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myanimeforlife-blog · 3 years

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Sad Anime That Will Make You Cry – Sad Anime Recommendations

Is it accurate to say that you are searching for a lamentable anime that will make you cry? Alright, look no further, our Top Best Sad Depressing Anime Suggestions will cause you to sob and to feel for the characters. These accounts are solid, with lamentably tragic scenes and passionate minutes.

As sad anime can cause you to holler your eyes out, such anime sort is scandalous, so for what reason do we watch them? For what reason do makers of anime love to make their fans cry? Also, why would that be a ton of miserable anime out there?

Anime designers appreciate seeing their fans cry. There have all the earmarks of being a lot of anime made exclusively to cause us to wail our eyes out. Anime has discovered innumerable approaches to break our hearts and make us cry, from the sincere shows of high school love, lonely emotions, and relationship dramatization to the more reasonable stories that talk about subjects like demise, war, and sickness.

Sad anime encourages us to have a decent cry whenever we want to cry, yet pitiful anime additionally causes us to see one another and even advantage from one another without truly feeling any of those miserable minutes or allowing them to understand that they are in good company in whatever damnation they are in.

Here is an accumulation of surveys in no request for a rating of an extremely miserable, awful, and dismal anime.

1. Chrono Crusade

Chrono campaign

Studios: Gonzo

Scenes: 24

Circulated: Fall 2003

Chrono Crusade is a great, tragic anime arrangement with clever, profound, and fascinating characters.

The Americas in the Roaring 20s. Not too far off, after the carnage of the Great War, it is a confident, prosperous second. In any case, prowling in the dimness is a dull factor prepared to remove the harmony. Sister Rosette Christopher, an exorcist functioning as a feature of the Magdala Order, must fight the fallen angels that come and exact obliteration. However, she normally ends up causing more harm than the actual devils, alongside her companion Chrno! On a particular task, they meet with a young lady with a beautiful voice named Azmaria, whom her stepfather focused on. Rosette is as yet looking for her sibling, whom an evil presence has detracted from her.

Chrono Crusade is known for making the group shout for activity, satire, and sentiment. It's a concealed pearl that begins gradually, yet you'll be dependent after you watch the initial 3 scenes.

2. Violet Evergarden

Violet Evergarden

Studios: Kyoto Animation

Scenes: 13

Broadcasted: Winter 2018

Violet Evergarden is a profound and amazing anime, even though there are a few cases that will surely help the tissues hit you. Numerous individuals refer to this anime as being one of only a handful, not many that at last left them demolished.

The chief character, Violet Evergarden, was raised principally to be a weapon for use against enemies. Yet, as the war concluded, after mending from her injuries, she needed to locate another explanation behind her life. She is beginning to work as an Auto Memory Doll, a job that assists with changing the feelings of individuals into words on paper.

3. Plastic Memories

Plastic Memories

Studios: Doga Kobo

Scenes: 13

Circulated: Spring 2015

One of those arrangements that offer you a supporting portion of authenticity and the way that nothing endures forever is Plastic Memories. The show's entire thought is around the presence of androids who are practically hard to recognize from real individuals.

The greatest qualification, in any case, is that they have an exceptionally little, restricted life expectancy. They will get by for pretty much nine years and no more. With one of these androids, the hero begins to look all starry-eyed even though we need to observe him comprehend that his experience with her is running out.

4. I Want To Eat Your Pancreas

I Want To Eat Your Pancreas

Studios: Studio VOLN

Scenes: Movie

Circulated: Summer 2018

It may resemble an ecchi or a zombie awfulness anime by the name however it's an adoration show successful in making you cry basins pressing. I want to eat your pancreas.

At some point, in the medical clinic, a secondary school young lady, seen a book. The title was "The Journal of Coexistence Disease." This was a journal written stealthily by her student, Sakura Yamauchi. Inside, her days have been checked due to her pancreatic malignant growth. It resembled she got pulled into her. However, the universe uncovered a youngster with a similarly brutal truth experiencing an ailment.

5. Nana

Nana anime

Studios: Madhouse

Scenes: 47

Circulated: Spring 2006

Nana is a shoujo sappy sentiment anime with great music and something lovely that allows you to celebrate on it for certain characters and feel a few episodes similarly as strongly as the actual characters inwardly.

Nana "Hachi" Komatsu wishes that she will get to Tokyo and put behind her impulsive love life. In the realm of rock and move, Nana Osaki, who shows up nearby simultaneously, has plans to score high. While these two young ladies come from different foundations, in a tornado universe of sex, culture, style, dramatization, and throughout the late evening celebrating, they quickly become best mates!

Nana is a pitiful anime that shows how individuals hold their things and how it is a human defect. You will shout, sob, and find Nana's two-section solid relationship. It gives numerous life exercises, its tests and its blunders, we don't need to do.

6. Clannad: After Story

Clannad After Story

Studios: Kyoto Animation

Scenes: 24

Circulated: Fall 2008

Clannad: After Story is splendid about how it portrays life, the significance of family, and the intricacies of adulthood.

The anime variation of the realistic novel of a similar name is Clannad. It's conceivable that this is the most well-known miserable anime. The anime comprises of two seasons: the 23 scenes long Clannad, the 24 scenes long Clannad: After Story, and its boundlessly more discouraging development. Albeit the principal half arrangements with secondary school show, chiefly kinships, and dating, the subsequent part is a significantly more extraordinary and effective glance at grown-up issues (with an accentuation on the significance of family).

The continuation of the widely praised cut-of-life arrangement Clannad, Clannad: After Story, begins after Tomoya Okazaki and Nagisa Furukawa move on from secondary school. They feel the psychological rollercoaster of growing up around one another. Tomoya, unfit to settle on a way for his future, perceives the significance of a decent hard-working attitude and understands the force of consolation from Nagisa. They push ahead to face their passionate issues, reinforce their former connections, and fabricate new ties through the couple's responsibility and solidarity of aim.

7. Grave of the Fireflies

Grave of the Fireflies

Studios: Studio Ghibli

Scenes: Movie

Circulated: Spring 1988

Perhaps the most deplorable film you could at any point see is Grave of the Fireflies. The film, set in the most recent days of the Second World War, recounts the narrative of a kid named Seita and his more youthful sister, Setsuko, whose lives were annihilated by the brutal and savage war that left them without guardians and homes.

Left in the Japanese wide open to battle for themselves, the young any expectation of the kin is stunning even with unfaltering difficulty, giving them the fortitude to keep on getting away from an inescapable fate. Grave of the Fireflies is a film that is strongly miserable, profoundly sentimental, and capably moving that can leave nobody apathetic.

8. Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

Anohana The Flower We Saw That Day

Studios: A-1 Pictures

Scenes: 11

Broadcasted: Spring 2011

Need to cry explicitly for each scene? Might you want to obtain the stunning ability to sob on interest after hearing a tune's first notes? We have you covered if your answer is yes. Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day is A-1 Pictures unique anime that debuted in the spring of 2011. This anime of eleven scenes tell the story of a gathering of companions, presently grown-ups, battling to adapt to the passing of their beloved companion Menma, who kicked the bucket when they all were extremely youthful.

The gathering of companions had self-destructed a long time since Menma's passing, yet the apparition of their tragically missing friend may simply be sufficient to arrange them once more. The gathering is brought together so Menma can really make her desire and proceed onward, while simultaneously offering her companions the solace they need to push ahead without her. All through the plot, surprisingly terms with their inability to adapt and overcome their sensations of regret, we perceive what Menma's demise meant for every one of her mates. Anohana is a tragic, passionate experience that you certainly don't have any desire to miss.

9. Your Lie in April

Your Lie in April

Studios: A-1 Pictures

Scenes: 22

Broadcasted: Fall 2014

The fall 2014 Anime, from A-1 Pictures, Your Lie April is joined by a well-known kid performer, who after his mom's demise, lost the capacity to hear the sound of his piano. After two years, Kousei experiences Kaori Miyazono, a dynamic violin player who causes him to comprehend that music can be played normally, and not in the inflexible, formal way that his mom instructed him.

The anime tends to Kousei's recuperation story when he finds that music is something beyond playing each note (and becomes hopelessly enamored with Kaori). Shockingly, Kaori's happiness just masks the inescapable catastrophe, similar to the clear shading range of the anime. Your Lie in April is a staggering and contacting story that investigates mental injury, overcomings misfortune, and advancement. This anime is without a doubt going to make somebody shed a few tears.

10. Orange

Orange anime

Studios: Telecom Animation Film

Scenes: 13

Broadcasted: Summer 2016

As far as I might be concerned, Orange was a roller seaside enthusiastic ride. Feelings are things that rouse us and figure out what choices we take and how our lives end. Orange is an arrangement that investigates how emotions will change our course.

A letter from ten years is sent one day to Takamiya Naho. At the point when Naho peruses, the letter says the specific day's occasions, including the exchange to the class of another understudy, Naruse Kakeru. after 10 years, Naho says continually that she has a few second thoughts, and she needs to fix them by guaranteeing that the Naho from the past will decide effectively – especially comparable to Kakeru. Seriously astonishing that Kakeru will presently don't be with them ten years after the fact. Naho needs all her nearby eye on him.

Top 10 Sad Anime That Will Make You Cry – Sad Anime List — Click To Watch the video!

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dgcatanisiri · 4 years

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Call it spoilers giving me advance notice letting me be prepared for it... I liked Veronica Mars Season 4 and, yes, that includes the ending.

First and foremost, this is Veronica’s story, and all other characters are secondary to her. This included Logan. Her story, her journey, and her pushing through adversity, that’s the thing about this show that I’ve always been here for. Without her, there’s nothing. But all the others are supporting characters to her narrative.

If there is one relationship that is a cornerstone in this series, it has NEVER been Veronica and Logan. It’s been Veronica and KEITH. Her and her father. They’re the relationship that I find it unlikely that they could ever be without.

I mean, back when the show started, Logan wasn’t “Veronica’s one true love.” He was the obligatory psychotic jackass. He was an asshole. He was a suspect in Lilly Kane’s murder. It was far less about him and Veronica having an epic romance, and more about the idea of Logan as a suspect - the homme fatale, if you will, since Veronica was the female investigator.

That ties in well to the fact... Veronica Mars, the series, has always been noir. It’s not a genre about happy endings. It even opens up right with that, with a voiceover in front of a sleazy motel, a teenager girl with a camera, spying on infidelity instead of bothering to do her homework or consider boys.

I'm never getting married. You want an absolute? Well, there it is. Veronica Mars, spinster. I mean, what's the point? Sure there's the initial primal drive. Ride it out—better yet, ignore it. Sooner or later, the people you love let you down.

That’s not an invite to prove her wrong. That’s setting the scene. That is letting the audience know at a glance that this is not a character or show where happy endings are expected. Hell, remember the last time they thought the show was never coming back - we closed on Veronica, her relationship with Logan in tatters, her relationship with Piz functionally over, having been casting a futile vote for her father, who had tampered with evidence in the name of protecting her, and walking away from the polling place in the rain.

And while we the audience might have cheered about Veronica walking back into Mars Investigations at the end of the movie... In many ways, that was a tragedy - she had gotten out, and her coming back to Neptune, deciding to stay there... That was an addict, giving in to the addiction. She’s always known that Neptune is not a good place. Every step of seasons one through three emphasized that. Up to and including the fact that in the time that she got away, it only got worse.

Neptune has always destroyed lives. Even when she does what she can to fight the tide, all she can walk away with are little victories. To stay there is to stay in a cycle of self-destruction.

And then, there’s the simple fact that Veronica Mars has always been a story about tragedy. About keeping on in the face of tragedy. About surviving tragedy.

Tragedy blows through your life like a tornado, uprooting everything, creating chaos. You wait for the dust to settle, and then you choose. You can live in the wreckage and pretend it's still the mansion you remember. Or you can crawl from the rubble and slowly rebuild. Because after disaster strikes, the important thing is that you move on.

A very formative quote for Veronica as well. The show opened with her having faced massive tragedy, in her best friends murder, her mother’s abandonment, and her being ostracized from everyone she once knew and cared about. Veronica Mars has always been about how to deal with tragedy. Not about walking off into the sunset. About picking yourself up from the shit you go through, dusting yourself off, and to keep going.

Because, as Veronica once summed it all up, life’s a bitch and then you die.

Like, this has happened before, you know. Characters getting killed on the cusp of a major point of happiness or positivity. The light at the tunnel turning out to be a train. This is a key component of this genre. This is not your average drama. This is noir. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the innocent die, the wealthy prosper.

Aaron Echolls literally got away with murder. His trial should have been ruled a mistrial, considering Veronica’s confidential medical records were used as evidence. The only reason he got what he deserved was someone acting outside the law to kill him. In this genre, when you follow the law, when you do the right thing, your rewards are minimal. The credit goes to others. The victories come in surviving to see another day.

You know the question about who you are in the dark, what you do when there is no one around who can or will hold you accountable? That’s one of the key things in noir. No one would blame you for killing the guy who confessed to horrible deeds and taking money off the corpse. The victory is in deciding not to, because you’re not them.

This felt true to that which came before it. I am a strong critic of the death of characters at this point, but I’m actually legitimately satisfied. I’d be happy to see more. I don’t even see it as “shedding teenage drama” with Veronica. In any continuation, it’s rebuilding her life again, with the new tools and abilities that she has gained over the years.

And I’m not responding to anything on this post, so don’t bother trying to start any discourse.

#dg rambles #veronica mars #veronica mars spoilers

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ratherhavetheblues · 4 years

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INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘IN THE PRESENCE OF A CLOWN’ “I wonder why I love you as I do…”

In 1997, at the age of 80, Ingmar Bergman saw fit to return to his 1980 film, From the Life of the Marionettes, in order to disclose the further range to be found in its turmoil and small triumph. That would have been long after those “in the know about films” had figured out and concluded for others that the maestro had nothing new to show. But those very small numbers ignoring their “betters,” could be beneficiaries of exciting times, far surpassing our many masters of the viral.

From the Life of the Marionettes, telescoping, in fact, back an eye-opener of a film from the days when Bergman’s numbers were not meagre, namely, Scenes from a Marriage (1973), the crux of the matter becomes “speaking the same language.” Most invested in that action would be the language of patricians (white-hot pedants), not nearly as bright and constructive as they think they are, but knowing where the money and dominance are. The 1980 blood-bath studies what can happen when couples dare not to speak the same language.

In the film, In the Presence of a Clown (1997), there is dissonance so massively distributed that clarifying its true conflict becomes quite a struggle, a struggle worth mastering. One way of cutting to the heart of our work is the Bergman standby of optical, dialectical apparitions, wielded marvelously by a remarkable roster of great cinematographers, in this case, Tony Forsberg. The first moment gives us a murky setting and a hand moving a stylus to a vinyl disc. Two agencies awaiting magic. The label is a rusty-red. In the Bergman film, Dreams (1955), the first scene involves a hand, in semi-darkness, pressing upon a sheet of paper immersed in a photographic solution, by which to disclose a large image of a woman’s lips. Coming into play with this nocturnal effort is Salvador Dali’s creation of, “Mae West Sofa,” a surrealist icon. At the outset of, From the Life of the Marionettes, a prostitute in a brothel, showing pronounced red lips in close-up, dies horribly, but not before disclosing a surprising gift for beauty and verbal expression. You’d think each film, therefore, might implicitly be about not speaking the language of sharp advantage, daring to have a go as an innovator of sensibility. And yes, it does. But, oh, what tiny steps being made! In the film, In the Presence of a Clown, we have permission to untangle the death throes of those being imprisoned by cowardly partners, and their own backsliding.

Whereas the protagonist in the latter film, namely, Carl Akerblom, is a patient in a mental hospital when first we meet him, he also (somewhat) belongs to three lamps shining from the ceiling of his confinement. Each light has a function within a strange and essential logic: one for survival; one for ecstasy; and, the third, a synthesis of the other two. To make those lights become everything, special actions are needed. Our film is resolved in getting what is needed. At this moment, Carl seems to be clueless about the sophistication peeking in. He inhabits a large room, painted grey, where he is the only inhabitant, along with many other empty beds. We soon learn that he had attempted murdering his fiance, Pauline (she being a Peril of Pauline, in the mold of Marionettes’ Peter, as in Peter Pan). That could account for his isolation. But, in an interview that morning (the doctor interrupting his vinyl) the thrust of narrative becomes Carl’s verve for music, in face of a blotto of a specialist (like the blotto of the mental specialist in, From the Life of the Marionettes), putting him in the driver’s seat of being a candidate of making that dialectic click. (The wintry scene out of two tall windows is supplied with a lovely tree in the snowy grounds. With the patient lying back on his bed, we see, on a little ledge, three small flower pots. Two support tiny flowers. The third is empty. The doctor’s surname is Egermann, that being the surname of Peter the effete butcher in the brothel.) As Carl digs into the woeful biography of Franz Schubert, by way of a rather hostile challenge to the doctor to admit he’d have a “sinking feeling,” were he such an artist, we are directed to his hands and his shaking fingers. (Hold that last thought.)

Just as we become rather skeptical of Carl as having the right stuff, Pauline, whom he had refused to see, breaches the blockade to an upshot of increased confusion. Wearing a smart Louise Brooks hair style—the year is 1925—her sylphlike presence is a contrast to Carl’s many pounds. But her arrival, coinciding with his being unable to offset a bowl movement, must seriously become an even greater impediment to future interplay. She has three buttons across her coat. On entry, she found room 2A (without a third). She lights up a cigarette, the first of many, reminding us of unfit Harry and his chain-smoking, in the 1980 film. (Does she flounder like Harry?) When Carl returns, in some array, and she tells him, “You can’t escape me,” you wouldn’t place any bets on her. She has a bandage over her forehead, and he declares, “It was your fault…” (What happened to poetry?) The musician declares, “If you’ve come to reap my contrition, you’ll get none of it… What can you have come for? The cheap triumph of seeing your future husband’s total humiliation?” She retorts, “I certainly didn’t need to come here to see your humiliation. That’s been a daily bitter diet…” Carl’s shifting the patter is something new and, at the same time, something old. “Here comes the bit about my stepmother and her jealousy…” (Here, also, is the time to realize that the rich theatrical component of Bergman’s effort—however non-readers would bridle—offers drama, not only thrilling, but unprecedented, in any field. Along, therefore, with dazzling cinematography.)

While this vague reprise of Hollywood screwball comedy, being impressively brought to life by the Bergman film, A Lesson in Love (1954), settles in, we are blindsided with Carl’s dotage upon the supposed sanctity of Schubert, to the outcome of putting together a homage whereby a silent film would be supplemented by actors speaking and musicians playing, a roadshow hopefully plumbing marvels of creative taste and power. There has been much more at the asylum between the doctor’s visit and Pauline’s visit, and now is the time to dispense with screwball comedy and begin to broach something even Bergman had never attempted before. First of all, there is a bit more craziness in the form of another of Carl’s shut-ins, one Osvald Vogler, a retired professor of exegetics (exegetics being a critical explanation of a written work, especially the Bible). Where he sits there are, in Carl’s big domaine, there are two empty flower pots. The name, “Vogler,” has a spotted career in Bergman films—pertaining to fakery, as with Persona, The Magician and Hour of the Wolf. Carl immediately takes an aversion to the academic’s vanity, and threatens, “I’m sicker than I look.” The lecturer peppers the protagonist (and us) about “inner freedom,” and though he’s another Mad Hatter, he has a sensibility to, like a tornado, dig up random gems along with the garbage. “Subjective by self-conceived… by self unfortunately destroyed… What we call inner freedom as it is so complex that can’t be codified, analyzed or classified… For freedom is the most elevated characteristic in the human spirit… the ancient source of the Sacred One and the literal immortality of Life.” Carl tries to talk about Schubert, but Vogler is now buried in a book. He does remark, “My wife is a deaf mute. She is also rich, and I live well on her wealth” [the source of the supposed new arts]. Vogler, now troubled, comes up to Carl where he is lying on his bed. The latter takes the troubled man’s wrists to calm him; and Carl’s hand and fingers are once again featured. Now back to his confidence, Vogler asks the new friend, “What kind of ill-health forces you to dwell in these depressing premises?” And our bemusing protagonist chronicles the violence: “The person who tried to help me out of a terrifying difficulty was rewarded with a murderous blow, so that the skin on the forehead split and blood spurted…” He goes on to claim that the incident is nothing to him; but that Schubert is. (Much more dialogue is in store here and in many other contexts. But we must distinguish between the saga’s need to convey to the film audience the crushing deadness of the situation, which affords a cue to some positivity; and our essay’s need to focus here upon a kernel of very rare and very difficult and very crucial need, which will never register to many.)

Carl bribes his motherly nurse to forego his tranquilizers, and then he makes her listen to a bedtime story she’d rather not hear. “Sit here and I’ll tell you everything… In the old days, they used to punish criminals by sticking a sharpened wood stake into the delinquent’s arse.” (Peter the patrician meted out a similar punishment to the prostitute in Marionettes.) He adds, “The point gradually comes out, at the back of the neck… Then they raised the stake by the river, and there the wretch hung. That’s what it’s like, Sister Stella. I’ve threaded on a stake… I’ve become a sight worth seeing…” (“The person who tried to help me out,” would have been a “delinquent,” exposing a shaky bourgeoisie to depredation.) Therefore, the rally, “Don’t think I’m asking for pity, like Jesus or Mahler…or for that matter, Swedenborg [an eighteen century, Swedish mystic, and Vogler’s hero], that sentimental old whiner… Schubert Franz, he’s my friend, my beloved brother…”) He thinks to end the night smugly with, “What theatre! What an audience!” But something shoots down the arrogance and hate.

Carl (and also Vogler) want to believe that the many hours they have put into their obscure repertoires must result in a better world. That they have landed in a place implying incompetence would not necessarily rule out a singular power; but the tenor of their explications are so transparently shabby, they now stand exposed as pathetic and virulent menaces, as with the half-wit doctor in Marionettes. Therefore, after boring the nurse with his bravado, he lies alone in his bed and ushers in a phantom not trammeled with soft lies. In the 1980 film, a murderer’s wife is far more concerned with the dead victim-prostitute than a live husband in a mental hospital. Her emotive make-up becomes a compass to take off as a free-lancer, a free lover. That compass returns to Carl’s bedroom, to haunt his cowardice (Vogel’s filibuster on behalf of “freedom” never giving a thought to courage). Emanating from the snowy atmosphere outside, we find that a strange presence has lingered after his Ted Talk. His spent candle has formed an angry-looking head. The apparition, all white with a white clown hat, focuses down to her fingers, very long and with very long fingernails. She turns out to be an expert in producing an odd kinetic residue from out of those fingers. Panning back to disclose her face, we have a huge ear [picking up what mediocrities like Carl and Vogler refuse to attend to, which is to say, being tone deaf] and an elaborate eyebrow [involving what the celebrated geniuses of our planet refuse to recognize]—one of the surrealist touches in Bergman’s film, Dreams. By contrast, she has lost several teeth. (When close to killing Pauline, Carl’s frenzy included grinding out many of his teeth.) He asks, “Have you been here long?/ “Quite a while… Quite a while,” she recalls. (In fact, thousands of years.) He tries to rationalize by asking, “Am I not quite awake, sir?” Her emphatic, “No” does nothing to calm him. Her sprightly dance to come close to him is rapid and graceful, recalling the hooker’s surprising homage to the smells of the seasons. She shoves the pitcher from the little table by the bed, and curls up on it with a smile implying her few years of problematic action. Her suppleness and equilibrium announce a dimension which fat, awkward Carl knows nothing about. The stab-wound on her chest becomes apparent, but she, disregarding it from out of a twilight-reservoir no longer human but having done her part, cordially asks him, “How are you?” He admits he’s bored (something he’d never have admitted to a person), and she follows with, “How are you, Mr. Torneman?”/ “Torneman was my cousin,” he reports, “who died. He was a clever clown. He scared the life out of me when I was little…” She laughs, “For that matter, I’m no mister,” and she happily shows her breasts and adopts a come-hither attitude, a residue of her former job. (She and Torneman, having done their tiny part in an infinite and perverse cosmos.) She fiddles with her nipples; and in so doing she lines up far to a side of the luminous windows. Carl finally comes to the crux of his nightmare. “One says that one is not afraid. ‘Why should I be afraid? As there is no life after death. For there isn’t, is there?’” She replies, “I don’t go around with secrets. Is that clear?” (Maybe it should be put as, “There’s a paradox,” a paradox which Pauline will approach slightly more effectively than the Clown.) Be that as it may, the flighty Clown, replying to Carl’s, “But aren’t you all alone at the actual moment?” by nodding yes and saying, “Alone. Inevitably,” may, for all her grace, be missing something, something Pauline, “The person who tried to help me out,” might see something very rare and very necessary. The Clown teases Carl for his apparent mania about fast and shattering locomotives. Both voices cover the cliché. She covers one of his eyes to calm him. Then she stands in that blue light and her fingers look like candles. The rendezvous collapses, as did the show for the nurse—the clown drawing Carl to approximate the savaging of her, “Inevitability.”

Despite her solid insight that Carl was, and always will be, a Lost Boy, in the mold of Peter Pan, the killer of the Clown, and the enthusiast of speaking the same language of advantage and nothing more, Pauline, in face of the mute’s monetary wealth and the boys’ garrulous showiness, gushes, “It sounds revolutionary!” Despite her soon having second thoughts—the fiancé intent upon quality pens and writing paper—she allows herself to be persuaded by his, “Let your young heart be enthused, my darling. Just for once.” Amongst the launch, one statement is too jarring to overlook, being quintessentially ironic. “New ideas produce new money!” While emphasizing the happy days just around the corner, he mimes fingers counting all that “new money.” So close to activating a true “revolution;” and so hopelessly lost. An even more pointed action within this tizzy wells up from Pauline (now recognized as the main protagonist). “I wonder why I love you as I do [when recognizing he’ll never reach heights she can demand of herself]… What do you want with other ladies… when the clear-sightedness that afflicts me quite often these days strikes? I don’t understand why I actually love you…But now, as you sit there, holding forth on your living, talking film and all we are going to do together, I just want to cry and fall to my knees…” (Later we’ll better understand her passion. His woolen sweater has spilled beyond his jacket, recalling the sheep being killed by a passion of cowardice, in the film, The Passion of Anna [1969]. She completes a frieze of a squire, kneeling to her king. [Don’t take it naively. Wait till the last scene.])

The tour is, of course, stillborn. But where we catch up to the disaster, at the village where Carl sort of grew up as a descendent of an uber-bourgeois family, the spotlight is upon Pauline and the nature of her peril and accomplishment. The wordy two, being rank amateurs, have produced an incoherent and saccharin waste of time in homage to Schubert. But Pauline’s endeavor, at a snowbound but canny locale, is a drama of the highest stripe.

The ingenue of the film (and Carl’s current squeeze) bitches once too often about the lack of majesty, and our real protagonist, having been doing the ironing, opens the subject of placing the hot implement upon her pretty face. Exit the talking ingenue. In the midst of that unpleasantness, Pauline explains, “There comes a point where nothing is of any importance.” (That happens to be a serious mistake which she’ll have to work on. And she will.) In contrast to that rather farcical disappearance, the cinematographer is magic itself, namely, actor, Robert Atzorn, who played the role of Peter, the skittish murderer, in Marionettes. His “Petrus” is a disinterested craftsman and well aware that the spectacle is rotten. During the long night of bathos in the snow he countenances Carl’s stupidity and dangerously using coins to juice up the electrical power, a state of affairs soon wrecking the night’s flicks and placing the technician in serious danger. (Twice along this flop, Petrus is left bleeding and writhing in pain, while putting out the inevitable fires. Carl, the artiste, had left the cameraman with the slogan, “The worst that can happen is that the Temperance Hall blows up.”)

Actually, the theatrical blow-up begins hours before the talkie does a U-turn and becomes a salon. (Here Pauline’s pointless alert, that she had been outnumbered in trying to establish coherence amidst almost complete folly, establishes her lack of grip in face of a peril requiring serious ruthlessness.) Carl’s step-mother announces (Carl roaming the snowbanks), “I have come to take my foolish stepson home…I care for this careless old child. I want to give him a little security…” (Security being the watchword of Anna, the bloodthirsty fascist, in The Passion of Anna. Here, though, as was another possessive mother, in Marionettes, the passion and depth of feeling of the younger woman transcends hard advantages of law and culture, and goes on to somewhat annul the relationship in her preferred way.)

Even more stunning a reversal of the hard-wired clowns are the patrons that night, seeing unbeknownst, the final show. You’d never know from the rich stepmother that riches of sensibility burn in those frozen wastes. But, with the new, brave Peter taking the tickets, and Carl providing little bios for the crew, we come to realize that hard lives can be lovely comets. A teacher from another town has skied to the theatre. A lady whose husband committed suicide looks for enlightenment. A man who can barely walk can would be always counted in the audience, “if it’s a question of culture.” “Superintendent Larsson… comes for the new…” “Fredrick Blom was a cantor and took to drink. He has a small pension and does research into chorales from the area.” (Where the latter sits, a delicate, undulating pattern appears on the wall. Such alertness is not to be gratified by the show. But its traction is a gift to Pauline, going forward.)

The approximation of the illiterate nonsense, in lieu of the broken technology, appalls the reflective gathering, and appalls Petrus and Pauline—the latter having her backside spanked, not to be missed by the supposed wit; along with Vogler, completely breaking down and having to be taken back to where he belongs. (“Your entrails will come out of your shameful orifices…”) At an interlude, one of the less sophisticated souls, comes up to Pauline and asks, “Are there many acts? I was supposed to be home by 11… I wasn’t asking because it was dull…” Over that coffee break, the teacher, seeing fit to provide a touch of maturity and class, asks, “I would like to read something… I found it long ago in a book. It’s the story of a man seeking his way. It’s as if seeking had become the main thing… and was concealing what he was seeking. The author writes, ‘You complain that you cry out, and that God doesn’t reply. You feel imprisoned and you’re afraid that it is a life sentence… [a painted backdrop of hills and verdancy is in view]… although no one has said anything. Consider, then, that you are your own judge and jailor. Prisoner, leave your prison! To your astonishment you will find that no one will stop you. The reality outside prison is indeed terrifying, but never as terrifying as your own anguish down in that locked room…’ [She continues, knowing by heart, since she is in fact the writer]… Take your first step toward freedom. It is not difficult. The second step is more difficult; but never allow yourself to be defeated by your [puny] jailers, who are only your own fear and your own pride.” The applause that follows is rudely interfered with, by Carl (one of those fearful jailers), causing a distraction by urging the folks to have some coffee, and thereupon ordering, “Now we must begin Act II.” Act II has one non-bilious moment. While relating Schubert’s demise, Carl, the careless old child, frightens his baby-soft gut and the Clown and the surreal blue light reappear to glare him down. He says, “I’m sinking.” Then he’s silent for a few moments, listening to the music. “I’m not sinking,” he declares. “I’m rising…” What can Pauline make of this? (He goes on to offer an elderly lady his help with early morning milking.) The dreadful entertainment has a grateful end. The viewers’ exits, however, are absorbing. The teacher comes over to Pauline (whose piano accompaniment in the piece is a rare aspect of seriousness), and tells her, “I want to give you this writing.” (Two glowing windows and the two women in between.) Pauline’s thank-you lacks weight. In many Bergman films, a remarkable effort of sensibility is met with puny response. (We’ll soon find out if the piano player has an A-game.) She’s a bit more touched by the researcher’s explicit praise, “Thank you for the lovely music, Miss. I interpret the Schubert sonata differently. No criticism intended. It was lovely, though somewhat feminine for my taste. But absolutely lovely. Thank you…” Near the end of the departures, a jumbled man, past his bedtime, tells the surviving performers, “This has been a great rendering of real art. Excuse me for saying so, but the play was greater than the film. Thanks, again!” Carl quickly figured out that the patron hated the dog, and enjoyed the story and the company of connoisseurs. His face shows him as, “my foolish stepson.” What can Pauline make of this?

It’s been a ragged night, after a ragged tour, and she makes a fool of herself before a bedtime she might have been able to be balance from. His sister (one of the theatre goers that night), having apparently the family instinct for avoiding any part of art (along with an estranged husband named, Mr. Bergman), invites the thespians (in the name of the stepmother) to stay the night at the estate. Pauline (a few hours before, having charmed the old girl and shared some sherry together) becoming viral, tells the breeder, “How very kind of Mrs. Akerblom. I wouldn’t grant her such a triumph…” The sister-in-law asks Carl, “Come and do some conjuring,” Carl having made far more progress as an uncle than an artist. It also seems that the uncle excels in diplomacy; but that, to our shock, is far from the facts.

In the night, in the busted theatre, with the spent wax looking like a monster, the spirit of a poetic outrage flares again. She steps beyond a curtain, close to the chair where Pauline was sleeping. Carl wakes up, the non-event with his stepmother festering like a mortal wound. She, now awake, and knowing she had been crude in the way the film was crude, she asks, “Are you angry about something?” His reply—“Are you going to send me back to the asylum?”—conceals an agenda of advantage and humiliation. In a flash, she guarantees that he can forever be a clown. “Come over here. Come…” Carl places his head on her chest. “You’re lying!” he blurts out, like a child. “You never know the truth!” Her, “Do as you like. Just don’t think I’m afraid,” bristles with her disgust with his personal superficiality and stunted, vomitistically precious family. He pounces, pressing his thumbs under her eyes. She asks. “Am I going to die now?” He melodramatically replies, “Perhaps we both are.” She then fires back, “That’s all right with me!” That leads Carl to take away his thumbs, and he shuts his eyes and breathes heavily. He falls to his knees. She looks outside for that wise light, only now having an incisive carnal taste of her antimajoritarian direction. He pouts, “I would like to say that my step-mother is an amiable lady” His legacy concerning wholesome and clever relatives must, from her, find a way beyond hate. Carl on the screen: “For Christ’s sake, it’s my nursery, Pauline… Then we would have sat for yet another while by the fire… She [the step-mother] would have taken you by the wrist and thanked you for having taken responsibility for me…” A Lost Boy. Would she always be his servant? The Clown makes a trio in the uncanny night. (A lost trio?) Katarina would leave Peter to his Teddy Bear, in Marionettes. What will Pauline do about Carl? Here, he would go on to approaching slashing his wrists with scissors. (The staff of the mental hospital where Peter ends up notes that the once-executive must be always under scrutiny against suicide.) She would use the chorus-cliché, “If you die, I don’t want to go on living.” On a more promising note, she declares, “You know you can wake me whenever you want.” But also she has to assimilate that this is a blow-up which has occurred hundreds of times. She gets up from the chair where she was sleeping. A face is imprinted in the cloth. She places her face upon his bended head. Her fingers move into a new site. How about the rest of her?

We have ample evidence to see that Pauline, like Katarina, will make a great change beyond the film per se. Whereas Peter had come to a point where he could not sustain any relationship with Katarina, it is possible that the “conjurer” has enough love on the ball to suit Pauline’s needs. Although, within the madhouse of Carl’s and Vogler’s drivel, she could not think effectively, there are agencies lovingly nudging her to her real presence. One, as already known, becomes a fusion of her moving fingers, with moving, dynamics, itself. When placed to perfection, a world beyond advantage (beyond religion and science) comes along. A third force having been subjected to mass nullity. Moreover, a towering power had been put into her frazzled hands that last night of the crazy promenade concert, by an out-of-the-way genius—in fact, an oracle, a skiing oracle. (Bergman’s last and most thrilling of a long series of oracles tolerating a poisonous, ridiculous normality. As a sidebar, though totally lacking serious reflection, Vogler and Carl [despite hiding their outlaw verve] knew that something important had been overlooked.) The backwoods teacher had given Pauline a map to the country of her true home, a country in love with disinterested “knack” (a best gift, in the film, Marionettes). The Clown, with her deadly and joyous knack of revealing that most of humankind cannot countenance its reality, never really registers (on film) with Pauline, while she drives Carl to near suffocation three times, during that last hopeless night. But with this lonely, beset upon woman-protagonist being a survivor as well as a victim, things can, in fact, happen for the best.

For the first and only time in Bergman’s career (this being his swan song) he encourages others to show what his protagonist could do, beyond reaching out to his partner and his family with civility. Carl, never to attain being a figure of personal love, perhaps would attain being a figure implicated in gusto along lines of her cosmic love. The oracle counsels a “first step,” away from cowardice, away from the norm. That coincides with the loaded hand (or other bodily features becoming a switch), the motion of elicitation from a cosmos needing finite love to fully complete the knack (that “menace” of creative, emotive force, being regarded as impious by the billions of religionists and being regarded as “soft,” frivolous, by the billions of smart, crude and intrinsically cowardly drones of science—well aware, on the fly, of emotive gratifications, but reflexively trashed as a secondary item). That loaded hand which we share carries two intertwined galaxies: a thrust of delight in dance with inventions of that play—as with the beauties of sunset, which happily dovetail to our eventual death, our eventual, loving, total disappearance; and a thrust to cue the myriad crafts to create the riches of sentience. Our option, therewith, to build when the vagaries of Lost Boys and Lost Girls permit; and a harbor of play, when they don’t.

Pauline, certainly knowing much about perils, could cull from Carl his range of conjuring. Could he appreciate her skills and her needs? Impossible! As impossible as Peter Pan in his cell, flitting hopelessly with his hands against a bright window in search of an adult traction, in From the Life of the Marionettes. Finding rich possibilities in others becomes a career for her, a career she very well might come to understand as impossible (despite fine pleasures), in light of all that has been already cemented on planet earth.

#ingmar bergman

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satireknight · 7 years

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TMNT S01E04 - Hot Rodding Teenagers from Dimension X

AND... just like that, the titles started getting silly.

So the Turtles are planning to turn Baxter’s van into a mobile tracking station, using the equipment in Baxter’s lab. Is this legal? This doesn’t seem legal. I know technically they’re vigilantes, but this seems a little thefty.

So they do what anyone would do: they push the entire van up the stairs, and then Donatello rips the entire side of the van off like he was peeling an orange. Explain to me again why Michelangelo couldn’t get out of ropes in the last episode.

It also turns out that Baxter’s been arrested offscreen because “the authorities didn’t appreciate it when he tried to take over the city with his Mouser robots.” Well, that happens when you print your name on your murderous metallic T-rexes. Wait, take over the city? They didn’t do that! They just tried to kill Splinter and ate an apartment building!

Since Donatello is modifying an entire van all by himself while everyone else stands around chatting, he inevitably starts asking why THEY have to do ALL the work of stopping Shredder. I’d be asking why I have to do all the technical stuff, since presumably one of the others can work a wrench.

How has the Technodrome not completely hollowed out the area under New York, causing a catastrophic collapse?

Krang has finally had enough and is refusing to give Shredder any more new toys until Shredder ponies up a pair of opposable thumbs. Shredder acts high and mighty by saying that the body is just one of several experiments he’s doing... which includes more mutants.

I can see the benefits of a bat, since they presumably would have sonar or something like that. But why a lizard? Or a mole? How are those better than the ones you already have?

Shredder then remembers that oh yeah, Krang is from another dimension, and since that dimension is full of nonstop war, he can just get weapons from THAT place. Of course, since Krang also has an army sitting on the other side, he might end up with angry soldiers ripping his face off. Krang is somehow horrified by the idea of what might come through the portal.

In “Donatello is underappreciated” news, Donatello has just managed to whip up a personalized, highly-decorated, weaponized vehicle in mere hours. How do his bros respond to this? They want more shit like higher ceilings and pizza ovens so they can mess around while driving. Amazingly he doesn’t kill them all with his wrench set, and they careen down the stairs and straight into a fire hydrant.

Shredder is apparently expecting to just open the portal right into an armory, but instead two flying cars come zooming through. These are the Neutrinos.

And I don’t know if people will agree or not, but I’ve always hated the Neutrinos, the futuristic alien elf people, even when I was a little kid. Part of it was their voices; they always sounded like they had a sore throat. Another was the antiquated slang that they used, which... I never understood the reasons for and is kinda cringey.

But the most glaring reason for me was that they never felt like complete characters. Think about it: when you strip away the weird way they talk, what are you left with? Who are they? What shapes them as people? Answer: we don’t know, because they’re not really developed. They are all basically the same bland empty character. Kala is particularly bad, because her only narrative function is for Michelangelo to occasionally crush on her. She’s not a real character on her own.

Let’s just say I prefer the Neutrinos in the IDW comic, where they actually have some character and function instead of “we’re fun-loving teenagers and the grown-ups oppress us!”

sigh

So they’re chased by a pair of rock warriors in a flying tank, and that sounded so much more metal in my head.

Rocksteady and Bebop blow up the tank, and a firefight breaks out as the Neutrinos escape. The Rock soldiers encounter Krang, who is upset that they’re seeing him naked.... and by naked, I mean just a brain on a little wheelie stand. Apparently he “lost” his body when he was banished to Earth... although I’m not sure how or why.

And then the awkward writing kicks in: Krang and the warriors talk with horror about how the Neutrinos hate war, won’t fight, and “encourage people to have fun.” Perish the thought. Oh Lord, the heavy-handedness is making my brain hurt.

Oh hai World Trade Center. You’re making me feel awkward and a little depressed.

So the Neutrinos drive right out of a subway entrance, and the Turtles immediately start chasing them, ultimately leaping right into their cars and forcing them to land. But then they find out that the Neutrinos have no idea who Shredder is, and are just a group of shrill-voiced tiny elves who unironically use terms like “daddio.”

So the Turtles do what any person would do with alien visitors: they take ‘em to... an arcade. Why? I have no idea.

April sparks off a conversation about Dimension X, and another silly “all the grown-ups don’t want young kids like us to have fun!” conversation takes place. Look, is there any child with six brain cells who won’t feel pandered to by that sort of thing? Especially with idiotic ideas like them being chased because they trespassed on a battlefield.... um, getting onto a battlefield is its own punishment, because... you are going to die. Nobody’s going to stop fighting just to kill YOU.

Just then the Rock Warriors torpedo the building and put the scene out of my misery. By coincidence, all the humans in the building suddenly evaporate... so I’m going to assume they’re dead.

So the Neutrinos finally do something useful and start firing at the Rock Warriors, and Leonardo manages to wreck their vehicle with his amazing insta-growing sword.

That’s easily twelve feet long.

Just then the explosions, energy blasts and probable deaths of multiple people cause the police to show up. I wonder why.

Just then Leonardo mentions how weird it is that Shredder is able to connect to a different dimension.... NOW? YOU’RE GOING TO ASK THAT NOW? Shouldn’t you have asked that back before you were playing pinball and listening to the Neutrinos bitch about how mommy and daddy won’t let them zoom around in circles being obnoxious?

So yes, the Turtles finally break out of their “fun” brainfog and realize that they could be facing a global invasion, which is kind of important. It’s about time that tenuous plot finally reared its head.

“This is my Magic 8 Ball!”

No, it’s actually a weather-making device. And then they’re attacked by the NYPD, who must be really fucking jaded if they don’t react to a couple of guys apparently made out of rock.

The Neutrinos tell the Turtles and Splinter about Krang, which explains the whole talking brain thing that came up in the last episode. Wow, that might have been good information to get from them BEFORE YOU WENT TO A FUCKING ARCADE. Sorry, these characters really piss me off.

Oh, and Michelangelo is crushing in Kala. Why? Dunno, because they’ve barely interacted at ALL, so I’m going to assume it’s because she’s the only girl he’s ever encountered who isn’t way taller than him. Also, her only defining trait is that she cries.

Wait, since when did they have a hydraulic platform inside a phone booth?! How do you even instal that without people noticing?

So the Technodrome that they previously spent hours or days searching for is now something they can just drive up to, and they are able to fly those flying cars right inside with no resistance whatsoever. Of course, while Donatello is diddling with the portal, the mook squad comes in and causes trouble for them, while the other Turtles encounter Shredder, Krang and the Rock Warriors.

I have no idea why Krang is bouncing with joy. It seems premature.

Also the Technodrome has a giant floor section with vanishing panels. Why?

Finally the dimensional portal opens, which means the Neutrinos and their bad writing are going as well.

“There’s a barrel of silicone lubricant over there!” How did you know that? And why do I not want to know WHY it’s there?

“We want to stay with you, and have FUN!” Can you see why I hate this character with a passion?

The Neutrino with the gray hair says that they have to keep fighting Krang in Dimension X... which seems to go against two things we’ve been told. One is that Krang hasn’t been involved in the fighting since being banished, and the other is that the Neutrinos just mess around and don’t participate in any kind of conflict because it isn’t fuuuuuuuuuun.

So they zoom through the portal, and Michelangelo gets teary-eyed over the departure of someone he’s exchanged maybe ten words with over the span of a single day. I care sooooo much right now.

But unfortunately the weather-maker is still causing sufficiently bad weather that the ground is actually shaking. Right now there’s a friggin’ tornado in the streets.Leonardo handles it the way you’d expect - he leaps out of a flying car and almost dies so he can slice the thing in half.

And having pussed out epicly during the fight, Shredder finally throws a fit and declares that he’ll make Krang’s new body for him if Krang kills the Turtles.

And back in the Turtles’ lair, for some reason they’re back to sleeping in a quadruple bunk, while April reads them the same children’s story over and over again.

VERDICT:

This story is a big step down from the previous three, partly because it feels so schizophrenic. Parts of it, like that bedtime-story ending and the Neutrinos whining, feel incredibly juvenile and pandering to the child audience. But the other half is an actual threat of alien invasion and a dangerous weapon.

And the two don’t mesh very well, which often makes it feel like the important plot is being sidelined for kiddie antics. It really just sticks out, especially since the characters we’ve been shown are not really the kind to respond to serious new developments by just kicking back in an arcade.

I already ranted about the Neutrinos and what shallow half-characters they are, but I gotta say again, they don’t really add much of anything to the story beyond a shallow insta-crush, infodumpage and some aerial action scenes.

One thing that was much better in this episode is the animation, which has stepped back up from the last episode. And it has some nice moments like the police and military taking on the Rock Warriors, which gave us some good conflict and a sense that the world outside is bigger than just the Turtles and their issues.

Speaking of their issues, despite my bitching it was kinda fun to see the origins of their van, even if poor Donatello remains horribly underappreciated. He’s the kind of guy who could build a particle accelerator out of toaster parts, and people would complain because it doesn’t have an embedded clock.

Grade: C-

#tmnt #tmnt 1987 #teenage mutant ninja turtles #satireknight #donatello #michelangelo #raphael #leonardo

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williamsjoan · 5 years

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Just Cause 4 Review — Grappling with Monotony

Usually you’ll find in my reviews that if a game has solid gameplay mechanics, then I’ll more than likely be a fan of it. While there are far more factors that make up a quality gaming experience other than the gameplay alone, it’s often one the biggest ones when it comes to my own personal enjoyment of a game.

Well, at least I thought this was the case until I sunk my teeth into Just Cause 4, and it essentially betrayed all of these preconceived notions. Even though Just Cause 4 is fun to play at times and its mechanics are pretty polished up, never have I felt that a game so poorly placed an emphasis on the player to take advantage of these functions. Just Cause 4 has a pretty world and a bunch of toys to use, but the act of actually playing through its monotonous and stale missions made me question whether or not I should put the game down more than once before eventually rolling the credits.

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Let’s start with the positives though before I get too into the weeds about what it is that Just Cause 4 does so terribly. As I mentioned at the top, hey: this game is pretty fun to play, particularly after you get past its rough opening. If you have prior experience with a Just Cause game, then you’re likely familiar with protagonist Rico Rodriguez and his many gadgets, such as the grappling hook, parachute, and wingsuit, all of which return this time around. The core act of traveling around the new island of Solis in JC4 continues to be a joy once you learn how to properly use your grappling hook and wingsuit in tandem to gain speed and momentum. It’s also still fun to glide over enemies with your parachute and rain grenades down upon them like a madman.

“Your own enjoyment in these scenarios is often left up to you to decide, which is both a good and bad thing.”

In addition to all of these lovely little knickknacks returning, a set of new tools have also come to Just Cause 4 because, well, this is a sequel after all and that’s kind of what you do in video game sequels. The booster and airlift gadgets are two new add-ons to your grappling hook that you can use now, and they can make for some pretty funny situations, provided you’re creative enough to use each properly. As you probably guessed from their names alone, the airlift device is essentially just a balloon that you can attach to anything that will then lift said thing you attached it to into the air — it’s pretty much just the Fulton from Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. As for the booster, it’s a rocket that you can also tether to dang near everything and send it hurtling in whatever direction the rocket is aimed opposite from.

Along with a variety of different guns that range from your typical assault rifles to more exotic weaponry like a rail gun, these are the tools that you roughly have at your disposal over the course of the entirety of the game. Combat situations can play out however you like, from straightforward encounters that just result in you shooting everyone in sight to utilizing more advanced tactics that could include airlifting a red barrel and then attaching boosters to it to send it flying into a group of enemies. Your own enjoyment in these scenarios is often left up to you to decide, which is both a good and bad thing.

This is where we start to tiptoe into what my biggest problem is with Just Cause 4: its mission and game structure as a whole. It only takes about 2-3 hours until you’ve basically seen most of what you’ll be doing over the course of the entire campaign of Just Cause 4. As you begin to liberate the island of Solis, you’ll complete a mission or two, take over small regions for yourself and your army, and then look to advance to the next nearby region and do the same thing. Every now and then you’ll liberate a region of the island that will then give you a main story mission to complete to further the narrative.

The main problem with this structure, other than the fact that it’s as derivative and as mind-numbing as can be, is that nearly every single mission you’ll be doing along the way is boring as all get-out. You’ll be doing variants of hack the terminal, pull the lever with your grappling hook, save the rebellion soldiers, and other menial tasks in these missions time and time again for somewhere close to twenty hours until you beat the game.

“…every single mission you’ll be doing along the way is boring as all get-out.”

Not only do I have an issue with these missions just flat out sucking though, but they totally undermine the nifty gameplay mechanics that I do genuinely think have so much potential — and that’s what bums me out. At almost no point in any of Just Cause 4‘s missions are you presented with a scenario in which Avalanche Studios is trying to encourage you to approach a situation in a cool manner that makes use of your airlift device and boosters. Instead, each task is so open-ended to the point that they have almost no structure. And this is what I was talking about.

Yes, Just Cause 4 gives you the freedom to approach combat and taking down baddies in a variety of novel ways that aren’t really seen in other games. But because you’re never really nudged in the direction of doing that at any point (and because it’s just easier) most of your combat encounters, like mine, will probably just result in you repeatedly shooting everyone in site and grappling around from point A to point B — and that’s not really fun.

It’s worth mentioning that there are some larger-scale missions that feature some of the storm sequences–tornadoes, sandstorms, thunderstorms–from the trailers of Just Cause 4, but even these moments ended up being way more lacking that I had expected them to be. Sure, it’s impressive to see this massive tornado plowing down everything in its path in front of you, but the sheer spectacle of these moments never goes much further than that.

So if the story missions and liberation missions aren’t very fun, then how are the side quests, you ask? Well, they’re just as trite in a lot of ways. There are three variations of side objectives in Just Cause 4 that you can do for some of Rico’s companions, but the actual tasks associated with each feels more like mundane filler content meant to pad out the experience. Finding hidden temples, completing wingsuit gliding challenges by flying through rings (just like in Superman 64), and blowing up blimps are just a few examples of some of the side content that there is to do. If you do enough tasks associated with each quest giver, then you can unlock modifications for your grappling hook attachments. But again, the game never really encourages you to mix things up anyway, so you won’t feel like you’re really missing out by not gaining more mods.

There’s also a story in Just Cause 4 but I couldn’t tell you anything interesting or worthwhile from it, mainly because I was fighting off falling asleep through most of the game’s cutscenes. While having a poor narrative arc isn’t really anything new in the Just Cause series, I think what I was most disappointed by how serious it decided to present everything. Just Cause 4 is unabashedly kind of a dumb game, in a good way. It encourages you with its gameplay to blow everything up in sight and toy around with your enemies rather than taking them as a serious threat. This wackiness never really carries over to the story though in turn, which disappointed me. If somehow there ends up being a Just Cause 5, I’d prefer seeing less of a straightforward, standard narrative and instead something that is self-aware and leans more into its own stupidity.

“Just Cause 4 had so much more potential than the final product we were given…”

To end on a more positive note, I will say that Solis was a rad location to journey about. Not only does it look quite pretty, but the region’s four distinct biomes kept things at least feeling fresh for the entirety of my stay. It’s a clear step up graphically and in terms of performance compared to Just Cause 3, which notably had a lot of performance issues on consoles. I will say that I still had a few frame dips occasionally–most notably when looking at the game’s map, strangely enough–but for the most part it ran about as I expected it to on my Xbox One X, at least during actual gameplay. Character models in some cutscenes, however, were a whole different story and looked outright ugly a lot of times.

If you’ve played a past Just Cause game, then you likely have experienced all of the best moments that Just Cause 4 is putting on display. A new region, some new gear, and a new checklist of tasks to accomplish isn’t enough to make up for the grueling hours you’ll have to put in doing the same tiresome missions over and over again just to reach its conclusion. Just Cause 4 had so much more potential than the final product we were given, and while it’s still fun to goof around with the toys it gives you, that’s about where the enjoyment begins and ends.

The post Just Cause 4 Review — Grappling with Monotony by Logan Moore appeared first on DualShockers.

Just Cause 4 Review — Grappling with Monotony published first on https://timloewe.tumblr.com/

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stewy497 · 6 years

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Stew Reviews - Dust: An Elysian Tail

What’s this, two reviews within a week of each other? What absolute madness is this? Could it be that Stew finally grew a sense of discipline and decided to start posting consistently? To that I say, dream on Mister Strawman. I had been planning this review for some time, and the Switch release of Dust: An Elysian Tail last month presented an excellent opportunity to finally tackle it, but at the same time I’d already planned out the introduction to my inFamous: Second Son review, and I didn’t want to miss the window of relevance as badly as I usually do. So, I took the logical option and decided to push myself, just this once. But enough about my scheduling habits, we’re here to talk about games, so let’s do that.

SPOILERS AHEAD. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

As with so many other similar independent projects, Dust: An Elysian Tail is a 2D Metroidvania hack-and-slash platformer, developed by Humble Hearts game studio – that is to say, one dude named Dean apparently trying to look more popular than he really is. As much as I tease him for that however, I can’t help but admire the guy’s dedication to the project – the core gameplay is solidly constructed, the visuals in particular I imagine to have taken a lot of work, and the story manages to apply itself to some surprisingly mature and complex themes despite the slightly childish presentation.

Dust takes place in a world populated with anthropomorphised animals and is set against the backdrop of a war-torn land consisting, against all odds, of mostly lush, green forests and meadows. You play as the enigmatic Dust, a faceless teal-furred canine with an oversized hat and a mysterious backstory. Without any memories of his past, he embarks on a quest to rediscover his true identity at the behest of Arah, a magical talking sword, and a small orange bat/rabbit thing named Fidget. Yes, the plot starts out somewhere between Disney Classics and My First Fursona – a comparison that only worsens with the introduction of soul merging and induces flashbacks to the Final Fantasy VII House - but over the course of the game it acquires more depth and deviates towards more interesting themes.

The aforementioned war is more of a looming threat than something actually present in the foreground for most of the game, but as the plot unfolds it’s threaded through a series of encounters which showcase just how far-reaching the conflict is, as guilty and innocent alike are affected by it. The point where I decided I was fully on-board with it was during the second act, where despite their best attempts to avert catastrophe, Dust and Fidget are unable to save the life of a dying villager – something that Dust doesn’t take particularly well. The sequence works because it’s a subversion of the usual narrative, and Dust’s grief and frustration with himself reveals a more introspective element not often seen in this sort of story. The contrast with the cartoonish visuals only serves to make it more effective, and it’s only slightly undermined by the voice acting.

I wouldn’t say that it’s awful by any means, but there’s a certain amateurish, almost caricature-like quality to many of the voices in Dust. The titular character himself is by far the worst offender, as he seems to confuse dramatic, tortured delivery with standing too close to the microphone. Every time he delivers a “wh” sound it comes out like he’s just finished running a half-marathon and listening to it makes me want to tear my own ears out. And considering how many whats, whys and hows the average clueless amnesiac character throws around, that’s a lot of tearing.

On the gameplay side of things, there’s not much to say that I haven’t already said. You jump around on collections of floating rocks a whole bunch, sometimes there’s a group of enemies between you and where you want to be, so you start mashing buttons until the path is clear again. In all honesty, while the combat is perfectly functional and somewhat entertaining, I feel like there could have been more to it – for a magic sword, the list of available combos is rather disappointingly short; light combo, ground throw, air launch, air throw, plunging attack. You’ll have seen every one of them by the time you reach the fourth screen.

Transitioning between moves feels sticky at times too, since many of them have long animation cycles that can’t be cancelled out of, which tends to leave you vulnerable or waste crucial seconds that results in a particularly long streak of hits ending prematurely. Then again, it does mean that the combat demands some degree of skill, as button mashing is more likely to leave you vulnerable than a carefully executed string of movements, which is part of what keeps it entertaining. Annoyingly Dust has inherited that quality of Symphony of the Night wherein the protagonist is thrown back by any incoming damage, which is particularly annoying during the time trial levels. It also makes Reed’s quest almost impossible if you don’t prepare for it, since the required revival stone is expensive and grinding up cash simply isn’t feasible while Dust is constantly taking damage.

The platforming is fairly bog-standard as metroidvania goes, but while in other examples of the genre exploration is demanded to make progress, it feels far less necessary in Dust as the progression is fairly linear. The movement abilities typical of the genre like the double jump or wall climb are simply given to you as you need them. The only purpose exploration serves in Dust is to hunt for treasures and secrets, making it less “exploration” and more “arbitrary backtracking for the sake of 100% completion”.

A treasure chest might give you some decent gear, but enemies also drop crafting blueprints regularly and the shop system makes it trivially easy to acquire the necessary components; any time you sell a material to the shop, it is catalogued and periodically restocked with no input required on your part. You don’t even need to visit a shop to buy materials, since an early quest allows you to craft items without visiting the blacksmith and grants you access to a portable shop to boot. Granted, grinding for the rarer materials would have been annoying, but this makes it zero effort to complete the item-gathering quests.

And as long as I’m complaining, there’s also a secret room in the snowy mountain stage which is literally impossible to find without a walkthrough; you have to find a cliff face in the middle of the level with an hourglass carved into it, and deduce that if you kneel in front of it for ten seconds, a tornado will appear from offscreen and teleport you to the secret room. Yeah, it’s poking fun at Castlevania 2’s obscure puzzle solutions, but acknowledging that what you’re doing is stupid does not equal biting satire, Dean.

Lastly, the final level isn’t great. The lion’s share of it is spent cutting a path through the big bad’s soldiers to confront him, most of which can block your attacks even when lying prone and concussed by a sliding tackle to the ankles. It completely obliterates any sense of flow in the combat, and, contrary to the rest of the game, makes button mashing a valid option. The final boss probably would have been about perfect if he wasn’t supported by these hangnails.

Additionally, since this is the final confrontation in a long and bloody war, the game sends you in with a squad of NPC support fighters. All this does, however, is clutter the battlefield and make any given encounter impossible to read. I’m not even sure the NPCs are capable of damaging the enemies, but like I said, I couldn’t tell through the clouds of dust and waving spears.

For all my whining, however, I can’t deny that I’ve enjoyed my time with Dust each time I’ve gone back to it, and if there is a second instalment planned for the world of Falana, then I await it eagerly. The beautiful visuals, gorgeous soundtrack and compelling story do a lot to make up for the game’s more annoying aspects. If you’ve an itch or a particular soft spot for this sort of 2D action-platformer then it is a strong contender that I’d definitely recommend.

#platformer #hack and slash #fantasy #story rich #furry #anthro #humble hearts #review

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