#with 6 of them being songs we already have albeit a different version | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

chibimyumi · 5 years ago

Text

That Demon, Seducer

Dear @gisellehexen89,

First of all, thank you for your kind words and interesting ask!

Indeed, the musical version of this scene is quite different from its 2D counterparts for several reasons. The shortest comparison I can make is that the musical version is, as you say, more unsettling, whereas the 2D counterparts are creepier.

But! I think nobody ever sends me asks because they think I’m good at short answers (if you did, I hope y’all learned by now that I just am not XD), so here comes another loooong post to live up to my notorious reputation!

This post will be a three-parter:

Manga and Anime

Musical - Noah’s Ark Circus 2.1. Step 1. Listening 2.2. Step 2. Connecting 2.3. Step 3. Advance

Conclusion

1. Manga and Anime

In order to understand the difference, let us first look at the manga and anime before we compare it to the musical.

In chapter 28 Beast is very upset. Sebas sneaks up on her, and the first thing he does is touch her scarf. Beast is understandably enraged at Sebastian’s assumptions of her feelings despite not even having had a proper conversation yet. “What do you understand!?” she challenges, and Sebas makes a countermove: “nothing, yet,” basically announcing that he is going to pry Beast open.

When Beast fights back, the demon immediately grabs her by the wrist and arm, pulling her closer.

Sebas gives her no time at all to consent, and already puts a hand to her belly, moving upwards presumably past her breasts before grabbing her by the most vulnerable part of any animal, the throat. Hereby, Sebas has demonstrated to Beast how the power-balance is entirely on his side, leaving her entirely at his mercy.

Sebas’ anime counterpart takes it even further. We see how Beast tries to run in episode 6, but Sebastian uses the fence to his advantage, blocking Beast’s body between the metal and his own body.

Beast attempts to fight Sebas off, and just like in the manga, Sebas yanks her arm to stop her escape. Anime!Beast offers more resistance than in the manga, and Anime!Sebas also responds with greater aggression. Here we see him not only grab her arm, but also seemingly pulling it behind her body, almost like how a police officer arrests a suspect.

The camera starts low and tilts upward in a suggestive metaphor of ‘moving up her skirt’. Sebastian’s hand does more than just holding Beast in place, he is touching up on her.

More explicitly thanks to the animation, we also see how Sebas is caressing Beast’s skin while she wears an expression of terror on her face. Just like in the original, Anime!Sebas also dramatically banks the power balance to his side.

Touching Beast’s scarf may not seem much of a deal on surface level, but this scarf was wrapped around her by Joker. And judging from how Beast immediately pressed her face into it, the scarf symbolises some type of comfort to her.

By touching that scarf unsolicited, Sebas was making an uncalled move on Beast’s last comfort.

In the manga, this assault on Beast’s metaphorical comfort was taken to yet higher levels by showing us how the scarf drops to the ground. Here, Beast’s comfort was metaphorically undone, literally leaving her exposed to Sebastian’s advances.

2. Musical - Noah’s Ark Circus

Now we have studied Sebastian’s advances in the manga and anime, it is time to move on to the musical.

First of all, the setup of this scene is incredibly different and therefore also calls for different approaches from the performers. This scene in the musical can be split into three parts.

Step 1. Listening

In the manga and anime it is mostly Sebas who does the talking, making advance after advance. In the musical however, most lines were given to Beast, while Sebas is the listener and only speaks in response.

In my opinion, this choice is by far the most clever change, because Beast would naturally not be interested in Sebastian’s rambles; all she wanted was to be heard. Sebastian’s goal in turn, was also to win trust and information from Beast.

I very much doubt anyone would open up to someone who imposes himself onto them the way anime and manga Sebas did. Had the target been someone who’s already horny beyond reason, seeing such an attractive seducer MIGHT have been enough, but that was not Beast’s situation. She was already emotionally vulnerable, and therefore I suspect what manga and anime Sebas did would only cause someone to shut close even further.

In the musical version, Beast starts her emotional pour-out, stating: “no one could ever understand my pain.” Yunbastian’s lines differ from the manga: instead of shutting Beast down with the line “I don’t understand anything, yet,” he actually accepts the woman’s words, and simply replies: “shall I wipe away your tears?” in the softest, cooing voice ever leaving his lips.

Beast does not humour Sebastian’s offer with a reply, and instead continues to pour out her frustrations and pain. Sebas continues to listen silently until Beast says that she’ll “only get hurt,” to which he replies: “I shall help you forget.”

In stark contrast with his manga and anime counterparts, the first time Sebastian touches Beast, it was in a gentle, assuring manner, only touching her shoulder as a sign of support.

Step 2. Connecting

Beast’s singing becomes more frantic, and she turns to face Sebastian. As it turns out, Sebastian had been listening so well that the moment she faces him, she hears him say the very words that she had been building up to: “a one time liberation.” There. The ‘understanding’ she previously believed the man incapable of giving. Their minds connected.

Yunbastian backs away to give her space, indicating that all he does is make the offer, but that Beast is the one who has the say in whether she grabs this ‘liberation’.

Now that Beast knows that she is being respected, she literally and figuratively moves towards Sebastian.

Even with full confidence that his prey is now in his hands, Yunbastian still does not touch Beast’s body, fully respecting her autonomy. Yunbastian merely follows Beast’s steps, never interrupting her. This was a very important action, because Sebastian needed Beast to feel like she can talk to him; “talking to him”, after all, was exactly what he wanted her to do.

Here ⇊ is a zoomed-in, slow-motion capture of this ⇈ moment where Yunbastian shows the audience how he knows he’s been successful in luring in his prey. His eyes communicate very clearly his inner thoughts: “hook, line, and sinker.”

Beast and Sebastian’s dance duet begins, and we see Beast being the one to make the first move while Sebastian follows. This too is a very important nuance, because by following Beast instead of making her comply with him, Sebas shows her that SHE is the one who matters here, that SHE is the protagonist of their story.

Step 3. Advance

For the first time Yunbastian makes his advance. Here he also follows Beast in her movements. He does not take Beast, but gently guides her hand into his.

Once Beast grabs hold of Yunbastian’s hand, the music plays up and they engage in a synchronised dance. Still here, Yunbastian only touches the hand and arm Beast had given him herself.

Then suddenly, Beast seems to think better of it, and attempts to walk away. Alas, it is too late, Sebastian’s already got her.

Unlike in the manga or anime, this is the first time Yunbastian touches Beast’s scarf - her symbolic comfort. He does not try to undo the scarf or pry away the fabric to touch her skin however. His hand is firmly pressed onto her throat, but the hand that is in Beast’s vision tells a different - albeit misleading - story.

Where the 2D Sebastians tighten their grip over their prey, Yunbastian loosens his. The effect however, is the opposite. It is like Beast is entranced by the demon, and can’t help but walk straight into the trap despite being fully aware that it is one.

It is like it had sunken into Beast’s mind what Sebastian is after only now. The moment the man moves, Beast grabs for the hem of her coat, pulling it down in an attempt to protect herself.

Now Yunbastian loosens his grip in his other hand which held her throat as well. It is only now that Beast relaxes and let’s go of the hem.

Yunbastian guides both Beast’s hands into his own, and pays immaculate attention to their height difference. He bends down and holds the woman’s gaze from below her. When he made sure that she would not resist, he made his final move.

“Skilfully, sweetly, silently...”

These were the keywords to Sebastian’s tactics, and it is indeed exactly what Yunbastian had done.

This part of the song is the reprise of the demon’s theme at the very beginning of the musical, ‘contract’. We see a man making a romantic advance on a woman, taking all steps to respect the her autonomy. But in the end all these respectful actions were but a means to an end.

This reprise should be understood as non-diegetic: obviously Yunbastian was not actually loudly betraying his manipulation tactics to his prey. He was singing the audience. Therefore he had dropped the angelic high tone he used to coax Beast and returned to his usual low voice. By giving **these lines to Sebastian and have him sing this in reprise of ‘contract’, it is like he is warning all of us against the pretenses of kindness.

Beast finally lets her guard down entirely. Sebas turns to the audience, grimacing “just as planned” so triumphantly, it would make ‘Death Note’s’ Light realise that Sebas is the actual OG here.

**TLN: These lines were originally William’s.

Now is where Yunbastian’s specialty comes in; the skin-crawling demon. Right after showing us Just-As-Planned!Sebas™, he makes a show out of pulling that concerned face before turning back to Beast. He won’t allow her to suspect that he is anything other than concerned for her well-being.

This ⇊ compassionate face is the only face Beast would know Sebastian by. Until she later learns of the truth of course, but then it was already too late...

Before this scene blacks out, we catch a last glimpse of Yunbastian pulling his leg backwards preparing for a descent to his knee. This tells us that he is going to carry through with this respectful and compassionate act, all the way until the end.

3. Conclusion

Now I have made an extensive comparison between the three media types, we can produce the following chart which compares the tactics between the Sebastians.

As I said in the introduction, I personally find the 2D Sebastians ‘creepier’, as he represents aggressive masculinity. The achievement the 2D Sebastians made did not necessarily require a demon’s skill; all it seemed to take was exceptionally good looks. It is beyond my understanding how he would have succeeded in getting Beast to talk (other than using actual demon powers, a.k.a. Yana’s divine decision).

The musical version is much more ‘unsettling’, because Yunbastian employs his experience from studying humans over the course of centuries. He knows the mechanism of ‘fear’ in and out, and is capable of bending this inborn protection mechanism all us humans have TO HIS advantage.

Yunbastian presents the face he wants you to see, masking the monster he is underneath. Instead of using brute force, he uses a far more insidious power. Yunbastian was the aggressor, but in the end, it still looks like it was Beast who talked to him, Beast who gave him her hands, her body, and Beast who chose to trust him.

Please click here for the AWESOME behind the scenes facts of this scene!

I hope this analysis was not disappointing. Thanks for reading this loooooong post until the end (*´▽｀*)ノ

#I am usually not SUPER enthusiastic about the script writers of these musicals #but this was the BEST change EVER #Kuroshitsuji #Black Butler #Kuromyu #Noah's Ark Circus #NAC #Musical #Sebastian Michaelis #Beast #Sebabeast #That Demon - Skin Crawling #tw manipulation #Yunbastian #Furukawa Yuta #Yun #Tano Asami

156 notes · View notes

shiningliive · 5 years ago

Photo

7th Stage Set List Speculation

Tumblr hates tall images so please click to see in higher quality!

I put way too much time and effort into thinking up a possible set list for 7th stage, and I’m sure it’ll be way off, but I’m curious how close I can get. Some clarifications, other ideas, and explanations below the read more. Be warned, it’s very long.

*This is not an official set Utapri 7th Stage list, just speculation.

Basic Layout:

1. This is all assuming they want something similar-ish to Maji Love Kingdom, plus solos and other recent songs. I didnt want to just copy the Maji Love Kingdom set list and whack some solos in there

2. Another order I considered was similar to the 5th stage layout where they did ‘character 1 solo, character 2 solo, character 3 solo, song they did together.’ I do think this is definitely possible for 7th stage, and if they do do this, it could be, for example, Tokiya solo, Cecil solo, Yamato solo, Colourfully Spark. I mainly didnt use this for my primary example because I figured it might be odd if they arent doing Quartet Night Solos.

3. Not very notable, but I also placed the solos in the order the boys are usually in (Otoya, Masato, Natsuki, Tokiya, Ren, Syo, Cecil) with the matching Heavens order.

4. I did my best to not have too much focus on one group to the point where you dont see another at all until the second half or later. This happened with 6th stage with Heavens not even being introduced until an hour and 45 minutes in. There is a bit of a gap without Quartet Night as Heavens and Starish do their solos, but I feel like this is a bit unnavoidable, and tried to counterbalance it by having the shining masterpiece songs (no heavens) before the solos.

5. Of this speculative set list, I consider Setsugetsuka-Michibiki Hikari to be the first half, and Up Down Up-Welcome to Utapri Kingdom (just realised I wrote welcome to utapri world in the graphic but you get me) to be the second half. This doesnt matter too much, but it could be split this way across discs or have an interlude inbetween. There are less songs in the ‘second half’ but it does end up being around the same length when you consider we usually get about 2 20 minute talks at the end.

Explanations:

1. I didnt include Quartet Night songs for a few reasons. Mainly because they dont have any new ones released lately and there have already been two QN only lives with qnlf being the most recent main live since 6th stage. It’s certainly possible that they might include some repeats of older QN solos, but this set list is already at the same length and amount of songs as 6th stage, so it would add enough extra time to make 7th stage too long.

2. Obviously I didnt include a Nagi solo because Wingu isn’t able to attend 7th stage. I assumed this would not affect other song selections and that they will likely have other members fill in for his parts in group songs.

3. I was unable to figure out which new set of solos for Heavens and Starish they would use. I didn’t decide the ones used for any particular reason, so I wouldn’t at all be surprised if different solos than I wrote are used.

4. I used Setsugetsuka as the opener song, because I thought it would not only allow for special outfits to be worn by Starish and Quartet Night that could be chanegd after their introductions, but it also saved time (instead of having one starish song and one QN song, theyre combined). It’s not quite an exciting booming start to the live, but it is a very well loved song by the fandom that hasnt been performed yet, and the first few notes are very recognisable. I can also imagine it fading nicely into a Heavens group song I’m not sure about this choice, but I couldnt quite shake the idea, so I kept it. Wouldn’t be surprised if they started with the same three group songs as Maji Love Kingdom though.

5. In general, I tried to consider things like outfit changes, the time of each song, having a first and second half that can be split onto two discs for dvd/bluray release, and most importantly perhaps, not having the same seiyuu perform too many times in a row to avoid them getting too exhausted.

6. I found it very hard to place Encore. Unlike a lot of the other Mamo songs, it isnt exactly a hype, exciting song to start off a live (after the initial group songs) but it also doesnt really work in the middle after the solos, or towards the end. Having the song be called ‘encore’ and being played during the credits of Maji Love Kingdom really give that vibe that it should be an encore song.

7. I don’t think they would want 4 Quartet Night+Starish joint songs without Heavens (as it would cause a bit of an imbalance) so I figure they might do either the Shining CD 2 songs or the upcoming Black/White songs that are released shortly before the live. For now I’ve gone with Wonder Rondo and Dancing Over Night because we dont know the length of the Black/White songs.

“Things that would be cool but probably won’t happen”:

1. I placed Encore towards the start of my set list, but theres something that I would love to see, no matter where its placed. If the song starts with Mamo singing, as expected, until about 30 seconds in when slowly all other seiyuu would walk on stage and join in. This would allow the song to be used as an encore with all seiyuu, or just help build variety and excitement to an otherwise (albeit intense) but slower more emotional song. It also lines up well with the songs build itself as well as the MV that slowly includes more and more people.

2. More special outfits for Setsugetsuka and the Shining Masterpiece songs and more special outfits/performances in general. I think this is the reason why previous performances like Koizakura and other Shining Theatre songs are so memorable.

3. Pretty sure this one is almost 100% not happening, but, I want Sawashiro Miyuki as a guest to sing Maigo no Kokoro, Haru’s solo song from the first season of the anime. It’s so often forgotten, but its a beautiful song. This would also serve as a nice interlude for the boys to have an outfit change or change staging etc.

4. I feel like there should maybe be a third encore song, but I couldnt choose a good one. It feels odd to not have 1000% or 2000%, so a version of them with all three groups is possible. If they are going to have a new version of an older song, I feel like a Mirai Chizu would be a great choice. Not only does it suit an encore (emotionally and lyrically speaking), but they haven’t performed it since 1st stage, and I feel like it could work really well with all groups together. Or it could be some kind of new medley or song entirely.

5. Of course, there are 3 big things we’d all like to see announced at 7th stage. These being: a 5th season of the anime or some kind of sequel, Dolce Vita news, and a large scale update to shining live (eg, adding Heavens.)

Stats of my set list:

1. The total song time of my set list is 2 hours and 20 minutes with an hour and a half of extra time including a shining dancers or other interlude, introduction video, talks, about 5-10 seconds inbetween songs, audience encore call, and goodbyes.

2. The final time of this set list would be about 3 hours and 48 minutes.

3. For the performance on the 18th for example, doors open at 2pm, and 7th stage begins at 4:30. With this set list, it seems like it would end at about 8:15-8:30pm which allows for enough time to exit the dome before 9:00pm.

4. There are 33 songs in this set list (one talk is incorrectly labeled as an extra song in the graphic) which is the same as 6th stage.

For anyone who’s gotten this far, thank you. This is literally essay length and I wrote it in 50 minutes. It was a lot of fun thinking up this set list, so I’m excited to see if im at all accurate, or 100% wrong. Either way I’m so excited to see the actual set list.

#not shining live #utapri #uta no prince-sama #utapri 7th stage #7th stage

98 notes · View notes

curestardust · 6 years ago

Text

this is a seperate sequel to Aikatsu with a new cast and story | more character and plot focused

Aikatsu Stars! changes some things up compared to its previous season, for better or worse.

Aikatsu S1 seemed to focus on introducing as many new girls as possible. This worked for making sure that everyone found their “best girl” but was also a drawback as basically as soon as a specific girl’s arc ended you may not see them perform again for the next 50 episodes. Stars is vastly different. We have a set cast of characters and only get a few new ones introduced when the anime has spent enough time fleshing out the original ones. Almost none of the important characters get forgotten and dissappear for long periods of time. Which is great if you found a favourite character. IF, you did.

In Aikatsu S1, we didn’t have anyone with an “offensive” personality. They were all tolerable and you could easily get used to them. Stars! is different and starts out on the wrong foot. We get our main, Yume, who is a typical ditzy blonde. This immediately made me uncomfortable because the reason I loved Ichigo was because they didn’t force her into those typical main character tropes. Then we have her best friend Koharu, who basically gets showed into the back, making her somewhat irrelevant for the first half of the anime. And then we get introduced to the rest of the main cast; Laura, Ako and Mahiru. The problem? All 3 are a certain level of tsundere. Ako is 100% one, Mahiru is like 50% and Laura 30%. This was NOT a good decision. As I said, the first half of the anime mainly focuses on these 4 and as someone who doesn’t like the tsundere character type I got annoyed by their behaviour numerous times.

Fortunately, this gets better as the anime goes on. As we enter the second arc, the attention somewhat shifts on a new group fo characters and everyone goes through a lot of character growth. Still, I feel like they spent way too much time before committing. For example, Ako’s main character development happens around episode 80...of the 100 episodes. Like...

There’s also a bigger focus on the overarching plot. In Aikatsu, the story mostly consisted of smaller challenges like auditions and units with there not really being a bigger end goal. In the first half of Stars! the main plot is preparing for the S4 Selection and in the second half for the Aikatsu Rankings. There’re plenty of side stories and fillers but in the end the anime always comes back to advancing towards the main plot.

There are less songs and performances in Stars! which is kind of a bummer, however the songs are all amazing as usual and their performance dresses and stages are even prettier and more detailed than in Aikatsu.

The original season was a simple weekly wind down with minimal stakes, cute characters and pretty performances. Aikatsu Stars! becomes more of an actual story. If you go into this right after the 170 episodes of Aikatsu, it’ll be kinda weird. But as the anime goes on, the characters grow and form friendships and the plot keeps you interested. You don’t need to watch Aikatsu to enjoy this season as they’re almost completely seperate. [7/10] (x)

Recommend: HELL Yeah! | Yes | Eh??? | Nope | This anime killed my parents

if you want: MICROBIOLOGY / to know the inner workings of the body / charming cast of characters / creative writing

I’m finally delving into the plentiful Summer Season offering, starting with “Cells at Work!”

I didn’t even take me a second to add this to my PTW. Science? Hell yeah. Overly dramatic portrayal of science in anime form? HELL YEAH. I’ve always been a sucker for stuff like this and I just couldn’t skip it.

So, how was it? Eh...there’s good and bad and seeing how popular this anime is, this review might get me killed but here we go anyway.

First off, let us get the small stuff out of the way. The music is fine but nothing remarkable. The animation is uh....questionable. The artstyle itself is a bit weird but it is not something I judge but the movements of the characters is so...uncanny at some places? Just watch the opening where it opens on the 2 main characters running and there’s just something wrong there. Fortunately, this problem isn’t very noticable most of the time as the anime uses a lot of quick cuts between dramatic stills and short action sequences. Still, the animation and the art is, also, just fine.

There’s no overarching plot, which is neither good or bad. The episodes are well....episodical. Very much so. One episode ends with a seemingly deadly antigen invading the body but the next episodes don’t even mention it.

I feel like it is also important to mention that if you’ve never studied biology in depth IN ENGLISH then some episodes can get insanely hectic. Whenever there’s something happening with the body, there’s a new antigen or a new cell showing up, the show stops and a very nice female voice explains what they are and what they do. However, there’s so much science lingo in these explanations that 50% of the time I was like ???????? BUT this doesn’t mean that the anime is completely incromprehensible, especially if you don’t particularly care about the real life explanations and just want to see some action.

So, why is Hataraku Saibou so popular? From what I’ve seen, there are mainly 2 reasons: the cast and the creativity. It is clear that the writers have a deep knowledge of the base material and they also love it. I see some fans reading about microbiology, trying to connect the things that appear in the anime with their real life equivalents. From just one look, “Cells at work” looks like some mindless fun somewhat based on the inner workings of the body but, no, this shit is DETAILED.

And the cast. People seem to be in love with the 2 main characters’ personalities and relationship (oh the shipping!). There’s also a nice secondary cast of characters surrounding them. The designs are all very distinct; White Blood Cell U-1146′s full on white body gear and Red Blood Cell AE3803′s Red cap and jacket are already quite iconic and easily recognizable.

Listen, I personally didn’t get into Hataraku Saibou. It was a fun, educational albeit somewhat mediocre one time watch for me. BUT I’ve been part of big fandoms before and I can see the appeal. The cast is charming, the world is vast and the writing is full of creativity. If you’re even slightly interested in this anime, watch it! And hey, maybe it will suck you in just like it did with a bunch of other people. [6/10] (x)

Recommend: HELL Yeah! | Yes | Eh??? | Nope | This anime killed my parents

if you want: (quite weak) horror/thriller / RPG maker game adaptation / unique chemistry between main characters / somewhat religion themed??

Gotta say that it’s been a while since I’ve seen something as incompetent as Satsuriku no Tenshi. This anime is an adaptation of a “horror” game that was created with RPG Maker. Now...people are capable of creating some great games with RPG Maker, I’ll not deny that. However, I’m pretty sure that everything that was lacking in the game got transferred over to the anime itself. I watched some short gameplay videos and the first thing most will notice is the quite weak dialogue.

I’ll start with the few positives I found. The story itself is quite intriguing, as it is the reason I gave this a watch. The chemistry between the main characters are unique and I didn’t find it sexualized either however the fandom generally seems to ship them which makes me wanna vomit as Rachel is 13 and Zack is 20 so it’s....ughhghghgh.

The Opening and especially the Ending track are quite nice and uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... yeah. Now let’s talk about the BAD.

Character designs are incredibly generic and resemble a 12 year old’s DeviantArt OCs. The OST would be alright however the same tracks repeat over and over and over again and it drived me up the wall! The dialogue is incredibly bad. The characters have the exact same conversation at least every episode if not multiple times in an episode. And they lack pauses. As soon as the action stops someone starts talking even if what they’re saying is irrelevant and could’ve been left unsaid.

However, the worst offender is the pacing. The creaters of this anime completely failed in adapting a video game into a series. If you’ve played RPGs you’ll immediately notice the patterns the characters follow. Enter Room. Dialogue prompt which gives you quest. Go somewhere. Pick item/push button. Go back. Dialogue prompt. Repeat. There’s even a segment where they are solving a puzzle and while that part of the story was quite tense as important information was being revealed, I can imagine this working SO MUCH better in the game itself, where YOU are the one solving the puzzle while YOU are under pressure. In the anime version a huge part of the appeal is lost and it’s basically like watching an animated gameplay.

I’m seeing people praising this anime. I don’t get it this time, at all but whatever. Personally, I’d not recommend this anime. It’s a drag and a waste of time. (3/10) (3/10) (x) (x)

Recommend: HELL Yeah! | Yes | Eh??? | Nope | This anime killed my parents

#dusty reviews #aikatsu #aikatsu stars #hataraku saibou #cells at work #satsuriku no tenshi #Angels of Death #Aikatsu Stars!

2 notes · View notes

aprilskyforever · 6 years ago

Text

Henny ranks Eurovision 2018 (fifth and final edition, after the contest)

I still can’t believe it happened, that I actually was there. In the arena. I saw 34 of the 43 acts live, from one distance or another. 10 of them from both. Let me tell you this first: Gabe told me before the trip that all acts would be better live, and he was right. Live, even Russia and San Marino were good. But in this final ranking, I’ve taken all aspects in concern: studio before the show, preparties, sound and show live in the arena, sound and show on tv. And for some, it differs a lot between the factors. But i’ll get to that in the comments for each individual song. Now, let’s go!

1 Italy. My winner since the beginning, and it remained that way. I just feel too strongly for these two men and their song to let them be passed by someone else. I can’t do that. Even if Cyprus beats them in staging. Non Mi Avete Fatto Niente never fails to make me Feel stuff, it hits me right in my heart, and Ermal’s voice is like honey and a magnificent contrast to Fabrizio’s raspy tune. 2 Cyprus (+3). When the song was released I didn’t fully believe in it, due to the heavy autotune on the studio version. But I always thought, if Eleni can pull this off live, this can be really dangerous. She never got to prove her talent until the actual broadcast, and I don’t gamble, but after semi 1 I would have placed my bets on her. Flawless staging (my only complaint is that it was tad bit too much choreography in the first verse), Sacha proves once again what a pro she is. And Eleni, what a queen she is! Completely owning the stage. I stand in awe. 3 Czech Republic. I’m forever impressed by and soft for this man. Brilliant staging - when he did the jumps and flips in the end I completely lost it, I was blown away. Very slick staging and performance, and the song always makes me want to dance. Please, Czech TV, tell me that this wasn’t a once in a lifetime thing! 4 Ukraine (-2). Now, I’ll be honest. Albeit a cool staging, the song doesn’t quite hit me live as it does in studio. It might be that I don’t like Mélovin’s styling, that there’s too much going on on stage, that the bass isn’t as heave as it should be... who knows. I love him and I love the song, but there was just Something missing. 5 Sweden (-1). My man! You made me be proud of my country again! It’s funny, because I’ve never really liked Benji before, even if I’ve known about him since... well 2006? But there’s something about the song, his voice and moves, and the neon bed that makes me soften. Being so far behind in televote was rather painful, I must admit that. 6 Germany (+5). This made me tear up when I saw it in the arena. I haven’t lost my father or anything, but this was simply beautiful and Michael filled it with so much emotion, it was so impressive and it hit me right in the heart on an Italy level. It really deserved its high placing. 7 Israel (+8). She really knew how to get the party started. I’ll be honest and say it’s really not my favourite song and I’ve grown rather tired of it, but it will forever be associated with the moment on Praca do Commercio when Gabe realized it had won, the happiness on his face. And the singing along, how we waved the flag, how we danced, how everyone was looking at us. In that moment, I absolutely loved it. 8 Austria. One of the best songs of the year, without a doubt. In one way I understand why it did so well with the juries, it really is that kind of song, however, live, it didn’t really feel that... exciting? Tickling? In a way that a winner does. Doesn’t really hits your most inner core you know? 9 Denmark (+3). This song climbing is all thanks to the audience, to be honest. They made this song grow. All aboard the viking ship! Or as we say up here, alle man ombord! 10 Finland (-4). Still also one of my favourites this year in terms of song only, the Debs are one brilliant duo. Staging was cool, although it was sort of missing a red thread? It felt a little messy? But I still loved it. 11 Moldova (-2). Oh Julija, I’m so sorry to not fit them into the top 10! I promise I still love them, I love the staging, and I’m weak for the song. Only thing throwing me off is the mixing live, the levels don’t feel just right. 12 Norway (+4). This was the first song I heard live and I’m still weak for it. Really a great party starter. Rybak may not be very helpful with song writing tips, but he sure knows how to deliver a performance and how to charm an audience. 13 Switzerland (-6). Oh my darlings, my darlings I’m so sorry... I really wished I could have seen this in the final. I’ll forever be weak for Coco. 14 Hungary (+7). This year’s big grower! If I’m not mistaken, it started out as my dead last because heavy metal isn’t my genre at all. But then I actually gave the song a chance. And in the arena, good lord help me how good it was. On TV, not as much, but this was absolutely one of the coolest acts to see live. 15 Albania (+2). I adore him, I adore the staging for this, I adore the intro of the song. It sounds so promising and always puts me in a good mood, makes me anticipate something. The only bad thing is the chorus, that thing I’m anticipating, it never really comes you know? But he’s Turt’s favourite and meeting him will forever have a place in my heart. 16 Ireland (+4). I’m forever grateful to whoever came up with the idea to make the music video come alive on stage. It fits so perfectly and lifts the song to sky high levels. 17 Bulgaria (-3). It’s Solid. That’s what I’ve always said. Sounds like Skeletons, but where Skeletons is wandering in an eerie forest with a slight feeling of anxiety, yet anticipation, Bones is being more sure of what’s going on, it’s walking with a steady pace on a wide path, not being afraid of what the eerie forest hides. 18 Australia. Oh, she always makes me so happy, and so does the song. But the chorus still sounds like a bridge, and the dancing felt... not really right, I felt she was too alone on stage. Live, however, this was absolutely stunning. 19 France (-9). This is a sleek song, I do like the sound of it, but by now it has honestly become a bit boring. And I’m sorry. 20 Slovenia (+9). Her charisma, choreography and staging really made up for the underwhelming beat in the chorus that had always put me off before. Now, I didn’t mind it. Also a really good live song. 21 Portugal (-8). Everytime I hear this song, I still wait for it to take off fo real, and it never does. It’s so beautiful, it keeps growing, but it never blooms into the full garden that I expect. And that’s a shame. 22 Latvia (+2). Where Croatia did it wrong, Latvia did it right, in a way. Good angles, good song, she made it work by being alone on stage. Maybe she was a bit too stiff and choreographed though. 23 Belarus (-4). You know, I don’t mind the rose, nor do I mind the song at all. His whole performance was alright, but somewhere I understand why I didn’t qualify. 24 Montenegro (+2). Oh this sweet man! The gift that keeps on giving. He deserved better. 25 Netherlands (+15). This song is such a water divider for me. I’ve grown tired of it and him, but then when I heard it live and saw him on TV it actually wasn’t that bad? It’s like I couldn’t resist it? 26 Greece (-1). This is the best Greece has sent since... 2014. Yeah. But the semi was too strong and I’m honestly happy it stayed where it did. However I’m not happy with the fact that This Is Love qualified last year, and this didn’t. But that’s just how it be sometimes. 27 Spain (+6). When 5000 Spanish fans sing along, you can’t resist it yourself. It’s rather sweet, to be honest. 28 Belgium (-1). Whoever staged and styled this number must be fired asap. Sennek looked like a ghost from a prison cell instead of the elvish and sophosticated lady I got to know in the video. Shame on such a beautiful song. 29 Lithuania (+1). Sure, it’s sweet, but it never hit me like it seemed to do to others. 30 Azerbaijan (-8). It felt... plastic. Detached. Without sincereness, if that’s even a word. But do you get what I mean? 31 Armenia. Beautiful, but it just did nothing for me. 32 Estonia. No, I don’t deny talent and I will recognize and admit the staging was stunning. But it dosen’t make up for the fact that I’ve never liked the song itself, and knowing the lyrics sound ridiculous to someone who speaks Italian, it just adds to it. 33 United Kingdom (+6). Also irresistable live! SuRie really is a very talented artist who deserves a much, much better song that Storm. 34 Poland (-11). I’ve always thought this was alright and it has always put me in a good mood, but after seeing it on TV I cringed a lot, Lukas vocals were far from where they should have been and so was his confidence. And Gromee himself? He felt very awkward. Like a dad who crashes his teenage girls birthday disco to dance along and embarrasses his daughter beyond limits. I shrug, in a bad way. 35 Serbia. This song is a bit all over the place and that really does put me off. Like it’s not... bad, but it doesn’t convince me. 36 Romania (-2). Solid, like Bulgaria, but far from as interesting. And what on earth was that staging? 37 Malta (+1). Cool staging, but I’ve never liked the song and I probably never will. 38 Georgia (-10). Sure it’s beautiful, but this song being in Eurovision just feels so... off? And the staging was so uninteresting. 39 Croatia (-3). Franka, darling, why did you have to be so attached to your mic stand? And being alone on stage? Bad choice. Didn’t help to make the song interesting like it should. 40 Iceland (+1). Oh my boy, my sweet sweet boy... you, like SuRie, really deserved a better song. Please come back with that ok? 41 San Marino (+2). So the song is horrible, but live this was actually kinda fun. Not to mention I love the robots with their signs. Amazing. 42 FYR Macedonia (-5). Man... Macedonia disappoints with staging and styling again. Can someone fire whoever is in charge already? My barbara dex winner by a mile, and I never liked the song to begin with either. 43 Russia (-1). You know, live it didn’t sound so bad. But on TV? Good lord help me. And lord help Yulia. Shame on Russian TV for treating her like this.

And there you have it! I had an absolute blast this season and it will, for very obvious reasons, always have a special place in my heart. Now set sail, and cross the Mediterranian, and we’ll see you again Israel!

#eurovision ranking #eurovision #esc #eurovision 2018 #aprilskyforever

18 notes · View notes

deadcactuswalking · 3 years ago

Text

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 22/05/2021 (Olivia Rodrigo, J. Cole’s ‘The Off-Season’, Nicki Minaj)

Yeah, it’s a big week, given the impact of J. Cole, Jorja Smith, Olivia Rodrigo (more on that next week) and the remaining impact of the BRIT Awards. There’s a lot of nonsense on this chart, a busy as hell one at that, but this surprisingly did not affect the #1, as the remix to “Body” by Russ Millions and Tion Wayne spends a third week at the top. Let’s just attack this head on. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

First of all, let’s get this nonsense out of the way: what happened to songs already on the UK Top 75 chart, which is what I cover? Well, a fair few of them dropped out. Any song that spent five or more weeks in the chart or peaked in the top 40 is considered a notable drop-out, and this week, they include “Wants and Needs” by Drake featuring Lil Baby off of the return last week, “Track Star” by Mooski, “Heat” by Paul Woolford and Amber Mark, “6 for 6” by Central Cee, “Patience” by KSI featuring YUNGBLUD and Polo G, “Hold On” by Justin Bieber, “We’re Good” by Dua Lipa, “Commitment Issues” by Central Cee (Gosh, didn’t think J. Cole would take a chunk out of this guy’s audience specifically), “Up” by Cardi B, “Streets” by Doja Cat and finally, “Get Out My Head” by Shane Codd, but also interestingly “i n t e r l u d e” by J. Cole dropping out off of the top 40 debut despite the album boost. This doesn’t mean it didn’t perform well but rather this is demonstrating this silly chart rule where in the top 100, one artist can only have three songs, preventing album bombs that you see on the US Billboard Hot 100. It makes the chart less accurate but arguably more diverse and hence fun for me to talk about.

There are also a few returning entries to add some fuel to this chart fire, one that has already combusted in the US this week, as “Slumber Party” by Ashnikko featuring Princess Nokia is back at #70 thanks to the video, “All You Ever Wanted” by Rag’n’Bone Man is back at #51 thanks to a delayed album boost, and the same can be said for “Addicted” by Jorja Smith at #49.

Then we have our notable losses, songs that fell at least five spots down the chart this week, including “WITHOUT YOU” by the Kid LAROI at #18, “Higher Power” by Coldplay falling big off of the debut at #25, “Your Power” by Billie Eilish at #26, “Didn’t Know” by Tom Zanetti at #28, “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals at #30, “Leave the Door Open” by Silk Sonic at #31, “Don’t You Worry About Me” by Bad Boy Chiller Crew at #39, “Latest Trends” by A1 x J1 at #46, “Last Time” by Becky Hill at #52, “All I Know So Far” by P!nk at #55 off of the debut, “My Head & My Heart” by Ava Max at #57, “Martin & Gina” by Polo G at #58, “Miss the Rage” by Trippie Redd featuring Playboi Carti dropping hard off of the debut at #60 (Really, what was expected here?), Travis Scott’s remix of HVME’s remix of Travis Scott’s “Goosebumps” at #61, “Cover Me in Sunshine” by P!nk and Willow Sage Heart at #63, “Don’t Play” by Anne-Marie, KSI and Digital Farm Animals at #65, “Sunshine (The Light)” by Fat Joe, DJ Khaled and Amorphous at #66, “Tonight” by Ghost Killer Track featuring D-Block Europe and Oboy at #71, and finally, “Calling My Phone” by Lil Tjay and 6LACK at #73.

That’s not to say there weren’t any notable gains however as we do have some interesting remnants of BRITs excitement and some other reasons for our gains this week, which include “One Day” by Lovejoy (more on them later) at #54, “It’s a sin” by Elton John and Years & Years at #47, “Way Too Long” by Nathan Dawe, Anne-Marie and MoStack at #43, “drivers license” by Olivia Rodrigo at #35 off of the success of “good 4 u” (again, more on that later), “Black Hole” by Griff at #23 thanks to the BRITs, and finally, “deja vu” by Olivia Rodrigo at #11. Really, all of this is just me stalling because this is a massive week – I’m writing this early – let’s just get through this... starting with—oh, for God’s sake.

NEW ARRIVALS

#75 – “Taunt” – Lovejoy

Produced by Cameron Nesbitt

Two weeks in a row, ladies and gentlemen: Minecraft YouTuber-core. How this happens I have no idea but regardless, the people of the UK seem to enjoy this Wilbur Soot guy’s new band. Is the new single better than the last one that charted from this EP, at least? Well, yeah, it is, mostly because at least this one’s an actual pop rock tune that, whilst derivative again, has more hooks than “One Day”, especially those stop-and-start-again verses that give me mathcore flashbacks, just with less of a catharsis to come from it other than that infectious, trumpet-laden chorus. The content is pretty gross if anything, seemingly focusing in on this past relationship from secondary school in which Wilbur tears into a girl for being insecure despite her privileges... for seemingly no reason. I mean, surely, you’ve moved on, right? Thankfully, Wilbur does get his comeuppance by the end of the song as the girl throws his drink at him, but it does leave the rest of the song with a pretty spiteful taste in my mouth that can’t be avoided by some pretty, 2000s indie rock-esque instrumentals. It doesn’t help that Wilbur Soot is such a non-presence as well, which I can see improving as the band goes on to record more material but the problem is with this early stage is that for now, it’s all rather primitive... yet it’s still charting. Oh, and if any people happen to find this that are fans of this guy, I am terrified of you so I’ll clarify that I don’t dislike this band at all, I’m just not a fan of what I’ve heard. I just wanted to put that out there because I value my personal information.

#74 – “Crocodile Teeth” – Skillibeng

Produced by Adde Instrumentals and Johnny Wonder

So last week, Nicki Minaj re-released her classic 2009 mixtape Beam Me Up Scotty onto official streaming services for the first time, with a remastered mix of some of her classic remixes as well as some new tracks or fan-favourite loosies sprinkled in. Why do I say this in reference to some random unrelated track, you ask? Well, we’ll get back to Nicki later but this song was actually remixed by Nicki and appears on that mixtape, despite baring no resemblance or relation to that mixtape at all, given this was released in 2020. The UK Singles Chart is particularly inconsistent is crediting remixes however, so we have the original here and, for what it’s worth, I quite like this. Skillibeng isn’t the most interesting presence but does his job in being vaguely menacing and violent over this cheap piano-led Afroswing instrumental with some questionable bass mastering. The song is in Patois but you can get the gist that it’s gunplay and flexing, typically stuff you’d hear in any UK drill track and it’s generic for sure but catchy enough to ignore. This version of the song is completely passable but I do think it is elevated by Nicki’s short introductory verse on the remix. I’d obviously have preferred there be more interplay but the remix was probably only known to Skillibeng when Nicki’s lawyers reached out anyway.

#72 – “Straightenin” – Migos

Produced by DJ Durel, Atake, Sluzyyy, OSIRIS, Nuki and Slime Castro

So Migos are finally preparing to release their highly-anticipated record Culture III as the boys are back together after some time apart, in which they have had varying levels of success, with Offset probably delivering the best solo material because he has both the best qualities of Takeoff and Quavo and always delivers on guest verses... I’m sorry, what about this needed six producers? This beat is not bad by any stretch with some vague flute loop eerily played under a rote trap beat, of which the bounced 808s are probably of most interest, but I do not understand how one person, let alone just an AI, couldn’t have made this alone. Regardless, the beat is good enough to make Quavo sound like he finally cares, even if he’s just going to talk about how he just saw Tenet – a bit late to the party – and how he turned a pandemic to a “band-emic”. Yeah, okay, so we’re going to ignore Mr. Quavious and move onto Takeoff and Offset who... at least have some good flows, albeit just the same triplet deliveries they’ve had for years. I think the most interesting part about this whole song is the slippery backing vocal that follows Quavo in the later choruses, which shows an attention to detail I missed from these guys. There’s only so much I can hear Quavo say “don’t nothin’ get straight ‘bout straightenin’” before I lose my mind, though, especially by the time we get to that awkward outro, so I can’t call myself a fan of this. If we’re speaking trap-rap from acts on hiatus, I really would have preferred “Lay wit Ya” by Isaiah Rashad and Duke Deuce to chart but I guess these guys will do.

#64 – “Independence Day Freestyle” – Fredo

Produced by Handz

By the end of this episode, I will never want to hear skittering hi-hats ever again. For now, however, we’ve got the same genre, different country as we go home to Fredo, a British rapper who’s pretty consistently good to be fair to him and did release an album I liked earlier this year. This is just a random freestyle he dropped last week because he felt like it, and here it is on the chart. Okay, well, it isn’t an actual freestyle because nothing that’s called a freestyle actually is in 2021, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a trap banger in itself and it’s got the foundation for it. I love the eerie chipmunk vocal sample that adds a touch of soul to the menacing keys before they get drowned out by trap percussion and Fredo going through his typical rags-to-riches commentary and memories of gang violence in one massive verse that somehow keeps my interest throughout the entire three minutes. The flow is about as smooth as it gets with UK rap, typically a lot stiffer, especially in drill, and the mixing’s fine, so yeah, I can’t really complain. I’d have preferred a chorus, obviously, and there are extended freestyles we’ll talk about later that do this a lot better, but for now, I can dig this, especially considering it’s pretty damn quotable for what it is. “If I fell off, I must have fell off the stairs into some elevators” is a bar, as is when he says he’s got more foreign cars than an Asian wedding or when he calls himself “Lord of the Bling”... okay, maybe that one’s not as impressive.

#62 – “The Great Escape” – Blanco and Central Cee

Produced by LiTek and WhyJay

Central Cee is a more familiar name but you may not know Blanco who, despite the collaboration with Cee making it ripe for comparison and comedy, is not a French white rapper. Rather, he’s from pioneering drill group Harlem Spartans and this is actually his first solo charting song thanks to Cee’s appearance. As you’d expect, this has some loud drill production and vague acoustic guitar loop as well as some stuttering vocal production peppered with dark 808s (that do bang here in all honesty) and pointless alarm sounds. Whilst drill is so standardised now, I do actually like this beat because it’s what I want to hear Cee on; sure, it’s got the guitar and the flutes but it’s also got a sax riff, which is what made “Loading” so fun. Blanco himself is also a more charming presence than Cee and their two energies bounce off of each other pretty well, even if the most witty their punchlines get are just referencing Powerpuff Girls characters... and when they’re not basic, they’re borderline incoherent but whatever, this is a fun slice of misogyny and violence that you’d expect from the genre with at least some care put into it. Not bad at all.

#56 – “Bussdown” – Jorja Smith featuring Shaybo

Produced by Riccardo Damian, Jeff “Gitty” Gitelman and Kal Banx

This is the break-out single from the most recent “project” from Jorja Smith, going the Drake route of not bothering to name it an album, mixtape or EP, and this one features London rapper Shaybo in a track about materialism but not as much embracing it as becoming increasingly alienated by it as whilst wealth may bring you luxury and connections, it detaches you from reality, which is the point in Shaybo’s verses about being Miss Naive, someone who is increasingly aggressive as a result because, well, she always gets what she wants, right? This is not a project I listened to but the content is promising... until I actually hear the song, with its awkward, clattering percussion showered in overwhelming vocal mixing that fails in whatever intimacy it attempts to present, and that’s before the decidedly unsubtle air horns and guitar licks. The song is minimal enough for the content to kind of fall flat as well, as a song like this feels like it deserves more than a slick bass groove, rather some kind of maximalist yet subtlety eerie production. I’m thinking Shaybo would actually make more sense there than she would here as well as her awkward, pathetic-sounding flow is delivered in the most dead-pan cadence, so much so that it drifts off fully into background “vibe” music but even then, it feels too distracting in the mix to work as that. I did want to like this but it just ends up as a really disappointing track from Jorja Smith, once again.

#42 – “Seeing Green” – Nicki Minaj, Drake and Lil Wayne

Produced by GOVI and Kid Masterpiece

We’re half-way through our batch of new arrivals and what better way to celebrate than a posse cut by three rappers long past their prime by now without a chorus that pushes six minutes? Normally, that would be sarcastic, but in this case it is absolutely not as this is awesome. I love 2000s hip-hop and a chipmunk soul-inflected beat blended with early 2010s era proto-trap production is obviously going to appeal to me as that type of contrast is what I love about more lyrical hip-hop, hell, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was said this was a Kanye beat or more accurately perhaps one by Harry Fraud. It helps that over that gorgeous soul sample we have all three rappers proving they still have it as performers, with some detailed verses from the classic Young Money crew that if nothing else provide a perfect nostalgia button for their era of dominance in hip-hop, not that it’s ever stopped since. I also just love hearing Lil Wayne hungry again, because I am a pretty big fan of his voice, delivery and even some of his wordplay and one-liners, all of which he expresses perfectly in his high-energy verse that switches through flaws as if it were all some off-the-top freestyle, and knowing Wayne, it might as well could have been. I love how he starts his verse off by shooting a guy and then saying it was his bad for doing it because he was a “good cat” and somehow it gets more off the rails afterwards, as he calls his girl a vacuum and says he’s peeing lean, before this self-proclaimed “badonkadonk bikini fiend” reminisces about his bisexual ex from Atlanta in a pretty clever use of repetition in rap. This is all with his sludged drawl of a delivery, which becomes especially important when he calls us all back to 2010 as when Wayne was in prison at his career peak, Drake always said “Free Weezy” and now 10 years later, Wayne’s saying “Free Drizzy” because Drake’s locked up in Canada because of the COVID-19 pandemic... because of course. I know it just seems like I’m itching out tiny little details in the verse but that’s what’s so great about repeated listens to detailed and great rap verses. That’s not to say Wayne is the only stand-out here either as Nicki Minaj impresses with that confident delivery she’s known for as she clarifies her beef with Cardi B being less about her “copying her homework” as it was about her up-hill battle with the industry, she recites how bitches are infamously her sons and delivers some pretty clever and quotable lines of her own, like “brand new Vanilla Maserati, I’ve been Haagen-Daszin’”... which again sounds like a bar straight out of 2010. I think the best verse here might actually be from Drake as much as I hate to say it, with bravado out of the gate that seems pretty deserved for someone with as immense success as he’s had. Not only is he referencing back to 2010 and even his Degrassi days, comparing it to the run-up to his upcoming album since he’s back on two crutches, but he’s also delivering some of his most interesting and quotable lines in years, and it all runs off so effortlessly and smoothly, but with a constant hunger and conviction reminding me of some of his deeper cuts like “Dreams Money Can Buy”. I won’t go further than I already have with this song – even though I could gladly quote practically the entirety of Drake’s verse, even when he aspires to be Vladimir Putin (I guess it’s better than accidentally comparing himself to Hitler) – but I’ve rambled on enough about this wonderful track. Triumphant lyrical rapping over soulful vocal loops will never be a thing I stop having a fondness for; these are some of my nostalgia biases creeping in – especially since these aren’t close to being the best verses any of the trio have delivered – but it’s so great hearing all three back on form together. Check this out if you haven’t as it’s absolutely a highlight off of the mixtape’s re-release.

#37 – “Build a Bitch” – Bella Poarch

Produced by Sub Urban and Elle Rizk

Bella Poarch is a name I had to search up and it turns out she is another one of these TikTok stars turned pop singers and all power to them for starting their career through such a useful and culturally important platform, honestly, and realistically, anyone regardless of their career background could make a song I enjoy, so there’s no use in dismissing them as a result, especially if I actually enjoy the concept of this song. The writing tends to be a bit childish as expected – again, more on that later – particularly when she sings lines like “Bob the Builder broke my heart and told me it needs fixing”, but the song’s theme of embracing young women for how they really are instead of Photoshopped, unrealistic beauty expectations is a message I like being expressed to her audience of teenage girls; I see it as necessary in the social media age. I do think that this message could be expressed with more tact than a Build-a-Bear parody but it never goes the slut-shaming route and is more critical of the men demanding or expecting perfection from their female partners, or on a wider scale the expectation for successful women to follow fashion and beauty trends, especially by men in their industries and fields. Poarch herself is a light-hearted vocalist kind of reminding me a bit too much of a self-serious Ashnikko but the melody in the chorus is infectious enough for me to ignore how void a personality she is. It’s harder however to ignore the stiff 808s that drown out clattering, awkward future-bass production and that drop just being really gross, kind of ruining the song in how it’s clearly a lean towards hyper-pop without fully drawing itself within that lane. Either way, this is fine, and at barely two minutes it struggles to find itself as a finished song let alone anything I can be offended by. This is remarkably okay, and that’s more than I expected.

#16 – “a m a r i” – J. Cole

Produced by T-Minus, J. Cole, Sucuki and Timbaland

These songs don’t even show up when you search them on Spotify and to be honest, I was hoping that would lead to limited success but of course, it didn’t. J. Cole’s latest album The Off-Season is yet another mediocre instalment in a dull catalogue full of rambling verses from a guy who thinks he has much more to say than he actually ends up saying, and it’s exhausting to listen let alone discuss the man’s art out of a sheer lack of personality or wit that follows his every move. His Dreamville label is filled to the brim with people more consistent, skilful and interesting than Cole has ever been so it’s just frustrating to see the label boss get all of the recognition. Regardless, I’ve never liked Cole as an artist – especially not a conscious one given the ableism, homophobia and tone-deaf exchange with Noname just last year – so I’m almost glad he’s stripped off half of the pretence of making a woke, important album. He’s just rapping on this record, which gives me the excuse to run through the rest of these consecutive bores from Cole as quickly as possible. First of all, we have “a m a r i”, a barely sufferable dud from the album scored by a blend of acoustic guitars and squelching trap percussion that fails to platform Cole’s Auto-Tuned moaning, oftentimes just aggravating and barely listenable, and sometimes disguising some pretty weak, topic-less verses for a man who claims to be focused. “Want smoke? I’m a whole nicotine company” is not the silliest bar on the album, but I’m almost convinced the song ends as abruptly as it does because Timbaland’s embarrassed that he helped produce such an underwhelming beat and not even someone praised as a modern great can save it from being worthless.

#15 – “p r i d e . i s . t h e . d e v i l” – J. Cole and Lil Baby

Produced by T-Minus

One of my favourite hip-hop releases of last year was Aminé’s Limbo, a diverse selection of tracks that ranged from conscious hip-hop about his ambitions and fears about growing up and raising children in a modern world as well as typical trap-rap flexing and R&B crooners about girl problems. All of this is smoothly stirred into a pot of personality that actually attempts to bridge a gap between older and newer generations of rappers rather than just claiming to. “Can’t Decide” is not one of my favourite tracks from that record – “Compensating” with Young Thug executes its ideas just that little bit better for me – but it’s still a fun, R&B-adjacent tune with insanely catchy hooks about Aminé’s relationships. So why did we need a J. Cole remix? This guy sucks the fun out of beats like a vacuum in a bouncy castle, as he sloppily whines in an almost emo-rap cadence over a cheaper West Coast slide he just can’t convincingly sell. Lyrically, Cole focuses on the idea of pride and how it corrupts someone’s morals, criticising the flashing of money and social isolation from the family... both of which seem like Cole’s M.O. at this point, right? Success amidst independence? Platinum without features? This time around, there is a feature however from Lil Baby, who much like Cole claims to be focused in this very focused whilst pick-and-choosing between random trains of thought in his typical frog-throat delivery. Hey, at least Lil Baby flows with less strain and unwarranted, desperate effort that Cole does, and ends up out-shining the primary artist entirely, even if he’s going to “pay silly bands to have sex on the jet”. ..What?

#13 – “m y . l i f e” – J. Cole, 21 Savage and Morray

Produced by WU10, J. Cole and Jake One

The first lines of this song are “Spiralling up just like a rich person’s staircase; no fly zone, please stay out of my airspace”. Cole, I thought pride was the devil! I understand that one can still acknowledge the flaws in their worldview whilst embracing it and engaging themselves in it – that’s really a lot of the point of rags-to-riches rap – but some subtlety or at least some explanation from someone who wants you to see him as focused, woke, hungry and a master of his craft, would have been nice, right? This is Morray’s first charting hit in the UK and I’m glad he’s here as he’s basically what differentiates this from the duo’s prior collaboration “a lot”, a song that not only banged harder but felt smoother and Hell, just more coherent, especially with some soulful production that this new collaboration glaringly rips off. Morray’s biggest hit is “Quicksand” but his mixtape Street Sermons is full of soulful and honest trap-rap that I’d absolutely recommend for gospel flavour on the surface and the lyrical detail behind the bravado being extensive and confidently delivered, especially standing out on his own with no features to speak of. He has the chorus on here and I’m surprised DaBaby doesn’t have the second verse so this could be a North Carolina anthem but we do have 21 Savage, who delivers his typical brand of cold-hearted (or rather no-hearted), stoic paranoia bars but at least that’s a personality. 21 Savage delivers a slick flow over this sample and spits the pretty simple yet profound bar of “I pray that my past ain’t ahead of me”, leading to probably the most enjoyable verse on the whole album. If you couldn’t tell, the new guys outshine the old guard so obviously with so little effort it’s kind of impressive on Cole’s part even. I’m glad this is the biggest hit from this album so far as not only is this one of the best tracks out of a slim selection but it’s big for both 21 and especially Morray, who I’m really rooting for against, say, a Rod Wave or Kevin Gates in terms of southern rap with a lot more soul and grit. Oh, and Cole, “know it’s on sight when I see you like I’m working at Squarespace”? Really? Again, it’s not the dumbest bar on the album.

#2 – “good 4 u” – Olivia Rodrigo

Produced by Alexander 23 and Dan Nigro

It’s pretty fitting to book-end a batch of new arrivals mostly consisting of hardcore gritty trap with two up-beat alternative rock tracks, and I’ll say I prefer this to Lovejoy mostly because, well, like I said with “Seeing Green”, my biases will always be on full and honest display, and as someone who’s a sucker for pop-punk of all eras, especially if it’s a female-fronted band with some youthful, raspy vocals, this will obviously hit for me. Throughout Sour, I found it hard to buy into the teenage melodrama due to Dan Nigro’s production often sounding too clean for its own sake, never allowing the guitars to really crash into some lo-fi, distorted noise like they seem to want to do on tracks like this, “deja vu” and especially the opener, “traitor”. Sadly, that cuts the chances of radio airplay by a ton more than it should, so we end up with mixing that slides off Rodrigo’s reverb-drenched vocals too smoothly, creating a rather formulaic album, unfortunate for its sheer excess of promise. With that said, this is one of my favourite tracks off of the album, if only for that funky bassline and some of Nigro’s most interesting stylistic and production choices, particularly in the drumming, which sounds as organic as possible for something that was programmed by him and Alexander 23. The sarcasm-laced post-break-up kiss-off is already not unfamiliar territory for Olivia Rodrigo and neither was it for Avril Lavigne, which this track tends to sound almost like an imitation of, down to the inconsistently PG-13 image as “screw you” is delivered with as much conviction as the actual F-bomb in the same verse. Regardless of how much it wants to consistently kill its own momentum, this janky songwriting actually reminds me of early Paramore, much of which holds a special place in my heart, so whilst Hayley Williams has been off doing her solo work – and Paramore seem to have moved on from this kind of bitter, petty pop rock anyway – this quenches that thirst pretty effectively.

Conclusion

Olivia Rodrigo bags the Honourable Mention for “good 4 u” as well as it’s one of two songs debuting this week I think are pretty damn special, the other one being “Seeing Green” by Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne and Drake as it grabs Best of the Week. For the worst, I mean, pick your J. Cole-flavoured poison but personally I’d say “a m a r i” can be crowned Worst of the Week with a Dishonourable Mention to... great, I don’t want to seem like I hate J. Cole but nothing else here is even as bad as his Lil Baby collaboration “p r i d e . i s . t h e . d e v i l”. Here’s this week’s top 10:

Expect two more of those spaces filled up by Olivia Rodrigo next week as whilst we may not get any new entries from her the album will have an impact regardless on the chart. Otherwise, I guess we’ll have to wait and see with how a Queen-sampling BTS song wrecks the chart – probably will give both Olivia and “Body” some #1 competition – as well as new songs from Little Mix, Lana Del Rey, Polo G and Lil Nas X popping up not too far behind it. It should be just as busy next week, folks, so strap in, I suppose. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you then!

0 notes

aion-rsa · 4 years ago

Text

Marvel’s WandaVision Episode 6: MCU Easter Eggs and Reference Guide

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains WANDAVISION spoilers through episode 6, possibly beyond, and for the wider MCU.

It’s Halloween in Westview, and WandaVision is going all out. From the most comics-accurate looks for Scarlet Witch, Vision, Quicksilver, and even Wiccan to an eerie “Wicked Witch of the West” getup for Agnes, this episode isn’t messing around with its pop culture references. Oh yeah, and the whole thing feels faintly like an episode of Malcolm in the Middle, too!

Let’s get to work, because there’s a lot to unpack on WandaVision episode 6…

Halloween in Westview

The episode’s title is “All-New Halloween Spooktacular!” which on its own already sounds like the kind of cover blurb you’d see on an issue of Marvel Comics. Marvel in particular is known for using the “All-New!” designation, sometimes in titles for the books themselves.

The first issue of the second The Vision and the Scarlet Witch series from Marvel Comics took place on Halloween night, so the pair have a history of canonical adventures around the holiday. That story had absolutely nothing to do with the events of this episode, though.

Sitcom Influences

The format and intro are definitely supposed to resemble Malcolm in the Middle, which began in January 2000. Tommy and Billy both break the fourth wall to talk to the viewer just like Malcolm (Frankie Muniz). The theme song practically tells you to stop questioning the reality of Westview and just enjoy what’s going on. How very Mystery Science Theater 3000 of them.

We wrote more about the sitcom influences of episode 6 here.

Pietro, Peter, and Quicksilver

Nope, nothing complicated about the whole Peter/Pietro/Quicksilver thing at all. Nothing we had to write an entire article about to try and make sense of, nossir.

The recap makes sure to show Avengers: Age of Ultron footage just to drive home that we have two different versions of Quicksilver here.

Interestingly, Peter’s speed effect is very much how his power was represented in Age of Ultron, not how it was in the X-Men films. He seems to have at least SOME of the memories of MCU Pietro…assuming that’s who he is in the first place.

Tommy says Billy is afraid that Uncle Pietro is a vampire. Well, we do see him in an undead form later on, so close enough! Plus there’s a strong chance that he represents an entity that’s trying to siphon energy/magic from Wanda.

Pietro is quick to point out that he has the “XY chromosome.” Any excuse for him to announce the letter X, considering which version of Pietro we’re talking about.

He mentions “‘Uncle Peter’ to the rescue.” The Evan Peters version of Quicksilver was referred to as Peter Maximoff.

Pietro dresses as the comic version of Quicksilver, as does Tommy, who has the same powers (while claiming to be dressing as the cooler twin, a slam on both Billy and his mother).

At one point, right before Pietro and the kids run off, Tommy describes something as “kick-ass” and Wanda repeats, “Kick-Ass?” out loud. The movie Kick-Ass starred Aaron Taylor-Johnson (the MCU Quicksilver) as the titular character while Evan Peters (the other Quicksilver) played his best friend.

Pietro and Tommy say, “I feel the need for speed!” The quote is from 1986’s Top Gun. Also, Tommy’s superhero name in the comics is Speed, so there’s that. If we stretch realllllly (unnecessarily!) far, we can connect the upcoming Top Gun sequel to Marvel, as it stars Miles Teller who played Reed Richards in Josh Trank’s woeful Fantastic Four reboot.

Wanda lashes out at Hex Pietro when he is cavalier about Vision’s fate – “It’s not like your dead husband can die twice.” The taunt is super cruel and doesn’t feel like something either version of her twin would say. Wanda’s violent reaction certainly speaks volumes about just how attached to this manifestation of Mr. Maximoff she is – not very.

Wanda doesn’t seem to fully trust this version of Pietro, who knows a suspicious amount about what’s really going on here. He’s asking a lot of painful, pointed questions she’s not ready to address.

Peter’s tattoo says “MoM” – Multiverse of Madness, Mother of Mutants, Magneto’s Own Mutants, or a red herring? We’re sure the internet will have fun theorizing regardless.

That You, Mephisto?

Some of Uncle Pete’s exclamations have strong Mephisto energy “Unleash hell, demon spawn!” “The kids need a father figure” “Damnit, if Westview, New Jersey isn’t charming as Hell…” Has the rumored Marvel Comics villain behind all this integrated himself in the The Hex passing as Pietro? We shall have to see.

The town’s theatre is called the Coronet. Classic poem ‘The Coronet’ is written by an English metaphysical poet called Andrew MARVELL. It’s about a dude who knows the sins of man led to the death of Christ. He tries to make a new crown for Christ’s head in a bid to atone, but finds that there is sin in this too, as the devil is entwined in it and therefore he might achieve some glory with this new creation. Fitting.

Wiccan and Speed

Billy and Tommy are starting to resemble their comic book counterparts more and more. Billy in particular is wearing his “Wiccan” costume from the comics, and Tommy continues to conform to his “Speed” color scheme…except when he dresses like his Uncle Pietro as Quicksilver.

Ellis Avenue

Ellis Avenue is an odd reference. Warren Ellis has written many, many comics, but nothing of note with the characters involved in WandaVision. The closest thing would be Marvel Ruins, a dark, cynical, horror version of the Marvel Universe where everything went wrong. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver had very minor appearances in there.

The closest other thing would be Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E., a probably non-canonical series that teamed Monica Rambeau, Machine Man, Boom Boom, Elsa Bloodstone, and The Captain teamed up to fight…lots of weird shit, to be honest…including several reality altering threats.

Agnes

In her daze, Agnes mentions getting lost, with Vision pointing out that she supposedly grew up in this town. Agnes also talks about making a “wrong turn.” This might have something to do with Agnes’ claim in the first episode that she didn’t actually come to town until AFTER Wanda and Vision had (jokingly citing a visit from her mother-in-law as the reason).

Agnes’ crazed laughter goes perfectly well with her witch costume, giving off some wicked Wizard of Oz vibes.

Agnes’ license plate number is either DA1 B2C or 0A1 B2C. Whichever it is, this is an incredibly generic plate number, either a nod to the artificiality of Wanda’s overall illusion or perhaps an indicator that Agnes is creating this as something that looks “fake” in order to further blend in. Which brings us to…

Is it possible that Agnes is “faking” her confusion here and in episode 5?

Similarly, her “naughty” sweatpants had a rather sinister, possibly demonic, font to them, didn’t they?

Scarlet Witch

Wanda describes her Halloween costume as a “Sokovian fortune teller” while dressed as her comic self. Vision is also his comic self, but is identified as a professional wrestler.

Vision

Vision is apparently supposed to be dressed like a Mexican wrestler, but c’mon, even though it’s no longer era-appropriate there was a Honeymooners-esque “Man From Mars” joke right there!

When Vision collapses to his knees on the ground with his cape blowing in the wind, the shot is composed much like his death scene in Avengers: Infinity War. Wanda’s magic is again the culprit of his demise, albeit unintentionally this time.

Vision showing how selfless he is again – even as he’s being ripped apart he’s trying to save the people of Westview instead. Another pure reminder of Vision’s introduction in Avengers: Age of Ultron when he proved he was worthy enough to wield Mjolnir.

Vision apparently has no memory of being a member of the Avengers, which is certainly strange.

Thanks to Wanda, Vision is an Avenger Disassembled! Get it? Anyone? No?

The Yo Magic Commercial

Yo Magic is a yogurt snack, but the commercial has a real strong Shark Bites vibe. Shark Bites were terrible, you probably would have died too if that was all you were allowed to eat on a desert island.

“Snack on Yo Magic!” MIGHT indicate that someone or something is feeding off of Wanda’s deal here, or perhaps she is channeling the mystical energy of someone even stronger than herself to keep The Hex alive.

There’s yet another reference to the Infinity Stones in this commercial. This ad features a kid alone on a desert island who grimly ends up looking like ol’ Red Skull on Vormir – he’s the sole (Soul) survivor. There’s no doubt in our minds these commercials are all about both the stones and horrible moments from Wanda’s past.

Cataract

SWORD director Hayward’s top secret project “Cataract” included experiments on Vision’s body, as revealed by Darcy. A cataract is “a cloudy area in the lens of the eye that leads to a decrease in vision” – has Hayward weaponized Vision? He’s definitely up to something nefarious.

The Cataract is also one of the stages in X-Men vs. Street Fighter and Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter.

Westview

The town motto on the altered billboard when the Hex expands is “Westview: Home is Where You Make It.” This was less visible on the earlier version, although the juxtaposition of the old and new billboards calls to mind the “Twin Pines/Lone Pine” sign from Back to the Future.

The Coronet theatre’s marquee features The Incredibles (2004) and The Parent Trap. The former is about a superhero family who retires to the suburbs, and the latter is about reunited twins! Both properties are owned by Disney. The Incredibles have often been likened to the Fantastic Four, and in September, 2019 director Brad Bird publicly shot down rumors that he was in the running to helm Marvel’s First Family reboot. The voice of Frozone/Lucius Best in The Incredibles is none other than Samuel L. Jackson aka the MCU’s own Nick Fury! It’s likely that The Parent Trap in question here is the 1998 version, given the time period. This would help place this “era” of Westview somewhere between 1998 and 2004.

Wanda expands The Hex to save Vision, sucking in most of SWORD and Darcy, too. Since we now know that when you are enveloped by the barrier it changes you on a cellular level, Wanda could accidentally be creating a range of new superheroes. How much bigger can The Hex get as Wanda’s anger grows and how many people will it affect?

Monica Rambeau

Darcy unveils evidence that Monica’s DNA has been altered by crossing the barrier of The Hex twice. It seems like she’s well on the path to becoming her superpowered comics counterpart. WandaVision is turning out to be our longform superhero origin story for Monica Rambeau! Of course, Darcy has also now been pulled through the barrier – will she be affected in the same way?

Darcy and Jimmy Woo

Monica and Woo are off to meet her “guy” who will help them – who will it be? We have our theories.

Darcy is seen wearing a Mickey Mouse watch when she’s hacking into Hayward’s files. Probably no need to point out this Disney connection!

Among the names of the people who drop down when Darcy is emailing Jimmy Woo:

James Gadd – works in post-production at Marvel Studios

James Alexander – a visual effects producer on WandaVision

Back in episode 4, Darcy referred to the other people she was travelling with to the SWORD camp as “the full clown car.” The joke pays off again in episode 6 when a bunch of SWORD gets sucked into The Hex and turned into clowns.

As far as we know, Jimmy has still not identified the Westview man in witness protection he’s been searching for since episode 4. This mystery will survive another week. What if it’s…Pietro? Nah. Unless…

Random Marvel and Halloween Stuff

In the background, one kid is dressed as an off-brand Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat. The first Mortal Kombat came out in 1992, fitting a more ’90s aesthetic.

Someone is dressed as Jason Voorhees, and his sweater is striped like Freddy Krueger’s, the peanut butter to Jason’s jelly. The iconic slashers faced off in 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason, so it’s a mash-up that suits the time period.

Wanda tossed Quicksilver over some fake tombstones. One of them is for Janell Sammelman. Janell Sammelman worked on WandaVision as a first assistant director.

Pietro and the kids are shotgunning “Kane Cola” which on the one hand sounds like it could be an “extreme” ‘90s/early oughts drink like Jolt Cola or Surge (remember those ridiculously stupid commercials?), but with all the X-Men teasing they’re doing, maybe Garrison Kane was a soft drink magnate in the MCU before his powers manifested. No? Ok.

Could Wanda asking about the kid in the orphanage who “had the skin thing” be a reference to maybe another mutant kid? Former Brotherhood colleague Toad?

One of the houses is made up with a sign that says “Macabre Mansion.” They’re …probably not referencing best-forgotten Marvel villain Madam Macabre or similarly obscure Moon Knight villain Dansen Macabre (get it?).

During a flashback, Billy and Tommy are shown playing Dance Dance Revolution, which came out for home consoles in 1999. Also, in their room, on the right, is that Dogpool? A dog doll colored in the style of Deadpool?

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Wanda closes apps (people) to reduce load times. Or maybe they’re video game NPCs. In any case, it’s disturbing.

The post Marvel’s WandaVision Episode 6: MCU Easter Eggs and Reference Guide appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2MSPA85

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

0 notes

yuican48 · 7 years ago

Text

Cyborg 009 continuity guide

This is built on a little research on the wiki so might not be 100% accurate, and it's basically just for my own use with looking at the franchise, but I'm going to put it out here in case it can be helpful. If any 009 fans have comments on this feel free I guess. Also I won't bother with some of the smaller things

The main continuity: The Manga

Essentially the source material of all other 009 works, Ishinomori's manga had chapters from 1964 all the way through to 1992, thought the last period of regular publishing ended in 1986 (I think), and some of the gaps are larger than others. Not every arc is canon however, which I'll note as I come to them. I'll note that I'm using the MF Comics ordering of that chapters since it's the one that's officially available in the west. Based on that order I would break Cyborg 009 into 5 periods:

Act 1 is essentially the original period of Cyborg 009, from the beginning up until Ishinomori's originally intended ending, in order it consists of the stories Birth, Assassins, Aurora Strategy, Wanderers, Man in the High Castle, Vacuum/Empty War, Bomb Model Raiden, Vietnam, Mythos Cyborgs, Golden Lion, Phantom Dog and Underground Empire of Yomi. I left you felt so inclined you could read just this and have a complete story. Man in the High Castle, Vacuum War and Bomb Model Raiden are considered non-canon due to Ishinomori having to depict 007 as a child to reflect the films. Some of the other smaller arcs might also be non-canon, not sure.

Act 2 Is everything from when Ishinomori continued the manga up until his second attempt to create a new ending story. In includes the stories Monster Island, Middle East, Immigration, Song of Lorelei, Bottom of the Sea, Angels and Battle with the Gods. Angels was an attempt to create an ending that was cut short by writer's block, and then Ishinomori tried again with Battle with the Gods, which was again cut short. The eventual version of this story would not see publication in Ishinomori's lifetime. I'm not sure if any elements of Angels or Battle with the Gods happened or not in story though.

Act 3 marks the manga being continued again, up until what Ishinomori planned to be the penultimate arc, to be followed by another version of Battle with the Gods, which didn't happen. The stories are City of Wind, Edda, Snow Carnival, Deinochyus, Phantom Island, Green Hole, Cyborg 009 Vs the 300 million yen criminal, Dinosaur and Undersea Pyramid. Apparently 300 million yen criminal and Dinosaur, one shot stories, aren't canon though I'm not sure why.

Act 4 is everything from the continuous run with an occasional supplemental run following from Undersea Pyramid until this runs end. Because the stories in this section are shorter and therefore much more numerous I won't go over the list of stories. Some of these stories include elements of the '79 anime that I guess was the reason the manga got continued, such as the Dolphin II, the Stranger, and the Manga version of Neo Black Ghost. Apparently all of this might not count as canon for some reason presumably related to that. It also includes two stories that technically aren't 009 stories, Cyborg Soldier and Barefoot Zanzibar.

Act 5 is everything else that got published in Ishinomori's lifetime, though one for these was actually published before act 4. In the order they're listed they consist of Emergency Situation 1992, Mysterious Star and the People Drifting Between Space and Time. That last one is the last proper arc, the 1992 story involves the characters reacting to the political changes of the time.

Act 6, not considered a proper conclusion by some due to Shimamoto not being involved as Ishinomori planned, and certain liberties Onodera has taken with his father's plans, is God's War. Apparently there are some differences between the light novels and the manga version. I will mention here as well Shimamoto's Angels one shot, which is unconnected to the version of God's War we got but I would say is building to an unseen version of the conclusion.

I'll cover each other major work in release order.

4 audio dramas were released between '65 and '68, each with small manga accompaniment from Ishinomori. The first, Volcanic Island Shock Tactics, is based purely on the manga, though with I believe a semi-original story, but the other 3 are all somewhat influenced by the films and anime, depicting 007 as a child. Attack the Ghost Island and Monster Wars are influenced by the films, with Monster Wars being an alternate version of the second film, while Confrontation in Antarctica is influenced by the anime.

The 66 film and it's 67 sequel, Monster Wars, are heavily altered versions of the initial story arcs. Besides making 007 a child, various aspects of the casts' appearances are different, as well as completely different uniforms. Monster Wars apparently ends with Black Ghost seemingly defeated for good.

The 68 anime also has 007 as a child, though the rest of the cast now better reflect their manga selves, including their proper uniforms. While adapting various stories, including some from Ishinomori works beside 009, Black Ghost don't appear. I'm not sure if the anime is meant to be a continuation of the films but I presume it isn't.

In 1978 the novel SF Roman was published, with illustrations by Ishinomori. It's essentially a slightly altered telling of Monster Wars, but in this world the Cyborgs were created and believed they had defeated Black Ghost in 1973, the novel taking place 5 years later.

The second anime came out in 1979, which again features the Cyborgs reuniting 5 years after a defeat of Black Ghost, which apparently doesn't fully reflect any particular previous continuity, or maybe it's meant to reflect a version of the early manga without the Mythos arc. It opens on the Yggdrasil arc which is apparently a loose adaptation of Edda. Aside from some standalone episodes, there eventually comes the Neo Black Ghost arc, the membership is different to the manga. The anime was cut short before a version of the Mythos arc could be produced, which Ishinomori created Artemis for, she was later used instead of Helena in the 01 anime.

The 1980 film Cho Ginga Densetsu is an original story, and is apparently standalone, though the Cyborgs have had their battles with Black Ghost already.

The 2001 anime is an adaptation of the early manga, with some original content as well as some stories sourced from later on the manga. Set in the then-present, it establishes a generational split between 004 and 005 where the early numbers were frozen for 40 years. It was followed by an OVA, God's War Prologue, which despite the same production team is, I think, not actually connected to the anime and just a first attempt at producing God's War properly.

In 2008 the Hashino One shot, using realistic designs, shows a view of Joe's kidnapping from his cell-mates perspective. The story doesn't exactly match the manga.

There have since 2008 been a few one-shots and such in the traditional style, drawn I believe mostly by Hayase and Sato, which include Nobunaga's End, Trump Tower, Warrior's Vacation and a new version of Phantom Dog.

In 2013 a new graphic novel was produced in the west, as a new version of the early manga, and was cancelled after one volume due to disagreements over direction. It features realistic looks but not, I think, identical to the other modern designs.

009 RE: Cyborg came out in 2012, aiming to continue the story of the manga in the 21st century, and is not linked to God's War. It's the first major source to use the modernised realistic designs for the team. It has a manga that tells the second story but also I think clarifies some points.

In 2015 a crossover with Devilman, Cyborg 009 Vs Devilman came out. The three episode OVA is set in a world based on the original manga, albeit one where the world of Devilman also exists, and takes place after the Mythos arc. A novel prequel explores both series history in the shared world, featuring some use of the original characters created for the OVA. A manga version, Breakdown has a completely different story (is it a sequel?)

2016 saw the film trilogy Call of Justice, a continuation of the story after RE:Cyborg.

And that's everything unless people have comments to make on this.

#cyborg 009

9 notes · View notes

its-just-like-the-movies · 7 years ago

Text

May Viewing List

Given that I now have two jobs that occupy a good amount of my week I’m so genuinely amazed I was able to get this close to last month’s number.

Casting JonBenet (17, B+/A-): As intimate with the actors as they are with their parts. Life experience as credibility in interpretation. - May 1, 2017 (review)

The Fighter (10, A-): O’Russell realizes the best possible version of this script to create a stunning, spiky showcase for everyone involved. - May 2, 2017

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (07, A-): An incredibly tense, textured portrait of two women in a time and place that’s slowly creeping back. - May 4, 2017

The Butler (13, C-): Gumpy, conventional plotting, odd casting & makeup undermines everything neat about Daniels. Amazingly broad. - May 4, 2017

Props to David Oyelowo for being the stillest thing in that movie, enhancing everyone else while giving a great, quiet performance.

Pitch perfect supporting acting. Great work, improves the lot, and you wonder why this isn’t a movie about him and the Black Panthers.

Don’t Think Twice (16, B): Spry cast, easy chemistry, remixed script beats elevate this tale of relocated dreams and success. Jacobs! - May 5, 2017

Nebraska (13, C-): Dern gets his Crazy Heart but instead fights flat, mean direction & plotting, false emotions & atmosphere, shitty musak - May 6, 2017

Face/Off (97, B+/A-): So deliciously, entertainingly Extra, finding the perfect tone to pull off this astounding nonsense. Cage! Allen! Woo! - May 7, 2017

Aladdin (92, B-): Feels like a different Disney musical than the 10′s movies. Lovely songs. Williams more magical than the Genie. - May 7, 2017

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (17, B): Such a wide color palette! Shaky til “Come a Little Bit Closer”, then becomes the space opera it dreamed of. - May 7, 2017 (review)

Who else thinks Guardians of the Galaxy 2 should’ve been a musical, and that the next one should just go for it?

Florence Foster Jenkins (16, B-): Great fun, especially the leads. Generous, but overly so? Seems to resist a deeper dive into her rise. - May 8, 2017

And with that, I’ve seen all the 2014, 2015, and 2016 acting nominees!

Nightcrawler (14, B-): Provocative, in distinct and generic ways, but strained. Wonderfully lit, creepy, and blunter than Snowpiercer. - May 8, 2017

The Innocents (15, B): Textured like a Gothic horror story. Milieu I’ve rarely seen in this genre. Intertwined, parallel narratives hit hard. - May 9, 2017

Autumn Sonata (78, B+): Bergman, Bergman, Ullmann, and Nyqvist just beat the shit out of me for ninety minutes and it was an incredible experience. - May 9, 2017

Dheepan (16, A-): I noticed so much more in practically every aspect the second time around. Camera, Srinivasan my favorite elements. - May 9, 2017 (rewatch)

Blue Jay (16, B+): Another one that spiked up for me. Dynamics even richer the second time around. Paulson and Duplass are so lovely! - May 10, 2017 (rewatch)

Blue Caprice (13, B+): Hard, risky, genuinely nightmarish. Symbiosis, paranoia as real bonding. Finds so many questions in its own answers. - May 11, 2017 (rewatch)

The Immigrant (14, A-): An operatic marvel, moving freely through every period of cinema. And so gorgeous! God rewatching things is great. - May 11, 2017 (rewatch)

The House of Mirth (00, B+): A warmer, more conventional, but just as impassioned cousin to Portrait of a Lady. Great look. Gillian shines. - May 11, 2017

The Lady Eve (41, A+): Lord why don’t they make them like this anymore? Quick, witty, lovely, silly, paced like a dream. Superb. Stanwyck!!! - May 13, 2017

I get how problematic the setup could be if made today, but it’s hard to image a modern comedy with this much genuine craft at all levels.

The Stanford Prison Experiment (15, B): Every element builds & improves as it goes. Not sure how much to credit any one part over source material. - May 16, 2017

Maybe because the real thing is so pervasive in the culture already but I’m not sure what I got out of this. Already thinking about B-.

Cool Hand Luke (67, B+): Lots to say about people, about one among many, and how we treat them. Newman makes it about a man. - May 16, 2017

We Own the Night (07, A-): Technical prowess and directorial strength ably fight off genre cliche. Tense, captivating, and very much Gray’s - May 16, 2017

Network (76, B+): THIS was the film so many adults have said I’d be inundated to because of the world now? Friend, that makes it stronger. - May 18, 2017

Malcolm X (92, B-): Artistically and politically valuable even in the sequences Lee is less interested in. Not always both at the same time. - May 19, 2017

That being said, Denzel is incredible, giving a massive performance in an epic that’s sporadically as alive as he is.

The cinematography, especially the lighting, is also really spectacular. It’s artistically strong across the board, just conventionally told.

Secret Sunshine (10, B+/A-): Grabs you by the gut with bracing handlings of trauma and religion, albeit with small hiccups. Jeon’s a marvel - May 19, 2017

The Wolf of Wall Street (13, D+): Is there anything to even say about it? No new ideas from scene one. Boring depravity. So visually dull. - May 20, 2017

Melina, after making a joke about snorting coke out of a stripper’s ass: ”Can women really have it all?”

Alien: Covenant (17, B-): The case against humanity, by David. Human stupidity as real plot logic. Sets, VFX even better than Fassbender. - May 21, 2017

After the movie I realized I almost have the same haircut that Katherine Waterston has. So that’s neat.

August: Osage County (13, C): Not all the pieces fit, especially with so many sharp edges shorn. But Streep’s incredible, Roberts gets it. - May 21, 2017

Passion (13, C): Weirdly uninspired style for such a pulpy tale. Awful sets balanced by great clothes. Score works. McAdams on point. - May 21, 2017

Love & Mercy (15, B): Limited in scope but what textures it finds. Separates art and madness even as they feed each other. Great leads. - May 22, 2017

All three really blew me away, and between this and the Manson You Must Remember This episode, hot damn are The Beach Boys interesting.

And on a totally unrelated note, Paul Dano can fucking get it. Oh yes. Yes he can. Young Brian did have a sweet bed. I’ll stop now.

The Final Girls (15, B+): There’s an even more inventive script in here, but so much more going on visually than I realized. Åkerman! - May 22, 2017 (rewatch) (review)

The Iron Lady (11, C): Damp rag baby of La Vie en Rose and The Whisperers. Messy camera and direction. How much really happened here? - May 24, 2017 (review)

Sweet Bird of Youth (62, B): Scrumptious. Not quite the play but expands nicely. Page a delectably seasoned ham, Newman a sweet hunk of meat. - May 25, 2017

Stage Door (37, A-): Is it a bird? A plane? No! It’s the inner lives of over a dozen artistic, intelligent women, right there on the screen! - May 25, 2017

Is there any point in film history where this project isn’t a miracle? Why hasn’t this been remade every ten years? God, was I in heaven?

Caterpilar (11, B): So confrontationally severe in content and style, even as it dilutes itself in the final third. Iffy taste, but it hits. - May 26, 2017

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (05, C+): No tweet (rewatch) - May 26, 2017

Me, watching Goblet of Fire: “Why couldn’t Ron have dated Hermione AND Krum?”

My mom, every time we watch a Harry Potter movie: “It shoulda been Harry and Hermione.”

Not to read too deeply into things but Ron being Harry’s person he has to save is Really Gay

Easy A (10, C+): Kinda spotty outside Stone, but boy does it care about her. And lord does she make it something special. - May 27, 2017

It’s abominable that with a filmography seemingly built on delightfully supporting women Stanley Tucci’s sole Oscar nomination is for Lovely Bones

The Banishment (07, B): Pace and length made me sleepy but Zvyaginstev’s formal control more than kept me awake. Oddly compelling. - May 29, 2017

The Miracle Worker (62, B+): Beats Arrival for conveying the power of language and understanding. Bancroft’s great, and Duke’s even better. - May 29, 2017

The Man With The Golden Arm (55, B): Sinatra does great work to elevate this semi-cliched tragedy, but Parker and the score hit a home run. - May 30, 2017

Paranoid Park (08, C+/B-): Never not overworked, especially sonically, but unbearable first half hour turns into a compelling yarn. - May 30, 2017

National Velvet (44, B): So kind to its characters, mature about their wants and ideas. Gorgeous, infectious, and well-acted to boot. - May 31, 2017

#my posts #month logs #my reviews #performance reviews

4 notes · View notes

edoowinnie-stuff · 8 years ago

Text

Fight Songs - The Music of Team Fortress 2

Here’s something that kind of annoyed me this week. A week or so back, Valve released the collected soundtrack of TF2 in the form of a CD, Vinyl and through the usual digital distribution methods (e.g. Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, etc.) They would also go on to release the soundtrack as DLC for TF2 for a mere £9.99. ($12.99 US)

Now, before I get into this rant, I would like to start by saying that the soundtrack for this game is incredible. It’s some of my favourite music to come from a video game in recent memory. The style of music succinctly captures the era that the game exists within (a campy, 60s spytech era warzone) and follows nearly ten years worth of updates and storytelling that has gone on within that decade. Nearly every piece is uniquely interesting and fun to listen to. It was all composed by Mike Morasky and performed by Valve’s In-House Orchestra and every piece is incredibly enjoyable both within and out of context.

Now, with that out of the way, do I think you should buy the Vinyl/CD? Well, a lot of that depends. To my knowledge, there is incentive to buying the physical copy. For example, there is additional bonus content with both the CD and the Vinyl. Both the vinyl and CD come with a code to earn a special item in-game (An all-class hat that puts a record player on your head) and the vinyl comes with a special edition poster of your choice while the CD comes with a “6-panel Digipak and an 8-panel folder.” I don’t know what either of those are but, hey, at least it’s something. What I found particularly confusing, however, was the digital soundtrack’s bonus offerings. Specifically speaking, there are none.

Now, bear in mind, that the CD comes with whatever I said earlier (I’m still not sure what they are but they sound good. I think they might be art cards or something similar) and that goes for $15.99. Just $3 more than the DLC offering. (Not including shipping and handling, but I’ll get to that in a bit...) But all you get is the music and nothing more, which is pretty outrageous when you think about it. Either that or a spectacular bargain for the CD!

“Now, Eoin,” I hear you cry, “Have you seen the listing for the CD? There’s like 20-something tracks and, as you said, they’re all awesome!” You are quite right. These are excellent tracks and I would be happy to pay that much for the music alone. That would be the case, except not only have TF2 released all of these tracks prior to this soundtrack announcement, they can all be accessed within the game’s files on the PC fairly easily.

That’s the game’s audio directory, accessed through GCFScape. All the tracks are there, you can check for yourself. This is what really irks me about this soundtrack, there’s no real incentive to purchase it any other way and for Valve to have the nerve to sell it as add-on content, essentially selling you what you already own, is extraordinarily cheap of them.

Now, here are a few more points that are worth mentioning before I continue:

- The files in-game, found in the sound directory’s “ui” folder, are 128kbps MP3 and, from what I’ve heard, the soundtrack being sold is 320 kbps MP3 so it’s technically higher quality, albeit slightly. Carousel of Curses is the only file that’s actually a WAV file, and consequently is much larger, so you would need to buy the soundtrack to make it an MP3. (Or use iTunes, or something, I dunno...) - While the filenames are gamestartupx, all the metadata is filled in for each track so, playing on a phone or MP3 player, you probably won’t be able to notice the difference. - You’ll notice only 26 tracks here while the Soundtrack has 29 tracks. Never fear for the missing tracks can be found in other folders, Two of them are in the “holiday” folder next to the above tracks while the final track can be found in the “music” folder which you can see in the directory above.

Now, I understand that the soundtrack is a way to make some more money off of this game, and I respect that the physical copies of the CD are definitely cool enough to warrant a purchase. If you are able to, I would honestly say it’s worth it. (I even heard there are some secrets on the vinyl version too so it has its incentives also) but, and I’m sorry to say this, I don’t believe it’s worth paying £10 for something that I already have if that’s all you’re prepared to give me.

I would honestly love to purchase the CD/Vinyl but, infuriatingly, shipping it to me in the UK costs a goddamn fortune. I’m deadly serious about this, shipping from their location to mine costs $40, which is insane! I purchased an album from California to UK at Christmas time and it cost me $50 tops, including shipping Meanwhile, these guys in Michigan, who are obstensibly closer, need $80 for a Vinyl and a poster!? The shipping costs more than the bloody product!!

I’ll be honest, this rant about a soundtrack turned more into a rant about shipping and handling in the US to UK, which I could go on for hours about but I should focus on the soundtrack itself. (Incidentally, Valve’s own store’s shipping is also pretty extortionate for us Brits but, again, story for another time.)

The point is, you can’t expect us to put money down for something that we already have without any prospect of new or interesting content. When you released the Portal 2 soundtrack, there was incentive. I mean, for one thing, the soundtrack was a difficult thing to listen to correctly, what with its music altering itself as the game is played. That required some work and I was more than happy to pay to hear the soundtrack as it was intended to be heard. The TF2 soundtrack is great, I grant you, but there’s nothing new or interesting to really get into with this compilation. They could have included demos, concept music, maybe even some ideas that had to be scrapped if any existed. Instead they decided to play it safe and release more of the same. I’m disappointed that it didn’t deliver anything new, but I still love this game and its music. No amount of blatant shilling from Valve will ever change that.

#tf2 #team fortress 2 #fight songs #rant #review #music #angry #frustrated #venting #personal #edoowinnie #eoin downie #valve #it's good to be back #now i just gotta do this more often #need to get angry more often

2 notes · View notes

adobe-outdesign · 8 years ago

Text

My Complete Current Views of the FNAF Lore (1-SL)

I don’t have any up-to-date mega theories about the FNAF lore post-SL, so i figured this would be worth typing up.

Please note that this is not a theory post, but rather a very straight-forward retelling of how I currently view the lore - therefore, there won’t be any evidence or anything provided. If you want to know my rationale behind something, just let me know.

Pre-Games

So this guy named Henry (discussed in TSE) partners with a man named William Afton. Together, they open a place called Fredbear’s Family Diner, with two robots made by Henry - Fredbear and Spring Bonnie.

Henry has two fraternal twins - Mike Schmidt and a girl (name unknown - the Litlte Girl in SL). William Afton kidnaps the little girl while in the Spring Bonnie suit and raises her alongside his own son, Michael Afton, who he most likely neglects.

Fredbear’s shuts down due to the incident and Henry opens another restaurant, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, with four new animatronics and the old springsuits from the last location. He also adopts another child by the name of Jeremy Fitzgerald.

A sister location to Freddy’s opens around this time, an early version of CBEAR. It shuts down after multiple springlock failures (Spring Chica, part of Chica’s Party World, was probably the faulty one). This restaurant contained an animatronic named Circus Baby - pre-Ennard. Something causes Afton to dismantle it, and he uses the pieces to built four new (child-killing) animatronics, including a new Circus Baby for “his“ daughter. A Funtime Fredbear may have also killed a child at the location, with the Bitten Child witnessing it.

A second sister location, Circus Baby’s Pizza World, attempts to open in ‘83. However, Afton shuts it down after Circus Baby kills his daughter when she visits her alone. She possesses Baby. This is also the year that Afton starts his experiments in FNAF 4. It’s also possible he himself died around this time, which is when he discovers his “immortality“.

A year or two later, four children are murdered in Freddy’s by Afton (possibly people the Bitten Child was friends with, considering how he treats his plushies), and their bodies are hidden in the animatronics. Freddy’s shuts down and is left to rot.

Afton moves his operation underground as a rental service, becoming Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rentals. It is the sister location to another pizzeria Afton opens, the second Fredbear’s Family Diner. It contains a new Fredbear and Spring Bonnie (purple accents instead of black) and merch of the old characters.

Sister Location

Afton then sends his son Michael down to help free his Sister’s soul. Michael succeeds in finding her and helping her escape at the cost of his own life. However, because Michael is “immortal“, he possesses his own corpse after death. He hides in the shadows for the time being. It’s also possible the Bitten Child saw him at one point and became terrified of him, which leads to Shadow Bonnie (see FNAF 2/FNAF 3 section).

Afton gives the Fredbear Plush to the Bitten Child (remember how it was still on his desk in SL?), using the walkie-talkie in it to manipulate the kid. The Sister, now put back together, is freed from Ennard and gains her afterlife mask. She decides not to pass on yet however, instead possessing and speaking through the Fredbear Plush (not how it appears in the gutter in 4′s minigames, which is where Ennard escapes to) in order to take care of the Bitten Child, who is severely bullied by her twin brother.

The FNAF 4 minigame events then happen during the summer, with the Brother’s bullying becoming so severe that he shoves the Bitten Child’s head in Fredbear’s jaws, causing the Bite of ‘87 on his birthday. Henry likely commits suicide or was murdered by Afton around this time. The child lives for a few months, albeit comatose. The Brother speaks to him one more time before death, and the Sister vows to put him back together. He, much like the Sister, breaks into five.

FNAF 2

The Bitten Child has a final dream that leads up to his death. He pictures his room as an office (note the single entrance in the middle) and himself as an employee, hearing his brother’s voice each night just like he did on Night 6. The Sister also appears to him in the form of the Puppet (she’s good at pretending) - mimicking the Bitten Child himself in appearance, and with a mask signifying her freed soul. Jeremy also has a mask, but it’s a fake one that only succeeds in tricking animatronics not based off his family (hence why W. Foxy and the Puppet don’t fall for it).

The entire game is basically the Bitten Child’s fears when alive (you don’t actually feel fear without your frontal lobe, so the main emphasis here is on panic). Shadow Bonnie represents what the child saw “in the shadows“ that scared him so badly, and it crashes the game (ends the nightmares) because the Bitten Child would learn there wasn’t anything to be afraid of if he confronted his fear instead of hiding from it.

The minigames are a stylization of real-world events: Take Cake was the Sister’s death, Go Go Go! was the original five killings, and Give Gifts was the Bitten Child dying and possessing the Nightmares. The only game that is purely false is Chase the Puppet - based off of the five kids he met on Night 3 (this is why it plays differently than the others).

By night 6, we see the effects of the Bite, which is what Golden Freddy represents here (based off the Fredbear heads in the parts and service room on Night 4). Shadow Freddy is the exact same spirit, a recolor of GF meant to represent the child’s death. Note how “Phone Guy“ starts to sound shaky here, and how he’s the one to tell Jeremy to stay close the animatronics at tomorrow’s birthday party.

The sound of the grandfather clock in the Bitten Child’s old house marks the end of each night - and on Night 7, he passes away (the song that soothes the Puppet is My Grandfather’s Clock, a song about a clock dying when its owner dies). While this was your summer job because it surrounds the Bite that happened in the summer, the paycheck is dated for November of ‘87 - the date the child died.

While that was going on, the Sister/the Puppet confronts the Brother in his dreams about killing the Bitten Child as he succumbs to guilt - which is where the FNAF 2 cutscenes come in. These minigames mark the creation of the FNAF 1 Golden Freddy we know, IT’S MEs and all. Note how she’s dong to the Brother the same thing she did to “William“ in TSE - as they’re both killers refusing to take responsibility for their actions. The GF we see in these cutscenes is not the GF in FNAF 1, but rather another form of the Sister - a modified version of the Fredbear Plush, which is why it disappears and is replaced by the Puppet.

FNAF 1

Immediately after Jeremy’s death, Mike beings to completely repress the incident and even his memory of his brother entirely. Because of this, he starts having nightmares where he pictures himself as the Bitten Child, hence why the animatronics act like the bullies here.

Phone Guy is basically the Brother’s subconscious - note how nervous he is here post-Bite compared to FNAF 2. On Night 4, you learn that he was killed by GF (the Sister in this case) - just like she killed Michael Afton. Note also how this lines up with the FNAF 2 cutscenes ending on Night 4.

Phone Guy then dies and becomes FNAF 1 GF (once again, note the Michael parallels with the whole “becoming an empty suit” thing) - he’s being haunted by his guilt. It’s literally the Brother - IT’S ME is both a declaration of guilt and a very literal statement, which is also why it appears outside of Pirate’s Cove (Foxy mask). It only appears/is summoned when Mike starts feeling guilty (signaled by Freddy ripping his head off to boot), and it only goes away when you ignore it. It crashes the game/ends the dreams because Mike would remember what he did if he confronted it, thus ending the nightmares.

But he only continues to repress his memories, and at the end of the dream he completely forgets about his younger brother. The paycheck is once again dated for the current date - the date the Brother died, November 13th, 1987, just like in FNAF 2. (Also note that this was stated to be your summer job on Steam, much like FNAF 2.)

Finally, note how the room layout looks identical to Afton’s Private Room, and how the Night 5 phone call excerpt happens to mention laboratory experiments. This could indicate that the Brother was already kidnapped and lead through the Private Room to get the FNAF 4 bedroom, or the Sister could’ve been trying to warn him about what was going to happen. Either way, this is where the inspiration for 1′s layout and gameplay comes from.

FNAF 4

Sometime shortly after 1, Afton kidnaps the Brother and starts his second round of experiments - experiments most likely meant to draw out trauma in order to figure out the “joy of creation“. He builds the main 4 Nightmares and Plushtrap (which is why they have similar endos to the Funtimes and other design choices, like 5 fingers) and has them try to kill the Brother.

(It’s also possible that the Bitten Child posses the main 4 Nightmares, and the Sister possesses Plushtrap. This is why Plushtrap won’t kill you - the Sister doesn’t want you to die, just help the Bitten Child).

Everything about the experiment is meant to draw out the trauma from the Bite - making the Brother think he’s a young helpless child, making him think he’s asleep during the nights, making the Nightmare’s behaviors mimic the bullies’, ect. Hallucinogenic gas may have been used to influence the Brother, which could be why he sees himself as a child and what causes him to see the hospital equipment. The nights this time around aren’t based off the grandfather clock from his house that were in his dreams, but simply the IRL alarm clock on top of the dresser.

On Night 5 and 6, the Bitten Child himself takes over, taking the form of Nightmare and Nightmare Fredbear, the stomach-mouth having come from his memory of a kid being “eaten” by Funtime Fredbear. Nightmare, representing the Bitten Child’s death, makes the Brother lose his memories - he’s repressed the Bitten Child’s death so much that he literally can’t remember it anymore. This is also why the FNAF 1 phone call (backwards and lower-pitched GF style to boot) plays in the background - his guilt’s so repressed he can’t remember it now.

That’s where the box comes in. Afton either left it on purpose for the Brother to find to create more trauma, or the Brother somehow found it himself. Either way, the box contained something that jogged the Brother’s memory of the Bite and forced him to confront the facts. This causes the Brother to want to help the Bitten Child instead of ignoring him again - he can’t ignore him anymore.

It is around this time that William attempts to dismantle the old animatronics (or possibly even the Nightmares if the minigames are symbolic). Shadow Freddy/the fifth piece, lures out the animatronics so they can be “killed again” - SF does represent the child’s death, after all. The Bitten Child, now freed from the animatronics, gets William killed in the Springlock suit, which allows him to find a bit of rest for now. The Brother’s “nightmares“ end with William’s death.

FNAF 3

30 years or so later, Fazbear’s Fright opens IRL, a horror attraction based off the events of Freddy’s. They find William’s corpse and plan to use it in the attraction. The Brother’s nightmares resurface at the news, this time facing off against the man who killed his family and tried to do the same to him (the two are foils, after all). The room layout is based off of the experimentation room, and Springtrap and the Phantoms are based off of Fun with Plushtrap, as is the gameplay. The need to have a ventilation system may have come from the possible use of hallucinogenic gas in 4.

Both the Sister and the Brother reappear. The Brother only appears as Shadow Freddy, a memory of his death waiting to be freed, while the Sister once again appears as the Puppet. The Sister’s Phantom Puppet hallucination, mimicking her dad’s Phantoms, does the same thing to the Brother as it did in the FNAF 2 cutscenes - a casual reminder of what will happen if he doesn’t finish helping the Bitten Child. (She also may influence the other Phantom’s appearances, as she’d know them from the Bitten Child’s dreams.)

Throughout the nights, the Brother reaches out to the Bitten Child and helps to put him back together. Each of the hidden minigames relates back to the reasons why the Bitten Child can’t pass on - fear of people, fear of the animatronics, and, of course, the Bite itself.

BB’s Air Adventure has representations of the Toys in it with the silhouettes. Mangle’s Quest has a silhouette of the Puppet (posed like the Bitten Child as that’s who the Sister’s mimicking) as that was her toy. It’s relationship to the Sister is also probably why it unlocks the cakes - it’s helping her to put him back together as well. Chica’s Party has representations of the Bitten Child’s plushies in it - the final cupcake moving and following you like the Fredbear Plush.

Stage 01 is fixing the Bite - FNAF 1 Golden Freddy, the Brother’s guilt, frees the Foxy-mask piece. The missing child in one of the rooms implies his twin sister’s kidnapping. Finally, Shadow Bonnie, the apex of the Bitten Child’s fears, provides the last main cake - as what is seen in the shadows is misunderstood. (If Shadow Bonnie is indeed Michael, this would also explain the kindness, as well as the glitchiness - he is neither dead nor alive).

The Sister finishes putting him back together by providing the last cake, and they pass on together in the Happiest Day (tomorrow is another day, after all). However, the Sister hangs back just long enough to burn down Fazbear’s Fright in a final attempt to kill William (hence why her mask fell slower). The Brother’s now put back together himself, and won’t be having any more nightmares.

Meanwhile, Michael Afton vows to find his father, having survived the fire and left Fazbear’s Fright - leaving us on the potential for another game.

#five nights at freddy's #fnaf #fnaf 2 #fnaf 3 #fnaf 4 #sister location #outdesign posts things #long post #outdesign analyzes things #i'm not 100% on michael afton's identity #and 4's a little tricky to know for certain because of the experiment plot twist #now watch scott release something that totally fucks all of this up tomorrow :p

49 notes · View notes

mmeaninglessnamee · 5 years ago

Text

Weathering With You (text version)

Video version here: https://youtu.be/yPHPCMmel9E

This is not a word-for-word transcription, I made some changes o the fly going from script to video.

Your Name is one of my favorite movies of all time and I give it a completely serious 11 out of 10. All the parts work together to create something beautiful. Compared to that, Weathering With You was doomed to only be okay regardless of its qualities, but how is it anyway? This movie is only just coming out outside Japan, so I’ll try to not spoil anything that couldn’t be seen in the trailers, but I am going to express some strong opinions about the general themes and plot of the movie, so if you don’t want a biased perspective before you see the film yourself, don’t watch this review, because I’m speaking from the perspective of a fan of Shinkai’s movies and will be discussing open spoilers about some of his other filmography for this review. If all you want is a number, skip to this timestamp:

So what did I think about Weathering With You? Beautiful weather is one of Shinkai’s strong suits, so having a plot reason to show lots of rain and then dramatically clearing skies was right up his alley artistically. I don’t know of anyone better to visually capture that aspect of the story. There’s not as many scenes in nature as his other movies have, being mostly cityscapes, but there are a lot of very beautifully-rendered cityscapes and locations.This might sound strange, but I think this is one of the movies larger problems: Shinkai makes everything look too pretty. There are some locations in this movie that are not supposed to look inviting. Weather is sometimes supposed to be threatening in this movie ]but it rarely looks anything but pretty. The scenes that are supposed to be beautiful and positive are when the sun comes out, and for these the beauty of the scenes works very well. But flooding is hard to take seriously when the water is beautiful and crystal-clear. Real flooding is dirty and full of debris, not beautiful Shinkai-weather.

The second main problem, and the one I feared the most from the trailer, is constant conflict with authorities. Everyone after the main characters is boring and cheap drama that serves only to kick the plot further down the road. There is no agency when the protagonists HAVE to run away, because they know something the authorities don’t so there’s no chance to talk things out. I do not like this in stories in general, and there were many other conflicts that could have brought the plot to a head that would have told us a lot more about the characters and made me care more about them. The chases and fights in this movie didn’t really make me feel anything.

The best scene in Kiki’s Delivery Service is one that doesn’t happen. When she first arrives in the city, Kiki has a run-in with a police officer. A different movie would have had him reappear to chase her down repeatedly though the film. This would have sucked.

The movie has two main themes, weather and characters having to deal with the consequences of choices. Both of these are effective at points of the film, but are not particularly consistent throughout. I think for both of these themes, my issues with them come down to balancing the different sides of those themes. To focus on one example of that balance, I have a question that I don’t know the answer to: Does Shinkai really like firearms? This is the third of his films to have realistic weaponry in it, (the others being The Place Promised in our Early Days and Children Who Chase Lost Voices) and when I saw the handgun in the Weathering With You trailer my reaction was “Why?” The other two movies have serious military operations going down, this one is not as effectively dark as it wants to be. It has serious scenes, especially the ones where the handgun makes an appearance, but they did not feel in tune with the rest of the movie. Rather than having close ties to the characters or to Hina’s sunshine powers, the dark scenes are like the handgun. They show up in the story and it feels weird that they are there, they are unnatural and manufactured. You could remove the gun, or any of the side characters or authority figures, and it would not change the central narrative about a teenage love story and girl who can make the sun break through the clouds one bit. I think out of all of Shinkai’s catalogue of films, this movie relationship between fun scenes and serious scenes the worst, and it ruined a lot of the investment serious scenes would have had for me, because there is no relationship between the two types of scenes.

So that may seem like an aimless mess of a movie with just plot and no fun, so here are some positives to end this review. There is a good movie, or at least good scenes and characters, hiding under my issues with it. But the issues are what comes to my mind first above any of the positive qualities

The music is good. I wrote this before seeing the movie, because I had already heard some of the soundtrack. Since seeing Your Name, I have become a fan of Radwimps, and heard several of the tracks from Weathering With You before I knew they were for the movie. A couple other artists had good vocal tracks in this movie as well. Unfortunately this is probably the reason that the dub does not redub all the songs like was done in Your Name. Radwimps can perform in English, but the only song they perform in English in the dub is in the end credits. Most people won’t care about this at all or won’t even care about the dub in the first place, but I really appreciate when dubs redub music well. Don’t get me wrong, the songs were still good, and this is a very minor complaint as part of a positive quality.

The montage or more upbeat scenes during the songs were also good. Just like in Your Name, these scenes were well paced and fun and the characters got be interact in likable ways. There was no blow-the-doors-off good dramatic music moment like with Sparkle in Your Name, but that’s comparing to one of my favorite scenes ever so it’s not really saying anything. The fun, upbeat parts of the movie overall were probably the best, with the characters at their most likable.And of course the movie is beautiful. I had some issues with its beauty I talked about earlier, but it is really beautiful and might be worth seeing in theaters to some people just for that alone. Shinkai makes designs for the big screen and many areas are packed with details you might not even see on a TV screen.

Did I in the end like this movie? Yeah. Did I love it though? Absolutely not. I think you should decide for yourself if you want to see it, I have been pretty negative about it in this review, but it wasn’t terrible and has some strong points, they were just outweighed by my issues with it.[score] I’d give this a 6.5 out of 10. That’s on a personal scale where I will rate something a 2 if it sucks, not a weighted scale where 6 out of 10 is the lowest of the low. It might be Shinkai’s second-best movie, albeit without much competition for that mark, but I would probably still put Children Who Chase Lost Voices above it. But defending that movie is an argument for another day.

But wait! I still have a few extra meta-textual thoughts about this movie to talk about now, so there’s still some review left. While I did talk about Your Name some before, I was trying to judge this movie on what it presents on its own, but there’s more to the movie than that, and it might even be more interesting than the actual movie.I saw this movie in an early-viewing screening with an interview with Makoto Shinkai about the film after the credits. He had a couple interesting things to say and clarified a couple things about the film. The abnormal rain is climate change and it will affect our everyday lives, but I’m not sure what the intended message is if the only way we have to fight it is one magic girl. I don’t think that’s an angle to take literally.

The more interesting thing he had to say is that while Your Name was a success and broke the mold of what types of anime could be widely successful as a movie, but you also can’t just keep making the same new successful movie either.A lot of his movies have been about destroying something revered, and I think in a was Weathering With You is as well. In The Place Promised in Our Early Days, the titular tower is this mysterious beacon that almost gains a reverence from the characters, and at the end it has to be destroyed. Shinkai had remarks specifically about Studio Ghibli’s style which is somewhat appropriate as Children Who Chase Lost Voices is a repudiation of many things associated with the Ghibli style. It may look like a Ghibli film, but at points it feels like its directly attacking them, with fantasy creatures being gunned down with modern weaponry and a narrative ultimately mired in a long history of violence and death. Weathering With You, in line with Shinkai’s comment on not being able to just make Your Name forever, seems to directly contrast it at many points. The weather and nature is not given such reverence, obviously, but the movie also tries, sometimes more successfully than others, to show a different depiction of Tokyo as well. There are no glamor shots of the city, and the characters are runaways, hack writers and others people on the margins of society rather than normal people experiencing the glamor and mystique that Tokyo has in Your Name.This reading doesn’t make the movie by itself any better or worse, but it is an interesting reading of some of Shinkai’s catalogue.

One last thing that I’ll call a spoiler but does not affect the plot at all, but if you don’t want anything specific spoiled, just stop this last bit of the video now. Some of the cast of Your Name make cameos in Weathering With You. Seeing them again is the best part of the movie. However, they are not well-done cameos. The teacher in Mitsuha’s school in Your Name was a main character in Garden Of Words. She does not get excessive screen time or emphasis, it’s a true cameo. In Weathering With You, the camera loves Taki and Mitsuha and knows the audience wants to see them. I did love seeing them, but they did not deserve emphasis in the scenes they were in. This didn’t matter to my opinion of the movie overall, but they were in retrospect weird scenes, and it might make the movie a little worse overall to try to be different from Your Name while at the same time giving the fans more of it.

And that is all. If you never saw Your Name and were considering watching Weathering With You, holy cow watch Your Name it is the reason most people even care about Shinkai as a director.But anyway, (Like, comment, subscribe!) Am I a heathen who’s opinion is invalid because I like dubs? Did I miss an essential message of the movie? Tell me. And of course, have a nice day without constant torrential rains.

0 notes

furederiko · 5 years ago

Text

"Shin Sakura Taisen Rekidai Kayoushuu" Review (Final Part)

Pave way for the old guards! The final three songs of the 6-Disc Limited Edition "Shin Sakura Taisen Rekidai Kayoushuu" were a blend of past and present.

But before I proceed to talk about them, I would like to share the background of the game first. I've been reading up some articles surrounding the game recently, and have learned about details and plot points that ventured into SPOILER territory (including those of past titles). Of course, if you're already well informed about it (unlike yours truly), then please skip ahead to the songs. You can also just stop right here and walk away if you feel like waiting until the game's international release to find it out fresh.

"Shin Sakura Taisen" is both a sequel and also a soft reboot for the franchise. The other day, I wondered about one important thing: What happened to the Teito, Paris, and New York Original members? Well, their fate had actually been revealed. And it's a depressing, albeit convenient one that serves as the baseline of the new generation. During a "Great Demon War" supposedly in 1930 (or sometime in the 12 years that had passed since "Sakura Taisen V"), they sacrificed themselves and had gone missing ever since. Heartbreaking, isn't it? Hence why everything started in a clean slate, and new cities began building their units (Berlin, Shanghai, London, and Moscow so far) following the formation of the "WLOF" (World Luxuriant Opera Federation). Teikoku Kagekidan itself is in a state of shambles, on the brink of shutting down. Yang Xiao Long and Huang Yui of Shanghai Kagekidan were assigned to protect Tokyo in their place. Sakura Amamiya's dream is to bring back her beloved Hanagumi to its former glory and honor. Seijuurou Kamiyama is enlisted to lead as captain because, in spite of Sakura's noble goal, the team is losing motivation by and by.

Just to clear things up again: I haven't played the game. Probably won't until its international release sometime next year (Spring 2020 is my best bet). So I don't know how that whole premise will evolve and how it opens the path for the future. It does seem that there will be a continuation of some sort, after learning how the game ends (which is unsurprisingly a callback to previous games). Are the past members truly gone, or are they trapped in some kind of parallel world? Will the story revolves around or explore their absence eventually? I'm sure this is a lingering question that long-time fans would have. The fact that two important original cast members are here, might suggest that route. But that is merely pure speculation on my part. At the very least, for the time being, we get to hear some familiar voices.

Kuruisake Teito ni (Disorder to Teito) by. Yasha (Chisa Yokoyama)

In the previous review, I compared New Sakura's image song to Original Sakura. Well, there's a good reason for that, to the point that I really can't help it. Sakura Shinguuji's Chisa Yokoyama is also part of the cast. Aside from being a figure that encouraged Sakura Amamiya to pursue her goal (apparently, Shinguuji rescued and thus inspired little Amamiya), she is also some kind of her archenemy in this game, in the form of an enigmatic antagonist named Yasha. Now, popular opinion (including yours truly) suggests that this is Sakura Shinguuji who had fallen to the dark side. For those who had not seen or knew about "Sakura Taisen", the Shinguuji bloodline had this scary "curse" called the "Haja no Chikara". And later in "Sakura Taisen 2", Sakura's father Kazuma Shinguuji, who had sacrificed himself many years prior, made an antagonistic return as a "Black Demon Society" leader named "Oni-Ou". Who's to say that his daughter wouldn't suffer the same fate, right? There was never a guarantee that Sakura Shinguuji couldn't fall into that scenario. Even Ayame Fujieda, the Vice Commander of the original Hanagumi was corrupted into a villainess Aya-me. As with most popular Hollywood reboots, there's a chance that SEGA is pulling off the same twist, right? On the other hand, the fact that SEGA wasn't even trying to conceal Yasha's VA identity from the get-go, implicitly hinted that that's not the case. However, there's another interesting tidbit to make this even more puzzling. Turns out, Yokoyama initially turned down the offer to play Yasha! Famitsu published a special interview (you can read a translated version on DualShockers) with her and Michie Tomizawa about their roles in this game. Yokoyama's argument was clear and obvious: "...it’s a mystery whether Yasha is supposed to be Sakura Shinguuji or not... The problem was, if Sakura really is Yasha, then I must voice her. However, if they aren’t the same person, then I shouldn’t be needed and they should pick someone else. Because Yasha’s identity wasn’t clear, I ended up declining the role." Somehow, she started giving feedbacks that shaped Yasha into a better version, eventually leading her to agree for the role. I'm not suggesting that this adds more confirmation to the fan theory. But personally, it does give some kind of hope that the original Hanagumi members are still alive, somehow. On to the song! There's not much to say about it, to be honest. It's a very musical villain song, with lyrics that are pretty generic when it comes to... uhmm, being evil. There's even a line saying that Yasha's goal is to let the dark flowers bloom in Tokyo, highly likely teasing more about the mystery surrounding her identity. Fans of the live musicals shouldn't be surprised by this kind of tune as well. Many of the shows featured a devilish tune or two, either performed by one of the Hanagumi members as part of their plays, or by a secondary character. But there's one fact that elevated this song on an entirely different level. I've come to realize that this is, in fact, the first time in the franchise that a game soundtrack included an antagonist solo! "Sakura Taisen 3" actually had "Ciseaux's Theme". But just like Erica Fontaine's famous "Ohayou Bonjour" jingle, it was never a part of the official album and was released later on the Complete Song Box. Chisa Yokoyama has range, as proven by many of her Sakura Taisen repertoires. As part of the plays, she got to sing melodies of a princess, a pig demon, a mystical bird of happiness, up to a fiery rebel. But as Sakura Shinguuji, her tunes were mostly sweet and cheery, a hit or miss for me. Therefore, it delighted me so so very much that she finally got to sound dark and chilling, and did an exceptionally powerful work with this. Most definitely one of the highlights of the album. You could easily sense a sinister and eerie feeling throughout the song. And I actually sighed a relief when it ended. Not because it's bad, but because it felt like I had been engulfed in a shroud of darkness, trying to claw my way out gasping for air, and that I could finally see the light again. Hold on, is that representative of who Yasha is too? Well, we'll just have to wait and see...

RURIRURAN Ginza Roman (Ruriruran Romance of Ginza) by. Itsuki Saijou (Mayu Yoshioka)

I'm going to say it out loud. I do NOT like this song. And it's my least favorite of the album. If I'm not mistaken, as a supporting character, Itsuki Saijou is a self-proclaimed number one fan of the Teigeki? So basically, she's the young female version of Shintarou Sonooka's Kousuke Dan/ Dandy Boss (FYI, he's still performing Sakura Taisen-themed live show until now, alongside other male actors of the franchise). At first, I'm confused as to why this is part of the album. I would rather have a musical tune from one of the Shin Hanagumi's plays like "Momotarou" or others. But then it came to my sense: Ginza itself has been a staple district in the franchise. Even Dandy Boss and his Dandy Dan have had more than one song for it. Basically, this could be a tribute to that, which also fits in this "Old meets New" section of the album. As for the "RURIRURAN" title, that's apparently the name of a Cafe in the district that players can visit time to time. Sorry if I didn't get that correctly, though. The song's music was another showcase of Kouhei-sensei dualism of tone. It started playful and bouncy, though in a rather unmemorable way. It's a sweet and young sound that greeted us with a smile after going through Yasha's darkness. Then it suddenly shifted to a tense gloomy mode in the middle, likely to depict the situation of the game, as well as Ginza as a place of both glamour and shady areas. I'm not familiar with Mayu Yoshioka (who I just learned voiced the main character Tilarna Excedillica in "Cop Craft", and sang that ending theme. She sounds different...), but she did showcase her range here and that's good. Regardless, I'm just not a fan of this song. And more often than not, I ended up pressing skip to jump to the final song instead.

STAR Tanjou (A Star is Born) by. Sumire Kanzaki (Michie Tomizawa), Kaoru Ringou (Yui Ishikawa) & Komachi Ouba (Ryouko Shiraishi)

After we heard echoes of a nostalgic voice from the olden days, followed by a new unfamiliar ring of the present, both eras came together as the final send-off of the album. Sumire Kanzaki, original Hanagumi's "TOOOOP-PU STAR" joined the new theatre staff members, Secretary Kaoru and Merchandise Seller Komachi, to celebrate and welcome the audience (read: fans and players) old and new to the Dai Teikoku Gekijou (Grand Imperial Theatre). Or "Teigeki", for short. PAOOOON... Life hadn't been kind for the great Ms. Kanzaki. How would you feel, if all the loved ones in your life are suddenly taken away from the face of the earth? Devastating, right? Well, that would be what Sumire felt when her beloved comrades, those she considered as a second family, vanished without a trace, leaving her all alone. Even worse, she managed to survive only because her depleting spiritual power had forced her to officially resign from the original Hanagumi. Otherwise, she would've still been a powerhouse of the team, thus becoming history alongside Sakura Shinguuji and the others. That's probably the base of reasoning to why she decided to go back, to help mentor and guide the new generation as the Teigeki's new leader. That sense of loss and confusion, a burden that piled towards new resolution also resonated with her VA, Michie Tomizawa. As you can read on the Famitsu link above, Tomizawa too, felt apprehensive about reprising her role. Ironically, as long-time fans would know, Sumire's retirement was caused by Tomizawa's own retirement from the entertainment industry. This occurred following the release of "Sakura Taisen 4". Because series creator Ouji Hiroi was against recasting actors (a decision I've fully supported), the franchise ended up officially bidding farewell to Sumire with a special New Year live performance dedicated for her, and an animated special "Sakura Taisen OVA: Sumire". Those were melancholic times. Tomizawa was absent from the franchise for several years until she officially returned to acting, hailing Sumire reemergence as a special guest star in "Super Kayou Show IV: Shin Aoi Tori". In that musical, she made a friendly visit to the original Commander Ikki Yoneda who was living a peaceful life after retiring from Teigeki. Yoneda had handed over his managerial role to Ichirou Ougami, who naturally had perished in the Great Demon War too. That's why it made perfect sense why Sumire took over as Shin Hanagumi's manager and Commander! She's the only one left. Tomizawa's words, with Yokoyama's blessing, added a much-needed hope to long-time fans: "I vowed that I would definitely reunite with the old members of the Flower Division one day. And that I will protect the members of the new Flower Division. That I would shoulder these two responsibilities... The old Sumire will come back after she managed to bring back her old comrades" Music-wise, this song was basically the Teito version of New York's "Koko wa Paradise" (heck, one of the line even says "Paradise"!) or Chattes Noires' can-can dance number "Hana no Paris". Complete with that touch of canon harmony in the chorus. But whereas those two titles were more upbeat or flashy, this felt a bit... subdued, calmer and elegant (that's Sumire, all right!). Kouhei-sensei did say this carried the style of "Gekijou e Ikou!" and "Kono Yo wa Tanoshii". You can look up for those songs online, and will get a pretty good idea of how this sounds. It's not really the best part of the album, but it's okay and enjoyable. Personally, I kinda feel an accompaniment song like this should've been the second track of the album, instead of those two massive group songs (Track 2 and 3) that served better as a showstopper closing. This would sound better to prepare the stage for more and bigger things to come, right? But thematically, it did serve the purpose of being a culmination of "Old Meets New". I don't know if that's the true goal, but that's the way I see it now. And perhaps, the purpose is to tell everyone that there will be more songs to come in the near future. Yes, that seems to be the case. During the "Tokyo Game Show", Kouhei-sensei accidentally spoiled that Shin Hanagumi members had recorded their version of this song, along with a new ending theme for the TV series. Simply put, this song concluded the album as a new beginning. So I guess I can deal with that! Hahaha... PS: Sumire's inclusion in the game does propose other unanswered questions. What happened to the other characters who are logically still alive? Is Yoneda still alive? But what about Vice Commander Kaede Fujieda? And then there's their Paris and New York counterparts: Grand Mere, Michael Sunnyside, and Ratchet Altair. Lest we forget the back-up ladies, Kazegumi, Mell Raison, and Ci Caprice, Plum Spaniel, and Anri Yoshino, along with many other supporting characters. Are they still alive? Then what about Neko Miyabi and the all-male musician team of Kanadegumi? Have they been written off history, just like that? It might be a stretch, but I'm hopeful that we will get answers about all of those in the game's next installment(s). Assuming "Shin Sakura Taisen" is successful enough to warrant one, of course...

OVERALL REVIEW

Once the final notes of "STAR Tanjou" faded away into silence, a sense of exhaustion hit me. Nope, perhaps the more suited term would be "emotionally drained". Not because it's something bad or anything, goodness no! As I've said at the beginning, it's been a while since I did this. And even though I've already split it into 4 thematic parts, I've gotten older now, and I haven't had this much excitement from the franchise for a while. A sense of relief, a thrust of thrill that... can only be compared to something people might find inappropriate to say. It makes sense, really. Considering I've just gone through an imaginary world tour through a potpourri of musical genres, happily stimulating and satiating myself with a rich and luxury full-course feast of intricate melodies and addictive rhythms. For a soundtrack of a full Sakura Taisen game, this probably felt the most colorful. Which on the other hand, might make it a tad heavy to hear for common listeners too. In particular, the younger people who're more accustomed to repetitive idol-ish techno notes and autotunes vocals. It's not hard to analyze why, though. Most of the past games only had like around 10 songs each, and "Shin Sakura Taisen" delivered a whopping 14 new tunes (just look at the tracklist). It's a tie with "Sakura Taisen 2", but that game featured 8 Hanagumi members! After all, this also had to introduce three new Kagekidan theme songs. And they were all scene-stealers, especially when compared to some of the solo numbers (looking at you, Itsuki, and sadly... Sakura). To be honest, If I had a say in this, I would totally release those new anthems on a separate album/release. At the very least, to balance things out. Of course, I suspect this is SEGA's way of foreshadowing/promoting potential sequels for the game. And if that's the case, then who am I to complain? All in all, I'm sure any Sakura Taisen fan would enjoy this, particularly due to the sense of nostalgia that looms over from start to finish. But the young generations (among them is my nephew. Good thing there's a cool uncle who can share exquisite things, huh? LOL) who haven't had the chance to know or experience this big fandom during its golden years, can see and understand why it's so special. Back then, people could only follow this franchise from Japan, where the franchise thrived and flourished while being unfamiliar to the rest of the world. But that time is gone, the era has changed, and everything is just a click away. That dream continues and CAN continue in a global scope. Will this result in a bigger love and appreciation for the past titles and music too? I would certainly love that, but we'll see. Just like "Shin GEKITEI", the entire song collection brought the same feeling, but also carried something new. And my one sincere hope is that it finds a special place in your hearts too!

Score: 8,09 out of 10 Note: The score is the average sum of my personal grading for each song in this CD.

Image is screencaptured from the game's opening movie that I featured in the Part 1. Video is available on SEGA Official Youtube Channel. "Shin Sakura Taisen" is produced by SEGA, and RED Entertainment. Credits and copyrights belong to their respective owners.

#music #review #sakura wars #Sakura Taisen #shin sakura taisen #Shin Sakura Wars #project sakura wars #melancholymoments

0 notes

bestchoomever · 6 years ago

Text

My Top 10 Videogames Ever

10. Uncharted 3

The Campaign. Fucking great and deserves some cred for being kinda original in the series. The Multiplayer. Some of the most fun I've ever had playing a multiplayer game in a while, like a long while. (@kaiborg101 would know why lmao)

Nothing else to describe, this game is just really fucking great to me and deserves more respect. Especially the home screen theme song.

9. Sly Cooper Thieves in Time

The reason this is up here is because of how dedicated I was to completely finishing this game. I loves the Sly Cooper story and personally see it as one of PlayStations greatest games ever, and to add more depth to it made for something amazing.

All the Clockwerk easter eggs, and how the story focuses on multiple people at once and yet still somehow focusing on Sly and the gang at the same time. I would've put the Trilogy edition on here bc it included new remastered versions of all prior games for the PS3, all we need now is Sly 5 and I'm settled.

Btw, Tennessee Kid Cooper is the best imo

8. Little Big Planet 3

I owned this for this for shit and gigs, guilty of charge. But out of the time I played this game I fucking love it. All the action adventure combined with an actual original and very thought out storyline made for a good chill game to play when stressed. Hell even dying in this game is fun, albeit a bit morbid to say but you hopefully catch my drift.

7. Call of Duty Black Ops

For 2010, I had just gotten a PS3 and gotten two games, all of which on on here. Call of Duty Black Ops was one of them, and to this day I still play it, albeit on a different account thanks to a hacker who stole my account and locked me out of it, leaving me to never play on my original account ever again.

Black Ops is a very special game to me, as it carries out what it was supposed to do, but better. The gameplay was for me a mix of slow and fast pace in certain situations bc of the gun balance, which admittedly in some places isn't the best **cough** snipers **cough**.

Either way, I spent way too much time on this game as a kid and it's personally my favourite in the series aside from BO3, which currently has my highest time ever played on a video game; 7 and a half full days. 170+ hours.

6. Rocket League.

I'm no pro, but I love this game. And I sincerely say to myself whenever I play it that I will eventually have the time to learn actual plays and freestyles and just get better.

Besides, whats more fun than jumping around a batmobile hitting a ball at this awkward yet surprising angle to score?

5. Uncharted 4

Oh another Uncharted game, fuckin loser.

I've been told this to people who haven't played Uncharted 4 like I have. I love this game to bits. The soundtrack is one of the bests I've ever heard, the character it presents is intimidating and the multiplayer and Survival is astounding. The Graphics in this game are on ANOTHER LEVEL also.

4. The Last of Us.

Holy shit. Naughty Dog you pulled a fucking MASSIVE HEART STRING with this game. This is some of the most compelling, gritty and emotional piece of storytelling I've ever sat five hours through completing. I didnt even care about the multiplayer bc the campaign was something straight out of a movie, if not better than one.

Me and a lot of other gamers like me cried during this game at a LOT, and boy do I mean a LOT of times during this game.

So much to take in, thank god for the sequel coming out!

3. Bionicle Heroes.

As a kid, I had only ever watched the trailer for this game a thousand times before actually buying the game back in 2008, and by god if I didn't I probably wouldn't be here today.

Not the best game in terms of gameplay, in fact it's very linear and simple by today's terms, but if it wasn't for this game being out, I wouldn't have been so into the Inika line than I Already was.

The boss battles in particular are some of my favourite examples of a fight in the game that I could literally Top 5 them. The story was non canon, obviously, but what it lacked in canon story it made up for in funny moments and great sequences.

It's by no means a perfect game, and sure as hell isn't. But it's surprisingly fun on the PS2 and I highly recommend checking out the PC version to anyone who wants a simple child game to play when bored or simply need to chill out.

2. Team Fortress 2

Pyro main, 141+ hours, and over 130+ achievements.

I played WAYYY too much of this game.

On its surface, it's basically Overwatch but free and dumbed down. On the inside, it's a madhouse of fun steaming of possibility and great hilarious over the top fun and action.

If you remember 2007, you have no need to know more. This game is beyond fun and even today, only a few months ago, the devs updated the game. 11 years on, and it's still being played.

1. Devil May Cry 4

In my opinion, this game and the rest of DMC is some of the best story driven games out there and possibly of all time.

This game was the first game I ever played on a PS3, all the way back in 2008. The story mixed so well with its source material that it almost felt like a different game but set in the same universe. Slashing demons and spewing one liners that would Make Chucky from Child's Play cry, this game was an absolute showstopper. Nero is my all time favourite protag ever, along with Dante, and their friendship is someone I wish I had today with my friends.

The nonstop action, heavy metal soundtrack (in some parts), and the EXCEPTIONAL graphics for the time make up this extremely great title. For anyone feeling murder-y, I recommend this game. Highly.

0 notes

nightangelreviews · 7 years ago

Photo

The Used “The Canyon” Label: Hopeless Records Genre: Alternative Rock, Post Hardcore, Experimental Release Date: October 27, 2017

Vocals: 10 Instrumentation: 8 Creativity: 9 Originality: 7 Production: 6 Flow: 8 Composition: 8 Lasting Value: 7 OPENING THOUGHTS: As a listener of The Used since “Lies for the Liars”, I don’t think I’ve gone into one of their albums with such unknown about what to experience until now. Only listening to 1 track before this, I may be a bit out of the loop when it comes to hearing, on multiple accounts, how experimental this album is.

Track-by-Track:

1. For You I absolutely did not see thing kind of song starting off this record, but at the same time, I find it very putting that it did. Beginning with an acoustic song for any band that is considered a rock band, or heavier, is very risky and could jeopardize the whole album’s experience in just a few minutes. Luckily this track is very graceful with what it does, by explaining right before the music what it is actually about. 4/5

2. Cold War Telescreen With this song, you immediately see what they did to the production, and possibly for the whole album too, making the sound more live and old school, giving it a lower loud volume with an added mix of muffled vocals. This song doesn’t stray from what The Used is though, but with the addition of so many extra little things in here you almost get overloaded with everything going on. 4/5

3. Broken Windows This track could easily be played on the radio, without the outro, since it’s more of a normal/generic-y alternative punk song. Right now, as a whole, the track isn’t bad, just kind of boring, but over the course of the song I did notice some small details that would make this playback-able in the future. 3/5

4. Rise Up Lights Besides the decent instrumentals, I find this track pretty forgettable, with the highlight of it’s bleakness being the repetitiveness from the vocals. 1.5/5

5. Vertigo Cave So far, this is the most experimental track. The use of non-standard drums on here makes this song sound very weird, and not in the way that I would say I like it. 2/5

6. Pretty Picture With each new track, this album gets more and more experimental. It’s definitely a distinct dissonance between old and new The Used, bringing a new wave for the band, but also with a lack of originality. 2/5

7. Funeral Post And here we are with the track the brings the band back down to Earth for a moment. This is some great classic The Used, with some additional flair added on for extra. So far it is the most re-listenable track, as I am already excited about listening to this later. 5/5

8. Upper Falls This song starts off acting like it’s going to be a slow song, and overall I would say it is, but by the end of it this track encompasses a lot of past representations of what this band is, pulling out a very refined version of themselves. 4.5/5

9. The Divine Absence (This Is Water) When people say this album is very experimental, they actually mean it. If you didn’t know that this was The Used, you could almost say from this track that this is some jazz rock infused punk band, to which they can be classified as that now. The closest representation of this song is something from Mutemath’s discography. 4/5

10. Selfies In Aleppo I don’t really know how to describe this song. It’s kind of like one one before it, but at the same time on a whole different spectrum. You really need to listen to it to understand. Also, there’s glitches. 3.5/5

11. Moving the Mountain (Odysseus Surrenders) This is the track where when you hear a bunch of the same elements over multiple concurrent tracks, songs start blending together. Just like the last two songs, this song sounds just like them. I’m now starting to question if some of these songs were meant to be combined, and they just decided not to do that. If these last 3 songs had been mixed as 1 long song, I probably wouldn’t have questioned the decision, over how fluent these 3 are. 2.5/5

12. Over and Over Again 1st single form the album, and the only track I had heard until this review. Definitely coincides with the flow of the rest of the album, just a little bit more upbeat. 3.5/5

13. The Quiet War Now, I don’t mind rapping in songs when it works, but this unfortunately does not. The song wasn’t that great top begin with either, but the rapping did make it worse. 1.5/5

14. Moon-Dream Literally a song that retains it’s same composure throughout, unless you are listening for the lyrics. 1/5

15. The Nexus Add a bunch of progressive instrumentals, and some “Artwork” vibes and you get this song. 4/5

16. About You (No Songs Left to Sing) By the time I got through this song, I realized that this album could’ve probably been cut by at least 5 tracks, including this one. 2/5

17. The Mouth of the Canyon The only thing I would have to say about this track is that pretty much encompasses exactly what this album has shown, by combining most of the elements from the record into one. Albeit, boring though. 2/5

ENDING THOUGHTS: When I think of owning music on vinyl, I think of if the music is super chill and can relax me, and if so it’s a great record for the format. This would be a great record to have on vinyl. It is definitely the most experimental, progressive, and tranquil version of The Used to date. I’d say it’s on par with the last 2 records between likability, as it is a very big mixed bag; some songs you will really like, and some songs you will think this is absolutely boring. From a technical aspect, I applaud that the band decided to go with an interesting and experimental route for this record, but they dived too deep into the experiment and left people wondering where the band will remain now.

Songs Kept: 7 out of 17

Final Score: 65/100% | Grade: C

Buy Here: Amazon, iTunes, Merch

Check Them Out At: Facebook

If you like the review, vote for my next one HERE!

#the used #the canyon #music #review #nightangel

0 notes