a black Peter Parker, he’s a brand-new character. And yes, you could say my above argument should apply here, after-all it’s still the Spider-Man brand. But Spider-Man is pretty unique in that there has generally only been Peter Parker. Yes there is Miguel O’Hara in the future and similar variants but many superhero mantles have been picked up by other characters, but Peter Parker is usually Spider-Man and no-one steps up to take his place if he dies or vanishes.

  Except maybe Ben Reilly, Peter’s clone.

  But even if he wasn’t unique, it wouldn’t matter. Do you know how many Spider-Women there have been? Including another of Peter’s clones?

  So when the Peter Parker of the Ultimate universe dies, Miles Morales comes along and tries to pick up the slack. This is just comic book tradition, and it works. I like Miles Morales. He brings a freshness to the Spider-Man story; seriously, screw Uncle Ben I want to see more Uncle Aaron.

  Speaking of Uncle Aaron, I was a fan of Prowler when it was still Hobie Brown under the mask, but multiverse so whatever.

  So changes thanks to the multiverse is cool, as is taking up another hero’s mantle. What else am I okay with? Well for starters, if something is done well.

  It seems a lot of Iron Man fans weren’t too happy with the Mandarin but, and maybe this is because I didn’t know a whole lot of Iron Man lore, I thought that the twist was amazing. That is how you do a trailer. They set up this mysterious terrorist (yawn) who was dominating the Middle East, only for that to be a façade for the real villain. As a twist this is not only amazing but was set up incredibly well.

  And then there is Michelle Jones from Spider-Man: Homecoming who we discover is MJ right at the end. She is quite possibly as far from the MJ we know as is possible but then again, she isn’t Mary-Jane Watson. I really like what they are doing here, using an established character whose relationship with the hero pops up in nearly every iteration, to hint at future sub-plots without actually being the same character.

 So I’ve been pretty positive about the idea of “changing” a character, so why am I bringing this up? Because it doesn’t matter how justified the change is, the execution can ruin it. Doctor Who is a prime example of this.

I was pretty excited to see a woman portray the Doctor because there is a lot in his (I use the male pronoun for a reason) character that you don’t often see in female characters. Matt Smith was amazing at portraying an old man in a young man’s body; he was a treat to watch. Tennant, Smith and Capaldi were all very good at showing a character who was old, who knew, and had experienced, far more than any human could match. He took the lead, got angry when he needed to and had a fire in his belly, a sliver of ice in his heart, usually hidden by a cheerful and possibly forced optimism.

  To see that kind of female character would be new and awesome.

  Instead we had infantile episodes more focused on preaching than actually telling a story. I don’t know if Whitaker can act, I don’t know if she is up to the job of being the Lonely God, because we didn’t get to see it. I’ve been watching the old episodes, by which I mean 1963 onwards and I’ve just revisited the 2005 onwards series’; two companions really has to be the maximum number of companions and if there is a third then they should be the Doctor’s equal. Otherwise the Doctor gets ignored.

  River Song was never just a companion and while you could say that her presence detracted from his, it was in a good way that allowed the characters to bounce off of each other. In series 11 with Whitaker we saw more of Ryan and Graham’s relationship than we did the Doctor herself, that is when they don’t pause the episode to dump exposition onto the viewers (I’m looking at you, episode 3).

  Of course as far as I’m concerned, the greatest sin occurred in the second episode: she gives up. The Doctor gives up. For no good goddamn reason. Okay so there is a reason. Her time-machine, which has been coming and going for centuries isn’t there at that very moment! She didn’t see it disappear, not to return for another hundred years; it just wasn’t there yet and she knew it was due any moment. What the fu-?!

  Who is this woman? Certainly not the Doctor who chases away fleets of spaceships with a speech.

-what a speech- 

  How about another example? You may have heard of Spider-Gwen (don’t worry she doesn’t actually go by that name, that would be stupid), her series is based on Earth-65 as opposed to the mainstream series which is Earth-616 (who numbers these?). I don’t want to talk about her, although I totally could. I like her and what they wanted to do, even if the execution was poor. No, I’m bringing up the Earth-65 Captain America: a black woman called Samantha Wilson.

  The agenda behind that can already be practically tasted but I prefer not to whine about such things and she seems okay as a character. My problem is that if she went through the same process as Steve Rogers, which she did, then why isn’t she ripped like Steve? Seriously, that guy is jacked in virtually every incarnation so why isn’t she? Because she’s a woman and thus her biology is different? I think it’s safe to say that that is BS and the only reason she isn’t covered in rippling muscle is because it wouldn’t look sexy.

-seriously? Trump is Modok? He’s even quoting Trump! Urgh, the taste of agendas-

  Men can be huge but women? Nope.

  I don’t mind Gwen not being massive, depending on the artist then Peter can be pretty skinny too. But double-standards much?

 I’m going to close up here. I don’t mind changes to established characters so long as it makes sense: taking up the mantle of a superhero, an alternate universe or possible in the established canon; I do however think that rather than changing an established character, a new character should be made. But while I often like to see these new (or sometimes “new”) characters, I will not force myself to like something if the execution is poor.

[livefromtheloam]

Tenchi Muyo! Galaxy Police Transporter

So I finally watched Tenchi Muyo: GXP. This is super long and full of fifteen-year-old spoilers, so I’ll stick a jump right about here.

tl;dr: Absolutely adored the series (with a couple of gripes), but hate what it heralded for the Tenchi Muyo franchise.

To start off, I want to say that I loved watching GXP. Had it come out earlier (and obviously had it not starred Seina), I would dare to call it the ultimate Tenchi series.  It combines the canon and overarching galactic epic of the OVA, the episodic format and character development of Universe, and the unbridled humor of Tokyo, then kicks every one of those things into high gear. It also fixes a lot of the problems that the three series were notorious for, namely: the OVA’s tendency to throw important details under the rug in order to put together cool set pieces, Universe’s low animation quality and over-reliance on filler, and Tokyo’s over the top irreverence (I’m normally a huge fan of irreverence, but man did Tokyo take the entire franchise off the rails).

It feels weird to call GXP a Tenchi Muyo! series, considering it’s as much of a spinoff as anything can get, but it does share most of the themes that all TM properties share. It’s got the harem, space adventure, comedy, drama, excellent character development (except for its main character somehow), and a cabbit. Granted, not all characters we’re supposed to care about are given any kind of dimension (looking at you, Miss Balta), but it’s so weird to start to care about secondary characters that were, once again, thrown under the rug in the later OVA’s, like Airi, Mikami, Seto, and even a few of the tertiary characters. Except for Tennyo. So sad.

Oh hey these ladies are actually great characters! (Not pictured: Tennyo.)

My favorite part was how relentlessly funny it could be. The show had no problem engaging in little gags here and there, but once Seiryo gets a more prominent role in the story things get downright hilarious.

I will never stop laughing at this.

I also appreciated how the opening and end theme sequences added new things as the series went on, such as replacing band-aids with Fukus, highlighing or blocking out certain characters, and adding others when they join the story. While I don’t usually like the harem genre (I prefer the first two OVA’s and Universe for their use of a love triangle rather than an out and out orgy), I always try to put my hangups on hold when it comes to Tenchi. Additionally, I just pretended that Seina was at least eighteen by the time the series ended just to get over the creep factor of a person who would be considered a child entering into a relationship with several adult women. Graduating from space college has got to take at least three years, right?

Speaking of, as much as Seina was yet another mediocre yet earnest everyboy protagonist, I couldn’t help but enjoy his antics. Maybe it was his almost Brooklyn accent (I watched the dub, so sue me), maybe his misfortune, maybe his complete and utter acceptance of pain and injury, but it was hard not to root for him. Plus, I love how his bad luck superpower can be used to explain why so many women are attracted to him despite being actively bad for anyone to be around (and way too young - seriously what is up with that?)!

“I guess they must be thirsty.” Ya don’t say.

And then we get to the last few episodes.

This was the point where GXP got over the top irritating for me. At some point, Seina’s bad luck turns to good, but with no noticeable difference either way. He’s given an incredible amount of gifts - A living ship made by Professor Washu! A royal tree to merge that ship with! A primordial battle mech powered by the sibling to the original Juraian tree to merge himself with featuring built in Easter egg action and kung fu grip! Light Hawk Wings! - and bad luck or good, these things serve to push Seina to godlike status. And that’s ok because it’s just a TV show. However, when he wins the duel against Seiryo due to, what else, a fluke of luck (why did either of them agree to a rule whereby someone can lose via embarrassment?), it finally reaches beyond frustrating just how much the showrunners pamper their protagonist.

The first of many promotions, given to him about a week after enrolling in the academy.

Seina himself does precious little on his own. He does his best, but grows very little as a person. Just what are his motivations, aside from a vague sense that he wants to be in the GP? We never see him try to do anything he can’t reasonably do because he wins every single time through either bad luck or good luck or someone looking out for him. He never comes to understand Kiriko’s concerns or Amane’s insecurities, nor does he try to get to know Ryoko or Neju better. He’s gotten everything - power, money, women - without doing anything to earn it.

Finally, the series ends with his wedding. To four women. And sure, it’s a political marriage in a culture that allows powerful nobility to have multiple spouses. And sure it ostensibly serves to ensure the longevity of the dream team that’s been ushering in an age of prosperity for businesses all over the galaxy, fine good whatever. But the show can’t even bring itself to respect these women who, for the most part, have proven themselves to be badasses who’ve earned every bit of respect they never got.

Does this look like the face of mercy?

Kiriko was a tactical prodigy who rose through the ranks of the GP through her willpower, wits, and ability to jump fearlessly into any situation regardless of danger, not to mention a distant blood tie to the royal family of Jurai. Amane was a wealthy heiress who threw away a promising career because it was too easy and challenged herself to make her way through the GP ladder. Ryoko Balta, despite being a bit bland, was a badass space pirate whose intuition, navigational skills, and battle prowess kept her ship floating long after most of the rest of the Daluma fleet had been captured. Neju was considered one of the most powerful head priestesses of all time (told not shown, sadly), and was revered (and reviled) throughout the galaxy for her two millennia of stern justice.

And they get lumped all together during their own wedding, all so that Seina can get a huge flashy show.

Seriously, they all walk out at the same time with identical smiles on their faces, as if they weren’t fiercely independent women like one episode prior.

And sadly, this is the final piece of the puzzle I needed to understand where the Tenchi Muyo! franchise has been going over the past fifteen years.

After GXP was somewhat of a flop, Kajishima took it back and has been writing a series of novels based on it. This precluded any need for a team to talk him back from the skeevier elements of what he thinks TM should be, including the harems and incest, and gave him full control over the direction of the OVA continuity. While I’ve never understood why the doujinshi are considered canon by fans, it’s hard to argue with the creator of a series when he says the officially published novels are what the real story is. I haven’t read through the whole set (I figure I’ll do that once my Japanese reading skills get a bit better), but from what I’ve seen so far the novels eschew the comedy and lightheartedness for exposition and expansion of the lore. Which wouldn’t be so bad if it were going somewhere, I dunno, fan-accessible?

As much as I dislike what the future holds for Tenchi, I’d love to see them all on Maury. (Thanks to AstroNerdBoy for the scan.)

Instead, we get a Tenchi Muyo! OVA that seems to serve the purpose of connecting Tenchi’s world to Seina’s rather than the other way around. Characters who fans loved and built a following for are pushed to the wayside for characters who appeared in Seina’s story, and the overarching epic is leading somewhere few fans ever wanted to go - namely Seina’s harem of twenty wives, a number of whom are mother and grandmother figures.

This is literally a grid of potential partners for Seina. He has backup harems. One of them involving Kiriko’s mom. Fantastic. (Thank you Tenchi Muyo Wiki.)

If I’ve mentioned characters a number of times in this piece, it’s because that’s the unshakable foundation that the entire Tenchi Muyo franchise was built on. There are at least five different continuities, and throughout them all the characters remain the same at their cores. Tenchi is plain but earnest. Ryoko is hotheaded and passionate. Ayeka tries to be proper but fails in the face of Ryoko’s teasing. Sasami is sweet, kind, and hard-working. Mihoshi is ditzy yet well-meaning. Washu is the greatest scientific genius in the universe! As of the ending of GXP, however, characterization seems to mean very little to the author. Kiriko, Amane, Ryoko, and Neju give up their individuality because... Seina. The women of the Masaki home take a backseat to Noike because... they’re no longer important to the story being told. Proud Emperor Azusa, who was embarrassed at the hands of Tenchi Masaki, grandson of that worthless Yosho, is suddenly devoid of any personality let alone desire for vengeance because... Seto is also on screen and she was an important character in GXP.

I will say that I’ve come to enjoy the third and fourth OVA’s, simply because now I’ve been properly introduced to more of the characters. The final episode of OVA 4 does a great job of tying up many of the loose threads that have been floating around since GXP’s inception and bringing all the OVA continuity series into a cohesive whole. It’s nice, but once again, makes me worried that a series that used to be about lovable characters having space adventures and shenanigans at home with tender moments thrown liberally into the mix is turning into a creepy ecchi series with no regard for characterization unless it gives Tenchi or Seina another wife.

They spend so much time this episode of Tenchi Muyo! talking about Seina that it’s ridiculous. They then proceed to tease the mother of his childhood friends about her obvious hots for him. (Thanks to EcchiOujisama for the subs!)

My theory is that it’s because Seina is the one thing that Kajishima has had all to himself for over a decade. Seina is his favorite child, who will receive gifts of women and good luck, regardless of how much the fans still love Tenchi and company. As much as he can profit off of doujinshi and art (and I’ll admit that I hope to own one of his sketches one day), he still has to share Tenchi with other people. This doesn’t prevent him from throwing Tenchi a bone in his fan comics, but the more he can tie the entire continuity into Seina’s story, the better. I wonder if the same thing is going to happen to Kenshi now too.

I liked Seina and rooted for him, but by the end it was obvious that he’d never become anything but a fantasy fulfillment device. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me he has no reason to grow or change, and is emblematic of what many people disliked about the franchise after 2002.

I accepted a while back that the OVA series and maybe even the franchise was no longer “for me.” The old episodes, movies, novels, and manga still exist, of course, and I can and do enjoy them immensely. I’ll also be watching GXP for years to come and plan to read the novels when I’m able to. I think I just wanted to get my thoughts out about a series that I watched and enjoyed, and how it changed a franchise that went down a different path a long, long time ago.

Adieu, Tenchi Muyo!

Also, why did all the members of Tenchi’s household get new voice actors for this show? That was weird. 

[dying-of-thirst-here]

The Light of Providence and the Spiral of Death: FFX and FFXV Compared

This is a pretty lengthy stretch of meta comparing FFX and FFXV’s attitudes toward death. Since that obviously ties into their plots, this will contain copious spoilers for both games.

The stories of FFX and FFXV do not remotely resemble one another. They do, however, in my opinion, contain parallel situations whose resolutions go in completely opposite directions. There isn’t anything particularly significant in that except that they are both major titles in the same series; I don’t know if they share any writers’ credits, but I would tend to assume not.

Both games depict sets of characters who’ve grown up in cultures that glorify self-sacrifice on behalf of a greater good. Their narratives, however, show wildly different depictions on the worthiness of that glorification.

These are not going to be brief rundowns, but I’m going to try to keep things simple. Like, I know one of the risks of being unsent in FFX is turning into a fiend, I know afterlife stuff happens in FFXV, but things like these are not really relevant to what I’m talking about. Yes, I am aware the main character in FFX also dies. But Tidus is not Noctis’s parallel in FFX; Yuna is.

So lemme start by laying out the cultural contexts we’re working within.

FFX: Just Don’t Climb Mountains with Corpses on Them. Don’t.

So Spira, the world of FFX, has a problem: it’s actually kind of hard to die. In fact, in some situations it might be impossible to die.

Okay, we don’t have to oversimplify: anyone can die in FFX. But unless a ritual undertaken by a specialist is performed immediately… not a whole lot happens when you die. You remain in the world of the living as something like a ghost, but you are for the most part indistinguishable from a living person. These ghosts are called “unsent,” due to the ritual performed for the dead being called “the sending,” as in sending them to the afterlife. Unsent can and do blend into the rest of the population and live relatively normal lives, not necessarily bothering anyone. Obviously, this is kind of fucked up, and no one wants to end up unsent or have their loved ones become unsent, so the sending ritual is treated as a matter of urgency… officially.

It almost goes without saying, then, that most of the people in positions of significant power in FFX are dead. Leaders hold onto their power by letting their deaths go unannounced and staying where they are, unsent. There are two examples in the game of massive unchanging power structures made up of unsent that exist solely to protect and perpetuate themselves. The game’s story is about how everyone who lives within the cultures that uphold these power structures ultimately suffer due to the people in power being unwilling to let go or accept change.

I know that’s a strange place to start explaining the religious atmosphere of FFX, but populating the upper reaches of power with undead incumbents is exactly the sort of situation where you’d want to weed out powerful up-and-comers. The religion itself – the worship of a figure named Yevon – dominates Spira’s culture, and it promotes faith to the point of such zealotry that people do actively seek to die for it. There a number of ways this works (Yevon is very complicated and you, reader, have presumably played FFX and do not need it explained in great detail), but we’ll focus on the two big ones: the fayth and the high summoners.

The fayth are people who have willingly had their bodies sealed within statues that worshipers form temples around and pray to. So first of all, they are officially sanctioned unsent. You can interact with ghostly versions of their human forms. Their primary method of interacting with the living world, however, and the reason they’d die in this horrible way to begin with, is that a fayth can take on the form of a fantastical and powerful creature which at that point is referred to as an aeon. The interchangeability of these terms varies; both the statue and the unsent ghosts are called fayth, but the dragons and the kirin and the fire demons and their ilk are always called aeons, even though the dragon and statue and ghost are all the same ‘person.’ I want try to avoid getting into these games’ weird vocabulary too deeply, but the distinction here is important when talking about summoners.

If you, hypothetical reader, have not played FFX but came across this essay and thought 'eh, fuck it,’ I respect that decision, and though you must be familiar with the summoning tradition in Final Fantasy as a franchise, you might be wondering why a strong religious culture would require people entombing themselves so they can become miserable unkillable fantastic beasts. You will probably not be surprised that this is where things get horrible.

The specialist mentioned earlier who needs to be called in to perform the sending for the dead is a role within Yevon called a summoner. Yes, like the summoners from almost every Final Fantasy game. Summoners train and work intensely with a fayth so they can form a bond that enables the summoner to call on the fayth’s aeon. Summoners are also the only people who can perform the sending, for… a reason, most likely. Becoming a summoner is a lot of work, though, and some villages lack any resident summoners at all, which is probably one reason there are so many dead people hanging around and getting away with it.

So that’s a summoner. Not all summoners are high summoners – in fact, there are only a handful of high summoners acknowledged in the game – but during certain cyclic periods of Spira’s history, all summoners want to become high summoners, or they come under a great deal of social pressure to attempt to become a high summoner. A high summoner’s job is to die.

The narrative that Yevon has embedded in its culture – and, to be fair, very much what appears at first to be going on – is that Spira is under a sort of curse that calls forth a massive sea monster unsubtly referred to as Sin. It appears without warning to destroy villages and ships; Spira consists of a number of small landmasses that contain a lot of coastline, so during the periods in which Sin is active, Spira’s population lives in constant terror. These periods of activity are not set to any kind of predictable system or cycle. Sin will vanish for years, and then it will just appear again one day. The only thing that can send Sin back into its temporary banishment is the most powerful aeon in Spira. This can be obtained by first earning the approval of a core set of the fayth (which itself involves walking most of the length of Spira, since the fayth are all located in regional temples), then climbing a mountain that kills most people who manage to make it that far, then getting into the dead city beyond the mountain and locating and praying to the fayth whose statue is unhelpfully based there, who will then hopefully grant you access to the aeon that can destroy Sin.

All of the other aeons have names – Valefor, Ifrit, Ixion, Shiva, Bahamut – but this one does not. It’s simply called the Final Aeon. It costs the high summoner his or her life to call on it - the high summoner doesn’t even get to see the fight - and then both Sin and the Final Aeon vanish.

The people of Spira believe the high summoners are laying down their lives to save everyone else’s, and they are granted the status of something like a saint in death. In actuality, the high summoner’s death sets off the conditions to begin the cycle of Sin eventually reappearing again.

But hey, we have to believe in something, right?

FFXV: The Once and Future Kings

So… FFXV has strange ideas about Christ figures. Not Xenogears strange, but… like, there’s official artwork strongly suggestive of the Triumphal Entry only there’s a chocobo instead of a donkey??

There is nothing in the story or setting that is actually thematically Biblical at all. JRPGs! What can you do.

This is going to be a little more difficult to lay out, because FFXV doesn’t really believe in things like backstory and exposition. Which I actually like in fantasy fiction, but it’s going to make explaining the self-serving power structure in this game a matter of interpretation here and there. Bear with me.

There are a number of regional cultures in Eos, FFXV’s loose floating jumble of continents, and none of them seem particularly religious. But they do have six gods, and they physically exist within the world. No one worships these gods, exactly. They are looked on with awe and respect and fear, but there are no organized religions around them that we see. This was a terrible oversight on the part of the ancient people of Eos, because these gods historically needed something to distract them from destroying everyone’s lives constantly. Eventually they all just agreed to go to sleep, I think.

But despite the lack of organized religion, Eos has an interesting figure known as the Oracle. There is only ever one Oracle at a time, and the role is passed down within one of the royal bloodlines. The Oracle’s power is that she can wake up the gods and speak and understand their speech, which is a great idea, probably.

The Oracle is a universally popular figure. During the game’s time frame the role is fulled by Lady Lunafreya, and the radio newscasts and newspapers you can find suggest a culture of celebrity worship of Lunafreya herself. She’s got other things going, like she’s a white mage and sorta princess, but the gods she’s supposed to commune with don’t seem to command much influence.

BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK we’ll come back to that

Anyway, the Oracle ties into The Prophesy. Yes, FFXV is a The Prophesy story. Everyone in FFXV knows The Prophesy. But there are also aspects of The Prophesy that you have to have explained to you by a rock or a dragon, so there’s The Prophesy and then there’s like The Gnostic Prophesy–

I really, really like FFXV. I do not The Prophesy stories. FFXV is a really bizarre example of a The Prophesy story, so honesty I kind of give it a pass. It’s just… okay, look

There are books scattered around the world that are parts of a cosmogony explaining bits of Eos’s mythology. The cosmogony explains that the gods picked the Oracle’s bloodline, and another magic bloodline kind of self-selected itself and established its own kingdom, Lucis, to whom the gods entrusted a supposedly wondrous but frankly pretty evil crystal; the royal family can tap into it kind of like a magic battery, so it does have its non-evil uses, but using that way drastically shortens the king’s lifespan, so… yeah, still pretty evil. This cosmogony also frequently mentions that someday the world will get dark and awful and then a king of light will make it better, yay, monarchism and a passing familiarity with Latin! It says it fancier than that, but that is pretty much all it says regarding any future bad times that I saw. This seems to be what people mean when they talk about The Prophesy, so most of the people in Eos can be forgiven for having no idea what that’s supposed to mean. Unfortunately, that does not include Lunafreya, who has one of the gods just like hanging out with her all the time, nor does it include the current King of Lucis, Regis, whom the crystal… talks… to? I don’t know, but when Regis’s son Noctis is five years old the crystal somehow tells Regis that Noctis is going to be the king of light. Oh, hey, guess how the king of light saves the world?

I’m doubly assuming that if you’re reading this you have played FFXV, so yeah, after two thousand words we are finally preparing the cabin for our final approach to my narrative comparison: he has to die.

Regis knows this. Lunafreya, a close childhood friend of Noctis’s, knows this. Noctis does not know this. Neither of them ever tell him. Noctis spends the game walking toward his death blind. And to make sure this point isn’t lost on you, it turns out that this isn’t the first time the conditions of The Prophesy, vague as they are, have been met. There was a king of light chosen by the crystal who predated Noctis by some two thousand years, and what happened to him was arguably worse than death. No one warned him, either.

The king of light is a venerated figure in Lucian artwork and poetry. He’s also a lamb for the slaughter. Even Christ got a heads up.

The Meta-narrative

“Meta-narrative” can mean about a dozen things depending on what school of postmodernism you’re incorrectly quoting, so I’ll be clearer: it’s the story that the story tells about itself. We know what these stories are both about, but how are they about them? The characters in FFX venerate and aspire to be as great as the high summoners, but what does the game itself think about what the high summoners have to do? What does FFXV think about what Noctis has to do? What are the games’ respective opinions of dying for a cause?

Well, that is of course up to interpretation. Neither fate is what can be comfortably regarded as a “good” death: the circumstances surrounding the high summoner and the king of light are very different, but in both cases they are lied to in order to put them where the real power of their respective worlds want them. Yevon wants to maintain the status quo to a degree that is obsessive and stagnant. The gods of Eos want to eliminate their own mistake, the previous king of light, which should tell you how much priority they’re giving The Prophesy.

I can’t speak on behalf of the culture that produced both of these stories, but I can say with some confidence that in Western culture we regard the concept of dying for the sake of others as a very noble calling. FFX has to make you look at that ideal from different angles to make its point about how much a single life sacrificed willingly can destroy the people left behind who didn’t get a say. It does this repeatedly: Wakka’s brother, Seymour’s mother, whichever of those two Crusaders you decided to doom, but it does so with the most impact when the game reveals the nature of the Final Aeon. There is no fayth in the ruined city. In order to obtain the most powerful aeon a summoner can call upon, they have to offer up the soul of one of their companions to be turned into a fayth.

What’s that? You’re balking at sacrificing a friend in order to save the world? But you were perfectly willing to sacrifice yourself! Your friend stood with you for your entire journey and is already mourning your impending death; going along with this plan is a way to follow you to the very end. It may even be seen as a relief from the burden of guilt and grief.

In order to become a martyr, you have to go through with murder. All the high summoners you’ve looked up to your entire life achieved what they did through killing someone they loved. Someone who had been willing to die for them every step of the way there.

The last high summoner had two companions with him on his journey. The surviving member of the party didn’t survive for very long. And with no one to perform a sending, he was left to become a ghost.

That is what FFX thinks of the nobility of suicide.

The Greater Good

FFXV’s situation is harder to make emotional sense of, not least because because the end of the game presents a scientific problem with a magical solution. The world has done dark because… parasites… release of light-absorbing particles into the atmosphere… yeah, human sacrifice ought to do the trick.

But let’s set the plot aside. The plot’s excuses for killing Noctis don’t literally matter, because, you know, The Prophesy. Ardyn has to die, Noctis has to die, and then Ardyn has to die extra, and thus the sun returns. But how does the story itself feel about this?

FFX never shows the audience how a person is turned into a fayth. It never shows us how the high summoner dies. But FFXV shows us Noctis’s suicide-by-summon in brutal, extended detail. We’re finally faced with Noctis at the edge of death begging the ghost of his father to kill him; Regis hesitates, and then he runs Noctis through. Regis kills Noctis. This can’t be a death we’re supposed to feel good about.

FFX is less interested in the deaths themselves than it is in their aftermaths. We don’t see the aftermath of Noctis’s death. We don’t know what his friends do after he dies. Noctis’s death is the end of the story; it’s the note FFXV decides to go out on. The story presents it as very sad, but also as the right thing for Noctis to do.

You can certainly make that argument considering the scale of what his death achieves. I believe that is what the game thinks, with its final shots of the sun rising over various game locations. Noctis was the only person who could do this, and he was strong enough to go through with it even though he emphatically didn’t want to.

Tidus basically ripped reality apart in order to save the next person slated to die as high summoner. He didn’t cry at their last campfire. He… well, he murdered his dad, look, FFX is complicated and deeply invested in its metaphors.

But it’s striking to me that none of Noctis’s friends try to brainstorm another way out of this. That’s the direction any other Final Fantasy game would have taken, so I suppose it’s to FFXV’s credit that it doesn’t do that. But have his friends really just… given up? None of them even declare they’re willing to continue to live in perpetual darkness for the sake of keeping Noctis now that’s he’s finally come back? Any one of the three has the background and motivation to at least suggest it, even if Noctis disagrees.

They cry for him, but they don’t believe they can save him. They grew up believing in the king of light that would save them.

The King Must Die

This is a question that can only be applied very broadly, because both games have their individual answers, but I find it interesting and am therefore ging to pose it anyway: why, on a thematic level, is Yuna spared and Noctis killed?

Again, it’s entirely up to interpretation, but I think a lot of it has to do with character agency. From the beginning of FFX to the end, Yuna makes her own decisions and carries them out, even when the rest of the party opposes her. She decides she wants to become a summoner, and she does. She decides she wants to embark on the journey to attempt to become a high summoner, so she gathers her friends and off they go. When she’s asked to partake in a political marriage, she recognizes that the situation is weird, but it’s still her choice. She ends up basing her decision on information only she has access to, so for a while her friends have no idea what the hell she’s doing, but whatever, she’s doing it anyway! And when she’s faced with the question of which of her friends she’s going to sacrifice for the Final Aeon, she doesn’t. She refuses. She was indeed willing to die herself, but she does something no one else has done and draws the line there.

It’s easy to forget this aspect of FFX, because Yuna is quiet and timid and kind of an idealized white mage type character. She cries over her impending fate. But that was still a fate she chose for herself, and she rejects it as soon as she realizes that entire high summoner aspiration is a lie.

Noctis is never given the opportunity to make decisions like this. As a prince, he’s locked into his fate regardless, and on top of that the crystal declares that this prince in particular was born to die. He is told half truths about this - he knows he’s fated to be the king of light, but neither his father nor Lunafreya will tell him what that means. One bit of party banter even has him complaining about The Prophesy being “vague.” Like Yuna, he’s to be a part of a political marriage, but he was informed of this, not asked. The gods jerk him around with migraines, bad weather, and occasionally just showing up and telling him what to do. When he’s finally told the king of light’s purpose, he’s essentially been imprisoned by one of the gods, Bahamut, and he again just is being informed. You’re going to die. Bahamut then proceeds to hold Noctis captive for ten years. He lets him go when he decides Noctis is ready to be sacrificed. There is nothing approaching a choice in any of this.

To add insult to this, Bahamut’s explanation for why Noctis has to die is largely unrelated to The Prophesy and is manipulative as hell. Yes, the world is shrouded in darkness, that’s bad, agreed. But his version of The Prophesy introduces an entirely new character. The Accursed! The Usurper! You’re kindly given a dialogue option to ask who the hell we’re talking about now, and oh, you mean Ardyn. Your previous chosen king of light. The one you tasked with curing a plague, allowed to get sick himself doing so, and subsequently denied any kind of access to the afterlife because you think his illness is gross. So he’s just stuck being alive and sick and increasingly vengeful forever. ….oh, hey, I think that’s my pager, I’ll just, uh, be a minute

Bahamut also tells Noctis that he has to sacrifice himself for the people because so many people have sacrificed themselves for him. Okay, whose deaths are we holding Noctis responsible for here? Is this still about Jared? Because we avenged the FUCK out of Jared!

My point is, by the end of the game we’ve gone well beyond denied agency; Noctis has ended up kidnapped and imprisoned. As of this writing, we don’t know what was going on with Noct during those ten years. If he was sleeping, dreaming, being brainwashed by a dragon – we don’t know. What we see is him telling his friends that he’s made up his mind to do this, but being back with them is weakening his resolve. He doesn’t want to go. He wants to stay with them.

But he does go. He restores the light, though he doesn’t live to see it.

FFXV admires Noctis for fulfilling his destiny, but it has no reason to. It never gives him the option to choose another path. This cup will not pass from him.

Noctis’s life was short and painful, and he had ten years of even that stolen from him. But he loved his friends. For them, he found the courage to walk back to that throne room alone.

[saetorimedia]

For the 14th time CAMERA JAPAN brings Japan a bit closer with not only movies but also a small taste of Japanese culture. This year’s theme was Youth because with the rapidly ageing population and low birth rate some might wonder what the Youth is doing. No worries though, because Camera Japan has showed us they are doing a great job and need to be heard more!

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Before going to this event a difficult decision has to be made, which movies are you going to see? So many interesting choices and not enough time, especially if you can’t attend every day. More people had this problem but sometimes you just have to make those choices and deal with it. Luckily you can make this choice before travelling to Lantaren Venster because the schedule was online for quite some time already. A thing you noticed when you walk in is that the atmosphere is completely different from your regular cinema. Quite some people were regular filmfestivals visitors and it’s no surprise why, people are here for the movies and not for the popcorn.

Although people didn’t eat popcorn there were plenty of ways to fill your tummy between all the movies, lectures and workshops. Lantaren Venster had a small restaurant and there was a small friendly Japanese themed market filled with taiyaki, sushi and delicious cake rolls. You knew exactly when movies ended, it got crowded and people had to line up for food. So be smart and buy your treat inbetween movies. Talking about movies, what’s a filmfestival review without reviewing a few movies? We went to 12 Suicidal Teens, Penguin Highway, I was born but.. and Short Shorts.

12 Suicidal Teens Before the movie started the audience was greeted by a CJ staff member (which gives a very personal touch) with a short introduction: “This is one of the most scary titles CJ have ever showed but it is not that scary as you might think. Don’t let the title scare you.” This movie is about 12 teenagers gathering in an abandoned hospital to commit suicide but they stumble upon a dead body of a boy. This makes a total of 13 teenagers attending the gathering while that wasn’t the plan. Together they have to figure out what’s going on and who among them might be the murder before continuing their original plan. In almost 2 hours you’ll learn the reasons why they want to commite suicide, it lets you think together with the main characters to solve the mystery with some twists and you’ll learn that we all are in a way connected behind our masks. Like the staff member said, it wasn’t scary but it can be an emotional trigger for those who are sensitive like me, yet I really enjoyed the movie and its twists (especially the thing at the end) Score: 7.5/10

Penguin Highway My mouth went open from astonishment when I heard this movie was sold out and so were the CJ staff members: “We knew that cats are popular but penguins are too!” There also was an introduction given about Studio Colorido, a promosing new studio that might be on the same level as Studio Ghibli soon so we have to keep an eye on them. I can understand why they mentioned that, the animation is smooth and pretty to look at. But what is this movie about then? Well, one day, a group of penguins appeared in fourth-grader Aoyama’s neigbourhood. Everyone notices them and despite this rare occurance they are very cute. Aoyama is young, boob-obsessed whizz-kid. and wants to solve this mystery with rigorous scientific methods and principles. But what he doesn’t know is that he is in for a much larger adventure involving penguin eating monsters and a mysterious woman (which is his dentist he’s in love with). Overall the movie is very good, animation and soundtrack is of very good quality and there is a lot of modern humor in it. But I still have no idea what’s going despite that the mystery is solved so I guess you have to have a lot of fantasy… Score: 8.0/10

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Lecture: 47 ronin and expositions Need a break from the movies? Luckily there were many other activities and one of them was a lecture about the famous 47 ronin story. The lecture started with a short summary of the story which then turned into an analysis of different version of the story. Some of those versions got translated into books and movies and we got to see a few examples. I was amazed by how many versions there were but sadly not all could be addressed since time was short. After the lecture I visited the 2 expositions which were spread through the building in places were a lot of people walk by. The Cosplay is Art exhibition wasn’t my cup of tea, maybe because I have seen too many cosplay photography, it just didn’t spark me. On the other hand the A Copy of Truth exhibition by Jelle Hooks was really good. The photos show alienated youths who want to stand out. Despite the photos being taken in black/white you could feel the colour, every teenager had their own story. His book was for sale during the event and he also still sells them on his website if you’re interested. What I did miss by both exhibitions was some kind of introduction or name of the work. You just walked by, took a quick look and that was it. They also had the popular MangaKissa where you can sit and read some manga’s and disconnect from the event for a little while and they also had a few art exhibitions and workshops. For the workshops you had to buy tickets seperately in advance. They had an origami workshop on friday, a bento workshop on Saturday and kids day and film brunch on Sunday. We’ve not seen kids day so packed however.

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  I was born but.. This black and white silent movie from 1932 by Yasujiro Ozu which was accompanied by a quartet who played music live to fit the movie. No matter how much I liked the music I felt like it didn’t really match the movie at all and I was missing some fun sound effects. But I enjoyed both a lot

The Yoshi family has just moved to the Tokyo suburbs, close to where the father Kennosuke’s (Tatsuo Saitō) direct boss, Iwasaki (Takeshi Sakamoto), is staying. Kennosuke’s two young sons Keiji and Ryoichi (Tomio Aoki and Hideo Sugawara) are supposed to be going to school, but owing to the threats of a group of neighborhood and school bullies, they decide to play truant. After the teacher speaks to their father, Keiji and Ryoichi have no choice but to go to school. They attempt to eat sparrow’s eggs to get stronger so that they can get back at the boys, but an older delivery boy Kozou (Shoichi Kofujita) decides to help them out to threaten the bullies, and they emerge as the top dogs amongst the gang.

One of the neighborhood kids is Taro (Seiichi Kato), whose father is Iwasaki himself. The boys argue amongst themselves who has the most powerful father. Not long after, they visit Taro’s home, where the office workers have gathered under Iwasaki, who screens some home movies for the amusement of the gathering. The two brothers witness on film how their father, who to them is stern and whom they look up to, plays the buffoon before his colleagues and boss.

Humiliated, they go home and decide that their father isn’t such an important person after all. They throw a massive tantrum, and confront their father asking him why he has to grovel under Taro’s father. Kennosuke answers that Taro’s father is richer and holds a higher position than he does. Dissatisfied with this answer, the two decide to hold a hunger strike. Ryoichi gets a spanking from his father, but after the children have gone to bed, the father confides in the wife that he does not enjoy doing what he does. Both wish for a better future for their children.

The next day, the children attempt a hunger strike during breakfast, but succumb to a dish of onigiri. Kennosuke manages a reconciliation with them. The children say they would like to be a lieutenant general and a general respectively. On their way to school, they see Taro’s father in a car, and they urge their father to go up and greet him. As Kennosuke takes a convenient car ride to work, the brothers walk to school with Taro and the rest of the gang. Score: 7.0/10

  Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia As the titel depicts, this was a lot of shorts. it had movies of around 20 minutes or less. I’ll summorize them by movie.

Beard and Raincoat by YAWATA Kimi, 2018, 12 min This…generally weird. as the name predicts. It was about a girl who had a beard fetish and the bearded guy who had a raincoat fetish. The bearded guy however was the brother of the girls boyfriend who ended up finding out and they ran away together in the end but I’m not sure how it ended because it was kind of weird. Score: 5.0/10

MOON RABBIT by HO Kae, 2018, 15 min I feel like this movie wasn’t totally honest about the end.. I felt really conflicted in the end. The story starts with a mother coming to her family house with her two half japanese half american kids. The older brother and his cousin hang out and the young girl wants to hang out too while her mom tells her father that she and her husband broke up. The young girl comes out with her hair all messy and a shocked face. Ending in her telling her mom that her brother told her the Moon Rabbit doesn’t excist. Score: 6.0/10

No One But I Know by KAMIJO Daisuke, 2019, 25 min This movie really looks promising, It’s about a boy who’s stepdad gets murdered and his mother gets charged with it. In the end, he tried to protect his mother but fails in the end and protects the killer instead. Score: 8.0/10

What Meiling Decided by KUJIRAOKA Hironori, 25 min This had a good start but a weird ending, I’m interested into this becoming a full on movie. Score: 7.0/10

Lovers and Coffee by SHIRAO Ayuka, 2018, 5 min This was a really short one, playing in the future where coffee is banned from the world. A couple smuggles it and drinks one cup each month. However the worst ever cop shows up and leaves without making an arrest… It was funny and dumb at the same time Score: 5.0/10

Blue Hands by YAMANAKA Yu, 2019, 20 min I absolutely loved this, Blue hands is about a son talking about his father who carried on his fathers legacy with an indigo dying company. His hands, over time have stained the indigo blue. It tells the story of how his father lost his wife to death, then almost his company due to other companies and his son due to neglect and endangerment. But it shows the fathers pure love for his son and the sons pure love for the father. It was absolutely beautiful and I saw many people around me wipe away their tears.  It was shot perfectly and would love to see it again. Score: 10/10

Camera Japan This event will hold their 15th anniversary next year and every year they’re looking for volunteers. The most important thing when you apply for a volunteer is to remember to stay professional, follow the guidelines and make sure every visitor has a great experience. The group of volunteers every year is amazing and being part of such a group is truly an honor. If you would be interested in joining the coming year make sure to continue checking out their website and facebook page so you can be in time and sign up.

  For the 14th time @CAMERAJAPAN brings Japan a bit closer with not only movies but also a small taste of Japanese culture. This year's theme was Youth because with the rapidly ageing population and low birth rate some might wonder what the Youth is doing. No worries though, because Camera Japan has showed us they are doing a great job and need to be heard more! Read our guest and volunteer expierence here! For the 14th time CAMERA JAPAN brings Japan a bit closer with not only movies but also a small taste of Japanese culture.