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thominospizza · 7 months

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The Bizarre Junji Ito Netflix Show (Japanese Tales of the Macabre)

Whilst I was browsing aimlessly on Nefflicks, I saw underneath "Related to" on Satoshi Kon's Paprika, a listing entitled "Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre".

Junji Ito? I thought. How haven't I heard about this? I guess I haven't been really up to date with animé as a whole scene for quite some time now. I also know the diaspora of the animé fanbase generally turn their nose up at adaptations of Junji Ito - which is understandable. They've had their fingers burned too many times.

But it's Junji Ito. I like Junji Ito. I like things he makes and I've never actually seen the previous adaptations and I am still looking forward to the monochrome Uzumaki animé when it eventually comes out. My fingers are essentially burn-free at this point.

Will that change?

Well, I decided to take notes on every episode and my thoughts, emotions and experiences to document more of a commentary on the product. I think with horror, there is no other way.

Hi! This is Thom from the future and past me didn't realize how fucking long this article would be despite failing to recognize it's about 20 individual stories across 12 episodes because Netflix dodge paying their production.

Brace yourself.

Diary

1: "The Strange Hikizuri Siblings"

This starts and I am interested in the weird uncanny vibe but I am immediately skeptical. Reason being that supernatural, paranormal stuff just leaves me cold and in a bad way. I can't buy into it ever. Mainly because I do not believe in ghosts at all so I feel left at the door. For me, I am only interested in horror that is grounded in what's possible and if it's impossible, it has to be very fucking good or surreal and out of this world. (This was just seance gone wrong shite)

But I'll give it a chance.

So far, I like the uncomfortable nature of the family being in hierarchical abandon. The inmates are running the asylum and you can see even that the most normal of the Hikizuri siblings are fucked up. Kind of like the family from Bob's Burgers except they are all smoking bath salts.

The protagonist is so irritatingly basic and simple. I can't remember her name. She wants to photograph ghosts, has a seance because the lanky nerd fancies her then it turns out its fake and she never speaks to them again.

You think its going the way of the big brother losing his grip on reality and doing some dreadful killings but it kind of just doesn't have an ending.

The dead father comes out of the young boy for some reason and then just goes back into the grave and then it's just over.

Are ghosts real or not? I dunno. This felt like it was going somewhere fun and exciting but it was just cheesy and stupid by the end. Dumb. Felt like a waste of time.

2: "The Story of the Mysterious Tunnel"

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the OP sucks. I don't normally comment on that stuff because I find it pretty redundant. Its like those hyperactive edits of anime tiddies over trap music you find on Youtube with Miss. Nagatoro in the thumbnail.

It took me about two minutes to find an example of what I was looking for.

This reminds of those really boring indie horror films where they think it would be really tense if absolutely shit-all happened until the last five minutes and this is exactly what this was.

I really liked the ending but most of it was boring, middle-of-the-road stuff about a spooky tunnel sucking people in or making them go mad or something. A tunnel being one of the most stupid places to get lost in as it is an enclosed linear space that you can see right through to end in broad day light.

But it was over quick and the ending just scratched an itch. I do like psychedelic, unreal stuff which I realize does contradict my opinion about the first one. I just think ghosts are lame. This wasn't really ghosts but more like a body-snatching which is fun.

3. "Ice Cream Bus"

If this is some Candyman thing...

Okay, it wasn't really.

I actually really loved this one. It was short, sweet and simple. A really easy concept to empathize with. Subverted expectations. Thought it was a really interesting view of balancing responsibility for your child and trust of the world around you.

A genuinely nightmarish idea. So good that I don't really want to talk about it. I would just like you to watch it yourself if you haven't.

4. "Hanging Balloon"

This one is immediately more eerie and almost like gothic horror. I like the colour palette of this one a lot because it extenuates Ito's bleakness well which I feel like the others haven't. I'm trying to separate these episodes from any original material because I don't feel like it's particularly helpful or fair. The production company is aiming to create some animé equivalent of Tales of the Unexpected or The Twilight Zone that's marketable towards your average Black Mirror viewer.

But oh no, its more ghost shite.

But speaking of Black Mirror, it does remind me of the latest series that focuses more on paranormal activity and the occult. That is until it falls into apocalyptic horror that I can't decide if it's preposterous or genius. The idea is actually fantastic but I can't help but think of the Futurama movie "Beast with a Billion Backs" except instead it's balloons that hang people.

It's the best one so far if with a few hiccups. Eerie and creepy. Joyously doom-filled. Out of all the terrible "suicide disease" ideas that have been done in recent years, this is by far and away the best one.

5. "Four x Four Walls"

This is iconic Junji Ito. Immediately recognisable. Surely, it must be a good-un.

Wrong. You should've been paying attention. Whilst the source material focuses more on paranoia, this just comes across as weirdness for weirdness' sake. It only forebodes quirkiness which you could argue is a consequence of the theme. But it's too silly.

I don't know if the directors only saw Souichi being a wacky weirdo but it just comes across as obnoxious and frustrating for the length of it.

Like the first one, it feels like it goes nowhere and is a waste of your time. I don't really like Souichi terribly much anyway outside of the iconic panels of his diseased gob that remain timeless even in the face of what is a mildly mediocre animé showing so far.

6. "The Sandman's Lair"

This reminds me of that bit in No More Heroes (?) where an animé villain cuts himself in front of a child for fun. I don't know why.

This is kind of like a Resident Evil/BioHazard brand of horror that I don't really like where some weird, non-specific, gellatinous monster is trapped in a guy.

I didn't really go for this one mainly because you can't really do this kind of story in this short-form package because there's no time to get attached to anybody. This was packed in with the last story and it felt like a complete afterthought.

I don't why they bothered. It's like they didn't even try.

7. "Intruder"

This feels like a classic concept of strange different boy who is obviously a humunculus-alien type creature masquerading as a human, yet the main characters seem completely disengaged with how weird the situation actually is.

However, I'm noticing a really annoying pattern.

They all shoehorn mention of ghosts in the first 30 seconds even if the plot doesn't actually contain them and its pretty tiresome to be treated like an idiot by the dialogue.

IT JUST ENDED OUT OF NOWHERE AS I WAS WRITING THIS. WHY? I'M NOT SCARED JUST BY CONCEPTS AND IDEAS. JUST FINISH THE STORY.

FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.

It's starting to get infuriating now. They have done this a couple of times where they present an idea and say "Wouldn't this be weird and creepy if this happened?" and then it just ends.

It's a shame because I was actually hooked and enticed by this as well. It was essentially like a Stephen King horror with four students investigating a weird occurance except it just ends before the third act with no conclusion. Oh well.

You are allowed to pull this kind of punch but it has to be done very, very well and this was undeserving.

This is Thom from the future again who decided to rewatch this in the English dub whilst I work on this article (I am currently trapped in a Junji Ito rabbit hole) and I will say it's better on second viewing. But not by much. It's another one that needed to be fleshed out more but again, Neppix dodges paying for extended production.

8. "Long Hair in the Attic"

This was... captivating. It was very good at building an intrigue and packages the kind of revenge poltergeist a lá Ju-On in a cool and interesting way. Like the Ice Cream Bus episode, it does it's job and goes. Feels like nothing is wasted.

The unexplained is mysterious and intriguing in a way that serves purpose to the narrative instead of making you just feel unsatisfied.

9. "Mold"

This feels more like traditional horror. A classic "character returns to his house and its disgusting and mortifying for unexplained reasons"

But the isolation and dread is sucked out when another human is introduced. His teacher ruined the house and he doesn't know why and I don't know why he gave his house to him either.

But there is MOLD. EVERYWHERE. BECAUSE THATS THE NAME OF THE CHAPTER.

I really love the atmosphere and the monochrome look this has.

Then the most obvious conclusion in the world happens.

It's fine.

10. "Library Vision"

It's about libraries.

This is kind of like a gothic, Edgar Allan Poe-like tale of manifested paranoia but it's almost as if they are mocking the style by being deliberately obtuse and overly pretentious.

It does very little to sell you on it's premise and it just feels like you're watching Downton Abbey or Penny Dreadful or something like that.

My main takeaway is that it might've been a good story if it was constructed and storyboarded better. It just comes across as rushed.

I get it but it was just a little too silly. Again.

11. "Tomb Town"

This one is a whole episode story. I was about to say that was a sign of something but on reflection, the length doesn't really have anything to do with the quality. Some of the longer ones have been boring like the Hikizuri Siblings but Hanging Balloons was long but it was great. Ice Cream Bus was short but effective yet the Four x Four Walls story was short and a fat nothing-sandwich with no crust.

This is clearly going for an American teen horror slasher vibe until it becomes obviously a commentary about Japan's ghost town epidemic.

It's literally a town full of tombstones because so many people have died, specifically in road accidents and theres constant questions of the philosophy of death traditions. Should we value death if it happens so often? Should we value it all? It's actually interesting and I say "actually" because I was expecting it to be a gory mess.

The central plot is around the fact that the two main characters hit and killed someone at the start and are having to hide it whilst the town are looking for them. Also that in this universe, people turn into tombstones when they die; kind of like in The Dark Hour in Persona 3. It's captivating enough but I'm constantly worrying something either stupid or predictable is going to happen.

...

Okay, it was sort of predictable but I preferred the way they ended this kind of story because the temptation is to have some elongated trauma for the tragic protagonist but the implication of trauma is far more effective in my opinion.

The narrative has executed what it's needed to do to deliver the point. The result is an unsettling cold feeling as opposed to like Ju-On ("The Grudge") where there is incessant hauntings of revenge from beyond the grave.

12. "Layers of Terror"

This has a shit name. I would pen this on my short story submissions for English Language in Year 8.

I don't know why they couldn't call it Layers of Fear but whatever.

I can't really concentrate on the concept of the plot because it reminds me too much of Limmy's short story "The Size of Sally" in which a woman incomprehensibly has infinite versions of herself underneath her skin.

It's so weird to have a curse plotline and people just accepting it like it's an illness or something. By "people", I mean doctors. The curse being that people have versions of their younger self trapped inside themself. I really love the idea of a mother trying to get at the baby version of their daughter. The way they execute this is amazingly weird and sickly that it actually does make my stomach feel weird. Horror doesn't do that to me.

That was my favourite one.

13. "The Thing that Drifted Ashore"

It's a mysterious fish thing that's like the episode "Mobius Dick" from Futurama where an unidentified creature swallows boats loads of people and keeps them alive indefinitely. Except this time, they've become weird zombie creatures. The episode is over now.

No plot. Just concept. Concept scary. Story hard. Dumb

Next one.

14. "Tomie's Photos"

I love how immediately weird and distasteful this is right from the off. A woman is just selling consensual photographs of men for money yet It seems so alien. It slowly gets seemingly more and more risqué and uncomfortable. There's something so unsettling about this and I cannot put my finger on it. It's probably because it feels like an animé in the middle of this horror anthology.

Oh. That's why.

There's something so ancestral about the feeling I felt when I realized.

It actually caught me off guard. I didn't realize what I was watching.

I know I said I wasn't going to compare the anime to the source material but I have to in this one instance because it's a story that's important to me.

I feel like they did everything right for a bitesize taste of the Tomie Kawakami story but they somewhat ruined it with the goofy music and the mediocre voice acting at the end. It probably isn't the best adaptation in this particular series of animé but in terms of source material, it's probably the best.

I adore horror playing on paranoia and mistrust and fear of the truth. That's why I love Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Alien. Junji Ito is fabulous at creating a universe where you can't trust reality as an innocent bystander. This story does it really well and I urge you to read the source material.

I was too busy soying at the adaptation of to write anything meaningful. I'm sorry. It had a whole episode to itself and rightfully so. It should've had a whole series but we will never win.

Another Thom update from the future: I watched this in English and it's ludicrously bad. I'm not really a dub versus sub guy because I think it's really, really, really dumb but abandon all hope ye who viewed this in the English dub. Holy God.

15. "Unendurable Labyrinth"

Okay.

The most I-know-where-this-is-going caper I have ever seen in my life.

Okay it was just a spooky cult thing with no ending. They get lost in the tomb.

GREAT. Next.

16. "The Bully"

Junji Ito is very good at drawing nonchalant and unassuming faces and making them look a subtle evil. Obviously. You don't need me to tell you this.

But this was just devastating. It wasn't really a horror in the traditional sense of the world. I was desperately waiting for it to end.

I don't even want to talk about it.

A mortifying segment.

17. "Alley"

There is something inherently scary about unfamiliarity and it's easy to make a horror in a ghost town with the protagonist being the au pare. As boring as that idea is, I feel like they did a good job at making this distinct and interesting.

I like making urban legends a reality. You can do a lot with it. This felt like an original idea and not some tropey mishap like some of the lesser ones in the package. I didn't really care for the animé backstory from the killer.

For some reason, after killing the main character, she climbs down the rope into the alleyway where she says she will never go and then the rope snaps, trapping her.

It ends abruptly again but I actually think it works in it's favour. I'm okay with this one. It's fine.

18. "Headless Statue"

It's about an art teacher who is already a weird subsect of society already but oooo, he doesn't like statues with heads.

I WONDER WHERE THIS COULD BE GOING.

He died and I don't know but I missed it.

Yeah, it did go exactly where I thought it was going. I won't tell you the plot but imagine a horror scenario where an art teacher for some reason specifies that he only likes headless statues specifically. You probably hit the nail on the head.

19. "Whispering Woman"

We're at the home stretch now, boys. The final stretch. This one and one more and we are done with this stupid animé.

Oh no, it's one of these philosophical existentialist, pre-determinist wanks.

It appears to be a representation of OCD (maybe?) but if it is, it's implying that people with mental health issues and illnesses literally suck the life out of people who take care of them.

I don't know how to interpret this one. As soulless as this sounds, I feel like this would've been an episode of Fringe or something like that.

It's disappointingly by the numbers at the end of the day. I liked it in all fairness but it was so pedestrian by Ito standards. I'd always seen the iconic panels of the eponymous character but didn't know anything about it until now.

I could live without it.

20. "Soichi's Beloved Pet"

Oh God, I hate this stupid family. Why are we back here?

And it's a vaguely disturbed boy who hurts animals plotline that I just fucking hate.

Oh and the animal becomes fucked up and weird. It's so disappointing to end on this. By fucked up and weird, it just does stuff that cats do. Like most problems in this universe, it could be solved with a doctor.

Like the other episode with this stupid kid in it, it's just annoying and too silly to be taken seriously on any level. The cat randomly just blows up everything for some reason.

This is dumb. I hate Soichi.

So... The Conclusion....

I don't know why I did this to myself. I wasn't expecting it to be good and to be fair, it had it's moments. Just not very many of them. By in large, it's another desperate attempt to translate Junji Ito's work to the screen and it didn't work. It worked SOME of the time but that surely makes it a non-starter from the off..

I wish some tales were fleshed out more. As the saying goes: many were mid but few were mildly above average at best. I appreciate the effort but it feels kind of wasted.

Was my time wasted? NO!

In my research for this, I have made a horrifying discovery.

This isn't the first time that this studio has attempted a Junji Ito adaptation. More on that another time...

I have found myself diving deep back into Junji Ito this Halloween. Reading old stories and new tales. Remembering the Uzumaki movie adaptation from the late 90s and the much more recent Adult Swim-produced manga-esque effort. Because of this stupid animé, I have found myself delving back into something I love very dearly. In a lot of ways, this show with the incredibly long name is a good message to remember what you had and why it's what you had and not what you want.

You already have Junji Ito's extensive collection and Ito is invincible. Immortal. Unbeatable. Junji Ito Crazy Man Tales of the Japanese Spooky Stuff is a dry and disorderly mishap, not of ups and downs but of a wiggly line running vaguely through the middle. One sharp boon ("Hanging Balloon") with one horrendous crash ("Souichi's Beloved Pet").

Overall though? Mediocre. Piss poor. I don't blame anyone else other than Netflix for thinking that financing this would be a good idea on any level.

That being said though, I am going to be selecting three to review in greater detail in a separate post. I haven't decided what but I'm sure you'll love it and you'll be sure I'll be right about it.

My Rating: *3/4 / ***** (One and Three Quarters of a Star) MAL Rating: 4/10

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thominospizza · 8 months

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thominospizza · 9 months

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Futurama's Back! And It's Awful!

Nobody was looking forward to this. Absolutely not a single soul. Even if we weren't positive that it would be total pigshit, dread was arriving in the gullet. I could write about the controversy about Bender's voice actor but I can't even pretend to say it's relevant to the quality of the show.

At the end of that sentence, I decided to open another tab to see what other people think of the new episode (which I never do with things like this) and I'm surprised to learn the reception is as good as "mixed".

So let's get this straight so we are all on the same page and we can move on with our lives. The problem with the LAST Futurama revival was largely that they were distracted from forging their own world and just started parodying current life with faux-dystopian twists. Otherwise, the episodes were generally alright.

There were some of the best in the whole series in there bunched in with some sub-par endeavours that I would hardly call atrocities. However, they make the worser episodes in the original run look pretty good by comparison.

Only one episode is out and it is distracted from building anything in the world (They don't even get in the fucking spaceship) and the whole episode was just jokes about streaming services that were about ten years out of date. I would make a joke about the show being ten years out of date but the reason I am sucking the fun out of it is because that's what they did for half the episode.

The most egregious part of the whole episode - aside from the disgusting and tiresome advert-not-adverts in the TV menu - is that they crack a joke about how the show Black Mirror is just a rehashed The Twilight Zone but with technology. The point being that all the episodes are just humans not being compatible with technology and that technology will take over. I will move past this being a weird thing to make fun if you're a lover of science fiction which I have to assume you are if you're writing for Futurama. But anyway, guess what happens after they make this joke.

They run a plot where Fry attempts to watch every television series ever made (not an advert) which he finds very easy (not an advert) but he is stuck on All My Circuits because it is coming out too fast and there is infinite watching time (not an advert) but for some reason, he is going to die if he is taken out of the machine he has to wear to cringewatch the show.

The ending doesn't matter.

The point is that they just did a plot where humans are incompatible with technology and technology ends up taking over and they did with absolutely zero self-awareness whatsoever. They bought back Calculon for no reason after definitely, definitely killing him after the character in the show being, funnily enough, past his prime and out of date for the TV landscape. It would be better to appreciate the time where he was brilliant once before being dead forever than to be stale for a never-ending lifetime.

But, CRUCIALLY.

NONE OF IT WAS FUNNY.

However, it's not the end of the world. Believe it or not. I'm not writing the show off just yet because, if they are following the same pattern from a decade ago, five episodes from now could be an absolute banger. You never know with this modern strain of Futurama. Whilst this episode of Futurama was without question, an absolute STINKER, it will hardly set the bar for anything.

I don't know if I will review every single one but I will keep this blog posted if a particular episode either makes me incredibly angry or very happy.

I'll letcha know.

3/10

#futurama #new futurama #new futurama episodes #futurama season 9 #futurama season 11 #futurama 2023 #futurama spoilers #futurama hulu #futurama revival #futurama reboot #futurama revived

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thominospizza · 9 months

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Night In The Woods: Bojack Worseman

I cannot believe that I finally got around to finishing this game in the early hours of the 13th in July on this year of our Lord, 2023. It's been almost six years since the game came out and I finished it TODAY.

Night in the Woods is the most me game ever. I love story-driven games™, the papercraft artstyle and the psychedelic garage soundtrack. That's on top of the themes that, on the face, I find very relatable.

We'll start there: That last comment.

Thematic Resonance

Woods deals not with a coming of age but rather, a stagnation of age which is an analysis of the modern "young person" I've yet to see in any media. It's something I am trying to gravitate towards in my own work because I feel it in myself as do many others in my zoomer age bracket. The possibility of moving on from college/university age with any sort of tangible progress feels impossible in our current state.

It's abundantly clear that the game also deals with trauma and sexuality and how an upbringing in our current stagnation will create people like the main cast. It does this in a very subtle and relatable way which is CRUCIAL to producing work like this. For example, Life is Strange fails on both of those levels. That's a simple way of explaining it. This game is LiS all grown up.

But a more real and complex way of explaining Night in the Woods would be that it forges very real scenarios with believable and relatable dialogue to build up an analysis of how society views the traumatized and vice versa. "Society" in that sentence is interesting because it's in a really tiny town and not because of cutesy quaintness either. I'd argue it's gunning for the opposite.

Possum Springs

The whole driving factor behind the depiction of the setting can be summed up in one word - disappointment. It's not how you remember. Even if the town hasn't necessarily changed that much from your formative years, it's just what happens.

But for what it's worth, I like the setting just purely because I find it relatable in a small way. I am from a small town that has had the opposite outcome to the end of an industrial complex except it was steel and not coal mining. But talk of getting a branch of Five Guys is huge news for like 2 weeks even if it doesn't actually happen.

My town also has cafés that seem to never die despite not that many people going to them, gentrified eateries, monuments of a former work force and kids getting drunk in the forest. I don't think this is unusual but what is unusual is representation of a place like this.

But ultimately, the town loses it's sheen. You can't look on it with rose-tinted glasses anymore if it's right in front of you - especially if you have been away for a while. It's a struggle to force yourself to remain attached to your comfort places and people and resist new things but it's ultimately a compulsion. You are older and therefore, less happy.

This is where I have trouble with this game and it's main character:

Mae Borowski

Mae Borowski is interesting to me because I am still unsure as to whether or not she is unlikable by design. Her motivations are closer to Tohru Adachi's from Persona 4 than a hero of any capacity. However, her seemingly not really going anywhere fast is integral to main throughline of Night in the Woods. This is a double-edged sword because I find it difficult to get behind her if she doesn't want anything.

On top of this, I found myself extremely irritated by her attitude and response to the world. She seems disconnected from reality a lot of the time and this is one of the problems with games like this and Life is Strange where the developers elect to have the protagonist interact with stuff. This means that they have to write pithy and quirky pieces of dialogue and exposition.

But people aren't like that in real life. It's not really a gripe for the game but more the fault of how games like this have progressed. They have to be stocked with interactivity and its not terribly unreasonable because it allows for easy character-building to be inside the character's head. People aren't really that funny and quirky in their thought process about assimilating a military monument.

Anyway, that's by the by...

Thematic Dissonance

I'll get straight to the point. Mae really irritates me sometimes. Not in a way that say Slippy Toad does or Tingle from Majora's Mask, but in a very personal, deep, real way. To the point of where I feel like the drudge to forge a Hashtag Relatable™ character overrides their want to make an actual relatable character. An example of this is the dialogue about how she hates old people for their political ability to keep old stuff like Trolleyside News open.

She comes out with stuff like this all the time and I have no idea what in God's name she is even saying. It's doesn't just come off as out of touch, it doesn't really have anything to do with the games themes or the story. She is just chirping for the sake of chirping and it makes her super unlikable.

Limmy's Show courtesy of BBC

It's not negativity out of anger or out of sadness, it's disassociated and detached from reality. She complains that everyone has jobs and everything is boring so she makes up some shit about ghosts to waste everyone's time. This is where my conflict comes in. I cannot tell if this by design or not.

On one hand, you could argue that you need to inject an unlikable character in this world otherwise there is no story to be had. There is no conflict to resolve etc. I don't need to explain the fundamentals of constructing a story to you. Mae isn't cynical and that is translating in obnoxiously joyous dismissal of the facts in the face of a really boring homecoming.

However, on the other hand, she is still annoying. She just says stuff and I roll my eyes. Before you pull the political indifference card, I was a member of the Socialist society at university like Bea so you can suck me.

Having said that, I found this scene in particular to be the best portrayal of autism/neurodivergence. The way it describes self-loathing in constant, and in this case, literal self-reflection resonated me with quite a bit and I'm sure I'm not the only one. If you're autistic and have ever found yourself in a moment with your own thoughts before a social event, you have had this exact moment more than once.

So... they can do it. They just choose not to when it comes to mundane chit-chat but the truth is that it is all about the little things. Everything word counts.

As a sidenote, I really appreciated that they represented a character with difficulties controlling anger. That is shyed away from quite often because it's scary to a lot of people. They don't want to talk about uncomfortable and ugly elements of poor mental health and mental illness. I didn't know where else I could put this comment. I appreciate the writers for doing that. Thank you.

The Other Characters

This is pretty minor but I found the way she interacted with Bea to be particularly distasteful. Mae is just snidey towards her for no reason supposedly and when that reason is revealed to us, it's not really enough for me to justify it. I liked her story a lot and it's a shame that the main character is a horrible shit for the majority of it.

Gregg mildly irritated me although I liked his self-destructive (and destructive-towards-others generally) nature when it's explored. It's unexpected in a fun and interesting way. A lot of it is uncomfortably real and I wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. His sexuality and identity is explored thoroughly and provoked thought in me about my judgement of people on the face of it. His over-energized demeanour put me off initially and I felt bad about it.

Not to be a cut-screentime Andy but I felt like Angus was done dirty. There clearly was a character there to get into and it came across like they were lazy and placid with him. I want to know more about him and it's like I wasn't allowed to. Maybe that was on purpose to preserve the quietness about his character. I get that it's not a dating sim but I was left unsatisfied.

I didn't interact with anyone else apart from by accident. There was a sewer sailor at some point and the old lady who knows stuff about Mae's grandfather. I didn't know there was other people until I looked up a guide on getting the Platinum. That isn't happening.

THE STORY. FINALLY.

It was dumb. I really didn't like it.

It didn't really feel like it was going anywhere. I was waiting for the interesting thing to happen and then when it did (the kidnapping), it was turned into some ghost-hunting thing. To me, supernatural elements in well-grounded premises is just a turn-off that I can't possibly describe.

Look, I know it wasn't supernatural in the end but the fact that they teased it for SO LONG and that it was even a consideration within the narrative? It was bile-swilling.

When you find out what the terrible thing Bea did in school actually was, it's kind of underwhelming but it is what it is, I suppose. It just left me cold. I was expecting it to be a lot worse. I feel like I've done worse when I was an "anger management kid" in school. Shout-out to anyone reading this from my infant school who remembers me pushing someone into a bees nest and them needing medical attention.

Anyway, I digress.

I feel like it wasn't really a conclusion to anything. It's basically the plot twist from Hot Fuzz except you don't really care because "the guys" (yes that is what they are referred to as) have only impacted one kid going missing whom you don't even know as the player, a severed hand being found on the floor and Mae seeing someone get kidnapped on Halloween. The severed hand, by the way, isn't really explained if I recall correctly. That's not what the Neighbourhood Watch Association do. They just throw people in holes in a thinly veiled allegory to mythology related to Native American burial grounds.

It is implied that they all get killed in the end anyway. There is something to do with Mae's grandfather as well but I can't even remember. Again, I feel nothing because they didn't really do a good job of setting anything up. Not to question their credit but it comes across like they panicked and tacked on some kind of ending. Call me cynical but I struggle to like anything about it.

CONCLUSION!!!!!!!

The article is over now because I've written enough. Way more than I thought honestly. In fact, this might be my longest article about just one thing ever. I was surprised that I had so much to say because I thought Night in the Woods was pretty cut-and-dry. I was going to give it like a 6.5/10 but after writing so much about it, I've realized that it's far better than I initially gave it credit for. It's more like 7.75 or an 8 for me now.

Ultimately, I have to be grateful that this exists and yes, it's just a coincidence that since I've come back to Tumblr that both games I've reviewed (Unpacking and Night in the Woods) have both featured queer protagonists. I used my Gamespot article joke in the last one though.

I'm using it again. Fuck you Gamespot.

8/10

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thominospizza · 9 months

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*****CALLING ALL VOICE ACTORS******

Almost 8 years ago, we had completed and uploaded the first movie Persona 3 Spring of Birth with resounding success! Unfortunately due to copyright, casting and real life issues I was forced to put the project in hiatus till further notice.

Mostly due to copyright anyway...

But recently I reuploaded the first movie without it being taken down and also partly due to the remake of P3 being announced, I was motivated to bringing the project back to life and finishing all 4 movies this time! (If you wish to confirm the legitimacy and standard of quality for the project, the 1st movie can be found here) With that said, here are a few rules to lay out before you audition #1 - Ensure mic quality is of professional quality. Treated sound environment preferable #2 - This is a long term project, please do not audition if you see yourself unable to remain on the project for more than 1 movie. #3 - If you are not cast as the character you auditioned for, that does not mean I won't possibly need your help as extras or other characters I may have forgotten in this post. I'm sure once the deadline comes out I will reach out to those of you who may have not been casted as the main, so look out for that and be sure to either provide contact information for you or contact me directly VIA Discord @LeoVoid#5449

Have fun everyone, I look forward to hearing from each and every one of you, Good luck! :)

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thominospizza · 10 months

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A Review of "Unpacking": A Sleeper Hit in a Semi-Detached House

I have a bad habit of watching people play a game before I play it myself because I am a disgusting zoomer who has to experience life and the universe through a computer. As a result, I end up playing games less for reasons that are self-explanatory.

However, this time I saw quite a few videos covering a game called "Unpacking" and knowing literally nothing about it other than the above image. So instead of watching the videos, I head straight to the store and purchased it immediately. I know. What a radical action.

I didn't know what to expect other than it probably being a horror because most indie games seem to be horror games or at the very least, not what they seem. So I was weirdly pleasantly surprised when this game was exactly what the cover presented it as. You unpack stuff. That's it.

So why do people like it so much? I think the answer is quite simple really.

Simply put, there is satisfaction is completing simple tasks if packaged in an appealing aesthetic. It makes nice clicky noises when you put books on the shelf and its the neatest you will ever flatpack cardboard in your life. The isometric pixel style is impossible not to love and, above all else, it is a neurodivergent's dream to make the perfect office space.

Done. Simple. Review over.

Actually no, I'm not done yet because would you believe it? There is a STORY.

I know, I didn't believe it either until it started unfolding. What's interesting about the storytelling in the moving-in simulator is that you aren't really bothered about whether or not you are instilling it yourself. You don't really care because it fits. We've all had a life like this - or parts of it anyway. Before you know it, there is actually a bona fide story there, for real this time.

There's a simple progression from kids' bedroom to college dorm to house-share to moving in with a partner. What the game does here is super-interesting yet it's very hands-free almost. What is presumably a house with friends is packaged charmingly despite being cramped and laden with cottage-wood furniture.

It's nostalgic for anyone who has found themselves in a similar living situation. I found myself softening up at all the little references and nods to tech from the era which is something I normally resent but you are put in their shoes expertly. Every placement is up to you so the experience is very individual.

The game then changes starkly when you move to the next living space and the designers present you with decor that we have all seen before.

It's the bland, characterless piano-tinted furniture you get from Ikea or, if you live in the UK, the Range. Let us say for the sake of argument that you actually like this type of decor. Great. You'll soon find that the boundaries and freedom for placing your items is so narrow and so specific that you grow frustrated at how little customization you seem to have. The sucker-punch is that you have to put your degree under the bed. There is no room on any of the walls.

Even if you aren't thinking about any kind of a narrative just yet, the game does an excellent job at making the player feel frustrated. It's clearly distinct from the game progressing to be more difficult. Any fun you had is being intentionally sucked out of the experience of unpacking. What is appealing about the other rooms is that you can have your own fun putting things where you see fit and it's relaxing.

The room after has the exact opposite experience and I found personally that I was just lobbing books anywhere to get the level over with.

The story comes into play where you find yourself exactly where you started which is a literal, real and metaphorical way of describing it. There's something very devestating and depressing about this because the player realizes what's happened in spite of being told NOTHING. It's brilliant.

With that, you're put on a soul-searching journey that ends in your character settling down with a partner and a child in a big house. Game over.

Now at first, I was disappointed with this ending because I felt like they just started cooking with gas and the ending was kind of abrupt. You're expecting a full-length feature of this person's life and death. However, I have came to the conclusion that the story is perfectly fine ending there. It doesn't need any extra baggage. There's a beginning, middle and end.

I'm satisfied with that. Fantastic pixel art, fantastic style, great music, sweet aesthetic and a unique storytelling narrative.

I'm also surprised that I managed to get to the end of this article without mentioning that the character is bisexual and it's, to this day, the only game with decent bisexual representation that I have ever played.

So that's cool. Gamespot can put "Unpacking" at Number #8

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thominospizza · 1 year

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Trying to Watch Beastars Taught Me Something... | Exposure Therapy (Some Animé I Watched Recently)

Now, you are probably hoping for something grand and revolutionary with that title. You are almost definitely a fan of the show and are maybe even hugely vocal about how great the show is. You might be looking for something to reflect your views on it and relish in your enjoyment of a thing that you like.

If you haven't worked out by now, this isn't what this is BUT I want you to stick around.

Rewinding ...

I haven't watched animé in several months. I haven't watched anything at all for a while. Not since completing Better Call Saul about two months ago have I been able to pick up something else because honestly, I haven't been the same since. I stopped To Your Eternity because I was falling out of love with it and writing about it has become a chore and nothing has replaced it. On animé-watching terms, I am in a rut.

So, out of a sheer desperate boredom, I forced myself to watch several first episodes of animé on my list. Why go about it like that, you might ask. I'll tell you.

Cannonballing

To explain my situation in a much more simple way...

I am someone who was afraid of swimming their whole life but recently got over their fear about two, three years ago. Suddenly, I was swimming widths and lengths and laps. I was getting so confident in it that I tried swimming the English Channel.

But something happened to me. It was too much. I got scared, exhausted and panicked. There were no boundaries, no lifeboats, no lifeguards and I was in the middle of the ocean with no assistance. Upon being rescued by a passer-by, I have been petrified of swimming ever since. I had my fears of swimming justified and have reverted back into my initial state of irrational fear.

For the past view months, I have been pacing back and forth outside a kiddie pool, pondering as to whether or not I should dip my toes in the unruly water. Fear not, I will pace no longer.

I leap and cannonball in, ripping the proverbial plaster off and letting the water splash my skin. One problem; it's a kiddie pool. It's too shallow. I broke my leg and I don't know where this allegory is going anymore.

Now replace swimming with watching animé, you have your answer of my opinion about Beastars.

(When I said "much more simple", I was fucking lying)

Exposure Therapy

I decided to watch the first episode from the following animé:

Beastars

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Komi Can't Communicate

Attack on Titan

Persona 5: The Animation

Code Geass (Season Two)

You may have noticed something about my picks there. I won't tell you the pattern because it will come clear in a minute when I tell you my brief impressions of every episode

Beastars

I was kinda excited by this and whilst I routinely never beat the furry allegations, I have to explain yet again that I am drawn to cartoons and animation with animals in it because I find it stylistically cool and a change from the norm. There's also probably some element of nostalgia in there because a lot of my favourite entertainment growing up had talking animals in it because that was in at the time; Cats and Dogs, Garfield, Stuart Little, Underdog. (Yes, whatever age you think I am, I am that age, moving on).

I had a positive outlook going in and in moments, it was shattered to pieces. I have never felt so indifferent about something in all my life. My main takeaway from this is that the use of animals, anthropomorphic or otherwise, to tell a story has to have a meaningful purpose. If this didn't have animals in, it would be boring and bland as fuck because it's just about class and gender roles in a school environment which is almost like every other school thing you've seen.

Will I ever finish it? Yes because I want to give it a chance. It might yet blow me away with something surprising. However, as the old adage says, it's the hope that kills you.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

This is where I realized something.

I am a boomer animé fan.

Everything about this first episode was better than Beastars and I know, it's fucking EVANGELION. I may as well be comparing a souffle with some brown chewing gum that someone left under the table last week. I don't wanna be unfair to Beastars but it is what it is. Sorry if I'm being controversial here but NGE is better. What a hot take.

In all seriousness, everything was just better from the visuals to the storytelling to the world-building to the pacing. Everything is set up perfectly and it made me realize that I like a lot of animé deemed "old" (1990-2005) for the same reasons. This will come apparent as we navigate down the list. I don't need to say any more about this. IT'S FUCKING EVANGELION.

Komi Can't Communicate

I didn't hate this but I didn't love it either. I feel like I can't not give it a chance. It's different and interesting enough that I will click on Episode #2 and continue to get the ball rolling. Don't think this is a positive though; I was teetering on the edge of being drearified by the slow pacing and the tiny uncomplicated landscape.

Then again, it is what it says it is. Komi Can't Communicate. That's all you need to know. Mesmerized, I was not but I'll come back to it in due course.

Attack on Titan

I had seen this first episode before and I wasn't overly impressed by it.

Slow your role. I had my reasons.

I thought it was too overdramatic to the point of it being comical at how depressing and sad that it was. It was like the show was bashing me over the head repeatedly with a newspaper and telling me that they're determined to win the sad competition. I also found the main character to be extremely fucking annoying and I don't know why you're supposed to root for him.

The music was super overbearing and I found the design for the Iggy Pop titan to be unintentionally hilarious. I couldn't take any of it seriously.

How did I feel about my second watch of it? Eh. Pretty much the same.

Don't get it twisted, I trust that it's very, very good and I will get into it, I promise. Just not today.

Persona 5: The Animation

I know, I know. It's been memed to death so I'll keep it brief and just say this. I only watched this as kind of a palate cleanser.

Because the game is so distracted by it's own style, it becomes the main feature and the animé becomes hyperfocused on matching that style which it's never going to achieve and the end result is bland, boring and shallow product that can't even tell the story properly.

Kinda like the game it's based on WHOOPS DID I JUST SAY THAT OUT LOUD.

Code: Geass

Something that puts me off continuing my adventure into Code:Geass is difficult to explain. I clearly loved the first season but the problem I have with finishing it is that it's pretty heavy viewing. Kinda like Attack on Titan, the epic is so good that it's actually overwhelming and exhausting. It sounds stupid, doesn't it? Why don't I continue to enjoy the thing that I like? The answer is that I don't know. I have the brain of a goldfish and would rather swim in circles in my little bowl.

This looked good though. It's Code:Geass, it's gonna be pretty fucking good.

What Was The Point of All This?

I don't know. I wanted a little bit of everything on the menu. A platter, if you will. Was I satisfied? No but that doesn't mean I won't come back to the restaurant. I'll just order something else. The inherent quality is definitely there. Even the worst stuff had something to like about them.

What did you think of this kind of animé posting? I'm looking for different ways to approach writing about shows that aren't blanket reviews cut-for-cut. I thought this was a fun little crash course and if you enjoyed it, I might do another one where I do even more animé in a certain genre. I might watch the first episode of every magical girl animé, every isekai, or every fighting shonen. Just spitballing here.

Post-Script

I can't promise that I'll be back to writing about animé on here. There's no guarantee because life is getting in the way quite a lot at the moment. I'm sure you understand and I have to reiterate that I have not disappeared. I'm just exiting social media because it's bad for my mental health. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram, Discord and even Facebook (if you're really weird) but I don't really have a presence on any of those platforms.

I'm going through a transitional time in my life right now and I could do without the doom and gloom and having eyes peering into my life from all directions.

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thominospizza · 1 year

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Multiple emergencies!!!

My roomate and I are trans, disabled, and homeless. We just suffered a traumatic loss in our lives, and we are grieving. We are having a lot of health issues separately.

Putting all this in the same post is a mess but things are terrible so. Please help. It's all an emergency.

We need an air purifier, we need money for our storage bill which hit yesterday. We need to pay our bnb rent for the week in 4 days as well, or risk being kicked out. I have been needing surgery for 6+ months to get accessed teeth removed, so this goal would cover that too. That's really waited far too long, I will have permanent health issues from it as it is.

Dm me for proof or details. I'll do art for anyone who gives $100+ my art blog is @theartistrans

Dm me for proof or details

$creepiecrippl

V3nm0: @tab-99

$301/$5,500

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thominospizza · 1 year

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I'm Giving Up on To Your Eternity (For Now)

Last year, I enjoyed watching a brand new animé for the first time. I joined in at around the third episode and I thought those three episodes were too good not to write about. In the reams and swathes of the fantasy genre, the show was unique in it's ideas and presentation. An element that I have a taking to is the concept of having a non-human undergo a human experience and it takes this idea and runs a marathon with it. I appreciated the quiet tragedy that it was able to pull off extremely effectively. The direction of said show successfully made you care immensely about characters in no time at all.

I was on the ropes with it for a while towards the end because of how formulaic it grew but even saying that, the animé was able to pull out all the stops and challenge itself and the viewer. The final episode was wonderfully poignant in how it presents a natural death in this world - a diminishing of a body in mind - where otherwise, life is cut short without warning.

So you can imagine the feeling I got in the pit of my chest when it was announced that my new favourite animé was being renewed for a second season. Excitement, right?

Wrong.

I was actually terrified because, with a great deal of time to reflect and think about that first season, it was perfect the way it was. I don't know the bones of the manga but the way the season was executed, I'd be absolutely fine with it. But obviously, animé must never end if it makes a profit. There were only one of two ways that I could see the second season going:

The show continues with the same formula: Fushi travels somewhere, meets people, gets to know people, gets emotionally attached and then they die. Recycle and repeat. It grows perpetually more stale.

The show tries too hard to divert from the formula but with nothing compelling to replace it and becomes a complete dredge.

It would become apparent from the first handful of episodes that it was option 2.

I started watching it to write about it as a kind of tradition despite my worries but I was proven right. Even though all the signs were there, I persevered with it anyway. Here's where I'm going with this: It's my blog, it's my decision. I'll write what I want to write about and that's always been my philosophy concerning this blog from day one. The simple fact of the matter is: I don't want to write about this anymore.

I'm sorry to disappoint but if you wait around, you never know. I might come back to this one day and binge a bunch of it like I did last time. I don't want to put out work that is continuously getting worse in quality and in tone when I simply don't care. It isn't in my best interests nor it is in your best interests. If you're reading this, I suggest you get into a blog that is more invested in the product that you're able to enjoy more because if you read mine, you'll just be pissed off.

Also, I'm in the middle of a nightshift job now and I have precious little time to get writing done. I'd rather push my big main project, do one-off blogs or even, dare I say it, watch a series that I find both enjoyable to watch and to write about.

Laters.

#to your eternity #fumetsu no anata #fumetsu no anata e #to you the immortal #to your eternity review #to your eternity analysis #to your eternity critique #to your eternity season 2 #fall anime #fall 2022 #new anime #new anime review #new anime analysis

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thominospizza · 1 year

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El Camino: An Apt Epilogue - But Not an Essential One

The Car was alright. Just okay.

Truth be told: I was up and down on it. Sometimes, it felt like a cumbersome episode with budget and there were other times where it tapped in to that neo-western thriller recipe. The kind that makes the action and tension in Breaking Bad so special. You wouldn't think it was two hours long.

I think it's important to realize that analysing El Camino is going to be difficult for me to do. The gap between the season finalé of Breaking Bad and this movie is about five years and in that time, fans of the original show would surely be well into Better Call Saul which would've been in it's fourth season. So when it was announced that they were doing a Breaking Bad movie, it would've been a bolt from the blue and a shock to the system. To return back to the old stomping grounds with Jesse Pinkman out of nowhere and after all this time would've meant a whole lot more.

More compared to me when the gap between me watching Felina and El Camino was approximately 48 hours.

This is why I'm going to be erring on the side of feeling like this is a long, special episode and not a movie per sé but perhaps that was the intended effect. It is a Netflix movie after all and me and you both know that they don't really count.

But I liked it.

I enjoyed the simple goal of Jesse needing to escape via "The Disappearer" and needed enough money to do so. It's the first time ever in the universe where Jesse is thinking on his own and the first thing he wants to do is escape. It's almost poetic that, in order to escape, he had to take mortal revenge on the welders and then found himself blowing the place up. Poetic that he's learned a lot from the people around him yet knows how to do things right by himself. It was oddly sweet that it was so simple for him to do in the end.

I enjoyed the way it concluded and how Jesse reflected on his relationship with Walter and Jane on his way to Alaska and the nuggets of wisdom that they imparted. He's comfortable with the nightmare now that he demanded satisfaction and got it.

What I had trouble with was the first part and I don't mean the moments in the present day. What I'm referring to mainly are the flashbacks with Todd. I just don't understand the point of them. I was waiting for them to serve a greater purpose in the point of the conclusion but I felt like they didn't.

I'm talking out from a place of innocent, honest-to-god, confusion here. What does it do? Establishes Todd is a non-emotional freak with obviously deep psychological trauma when you're presented with his attitude to life and death, his family and other people and Lydia Rodarte-Quayle. My problem is this: We knew all this stuff already. We already got the strong Todd flavours in the main course, if you will.

I didn't particularly have a problem with the sequences for any other reason. I just don't understand why they're there and their heavy reliance on them shows that they didn't have enough to fill a quota. But again, I don't want to be too harsh because I might just be completely lost here.

It had an unusual structure for a movie but on reflection, I think I'm grateful for the understated action and slow pacing. I think, at the end of the day, this is all El Camino needed to be and all it was ever going to be. It's scratched that Jesse itch because he never did get a proper conclusion. The reason I say that it isn't essential is because I don't feel that you've got a piece missing if you don't watch it - not that that's a bad thing. It does it's job. No more, no less. It's there if you want it and you'll enjoy it.

It's nice to see Badger and Skinny Pete again.

***1/2 / ***** (Three and a Half Stars)

#breaking bad #el camino #better call saul #el camino review #el camino analysis #el camino retrospective #thrillers #action #camino #jesse pinkman #breaking bad movie #mike ehrmantraut #walter white #saul goodman #gus fring

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thominospizza · 1 year

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Breaking Late: My Adventure into Breaking Bad in 2022

It should go without saying but the following blogpost contains spoilers for Breaking Bad.

It's taken fourteen years for me to finally watch this TV show and this is my third attempt at writing a blogpost about it.

(23/11/2022) Addendum: This post has taken me around 2 weeks to put together and I've rewritten and reworked it 4 times now. I currently have three, full and completely different drafts of this article. Even now, looking at this one (my best one), I still don't feel that it's good enough. The problem is Breaking Bad is one of these shows that offers so much to think about that it continues to unravel itself the more you think about it. I have to stop now because it's getting silly. This is as much as I'll ever do on the subject. As I write this, I have already seen El Camino and the first two seasons of Better Call Saul and if I don't publish this now, I never will. The long and the short of this post-script is that I'm sorry if I couldn't go into enough detail; There is literally no more room for it anywhere.

I always knew that this was a huge deal but lately, with Better Call Saul coming to a close, the hype around the universe that's been built as a result has been inescapable. There was no way I was avoiding it. I've been putting off watching Breaking Bad for an exceptionally long time but I've done it. Over the period of around a month, watching between two and four episodes a night, I have documented my experiences, thoughts and feelings over the course of the series.

I thought it would be interested to to hold up my late arrival to what is frequently labelled "The Greatest TV Show of All Time" as a document of interest for the avid Breaking Bad fan.

This has taken a very long time to convert my notes into something presentable and after chopping and changing various approaches, this task has been completed. I hope you enjoy and settle in, this is going to be a long one.

Walter White: The "Protagonist to Antagonist" Experiment

The raison d'etre. The whole point of Breaking Bad. The goal. Let's start there.

So I knew the basics of the story structure going into this. Walter White is a chemistry teacher, he gets cancer, enters the meth production business with his knowledge to pay for it and then becomes a drug kingpin. I don't know doesn't know that about this. This is where it becomes difficult for me to judge because I am waiting for it. The changes aren't unexpected but I still appreciated the incredibly carefully structured character arc.

Everything about was growth was totally believable and logical. Especially in the first season because it perfectly demonstrates his thrill of taking a walk on the wild side. This comes full circle in the final episode where he admits that he did it for himself because he enjoyed it. You really get behind the sense of reckless abandon that comes with mortality, the addiction to money and the deflation that Walter feels when he finds out he'll survive the chemotherapy.

All this being said, I found him to be a prick from the very beginning. His interactions with Jesse lead him to come off less bookish and more bitter. Bitter about the situation that he consciously put himself in to use a former student that he has a dislike for to pay for his treatment. I have to say that from the beginning, Mr. White is pretty unlikeable already. He had his moments of sympathy alongside his moments of evil but he reached peak bastard when he killed Mike Ehrmantraut. Everyone surely must love Mike and that moment has to be the pinnacle of his alienation to the audience (More on that later).

Personally, I found that the actual character development of who he was becoming wasn't actually the most compelling thing about his character. It was the consequences of his actions and his efforts to escape, rectify or outright ignore the falling dominoes. His hand being forced to do bad things before slowly seeking them out and relishing it. There's nothing more I can say that hasn't been said before on the subject.

They succeeded in their mission to draw his character arc in the end. I don't think anyone can deny that. I wouldn't blame you if you just scrolled right past this bit.

A Fresh and Clear Attitude to Television

I prefer the filmic approach that they take to make Breaking Bad the programme that it is. My favourite part of watching this was something that I came to realize around the middle of the second season. It hit me that this show hasn't, at any point, treated me like an idiot. What you see is exactly what you get with Breaking Bad and it's one of the few times where you can view that phrase as a positive.

All the tension, the comedy, the drama, the tragedy; it is created organically. There is no manipulation of the audience with obnoxious editing and garish music. Sure, there are musical cues but the purpose is to punctuate moments not to carry the weight of them. Even then, score is used very sparingly in favour of a perfect, hand-picked soundtrack. The outcome of these creative decisions is the feeling that you're actually watching a movie, not a TV show.

The shots and the settings they use are tremendous for building the universe. Especially, the shots in the Navajo canyons and deserts. Junk food for the eyes.

It doesn't over-explain anything either. You don't have to be told every little detail about a story and it doesn't have to show absolutely everything if it isn't essential to the viewing experience. That sums up why I love the directorial style so much. It's utterly economical in it's delivery which adds to the rawness of the telling.

The Neverending Tragedy of Jesse Pinkman

They are so brilliant at forging this fantastic, pitiful loser because it isn't enough to have him simply exist. He is unwittingly way out of his depth so often that you feel sorry for him. A lot of what happens to him is not his fault which compounds his self-destructive behaviour. The changes that character goes through is the most intriguing in the series for my money because Walter White's perception to begin with is essentially our perception because we have little else to go off of. We see him as a meth-dealing lowlife who takes the shortcut through everything but as the show moves forward, it becomes apparent that all he needed was a push in the right direction.

The way they execute Walter White's manipulation of Jesse makes for a delicious kind of dramatic irony that I certainly haven't seen before. Dramatic irony is usually used for creating an air of igorance around the main character to then be instrumental in their downfall. Traditionally Shakespearean, it is used theatrically to create alienation. What sets this show aside from the traditional tropes is that they treat violence and murder with weight and attention. It's not entertainment. It's damaging the main characters, especially one Jesse Pinkman. I loved the gravity that comes with Jesse finally realizing that he's being manipulated and to do the right thing for once in his life. If we're talking theatrical theory, that's his carthasis: survival.

I found that I became frustrated with Walter from the get-go because he was already using him and wouldn't give him the time of day. The moments in "Fly" and "Bug" when Jesse gets his own back on him are incredibly satisfying and he literally has the last laugh in the final episode after years of pain and suffering.

My favourite scenes are the introspective recovery meetings because it's the only time that Jesse questions himself and his place on Earth. The rest of the time, he is being used by Walter White and made to do incredibly immoral and illegal things in the face of his evident moral compass. That's the perfect brew for making a tragic character because the end result is the audience not really knowing what to make of him saving his own skin when it means he is unsuccessful with nowhere to turn. The universe and the cosmos views him as expendable and his fighting of a losing battle makes for fantastic tragedy.

I Hated the Season 2 Finale: The Wayfairer 515 Disaster

This was where things started getting rocky for me and I think the problem is how they built up to it. There all these mysterious teasers in the episodes "Seven Thirty Seven", "Down", "Over", "ABQ" so there is a certain degree of expectation piled on what the meaning of said teasers are. They're all super moody in their atmosphere by playing on your senses. The image of a fire-damaged pink teddy in a swimming pool, the presence of hazmats and contamination connotations create the unsettling, uncomfortable feeling. The mystery is further explored upon when we see Walter's car windshield smashed open and the two bodybags.

When the monochrome filter disappears and reveals the colour and the widespread damage of whatever this mystery has caused, you're fastening your seatbelts because you know it's going to be revealed. You're waiting for it all episode, all season. Then what happens?

Two planes crash into each other in the air, the bear drops in Walter's swimming pool and the episode ends.

Irrespective of the likelihood of the actual moment (which, upon reading, is exceptionally unlikely), it just fell flat and I know what they are trying to illustrate with this. Walter letting this man's daughter die and he returns back to work, ill-prepared and his lapse of concentration causes this crash. My problem with that angle is that it isn't really Walter's fault necessarily. Someone in that important of a job shouldn't be returning to work so soon and if they want to get the impact of the deaths caused across to the audience, then do that.

They didn't. It just happens and it's done. Aside from a few instances where it's referenced in the following series, the actual impact of this supposed huge tragedy isn't touched upon nor does it have any bearing. My point is this: They didn't execute the actual event with enough punch. I don't feel sorry for Donald Margolis because I barely know him. I feel sorry for him that his daughter died and that whole scene is done expertly but him crashing the plane? I've only just this minute found out that he's a traffic controller.

I might get flak for this but whilst credit where credit is due, criticism is where criticism is due. This moment in the series sticks out like a sore thumb. I just wish it wasn't here. I can tell that they want to try and do something a bit different and bit unexpected because the obvious thing to do would be to show Donald angry, a loose cannon, trying to kill Jesse etc. Instead, his reaction is more true to life at the end of the day. The only plane crash-related moments I liked is how Saul Goodman is constantly trying to capitalize on the disaster in the background, long after it's actually happened.

I'll talk more about Saul Goodman when I've finished Better Call Saul.

Gustavo Fring: An All-Time Great Villain

I love, love, love this character. I cannot get enough of Gustavo Fring. The writing of him, the acting by Giancarlo Esposito, the painting of his backstory. All of it is pure genius. Easily the greatest part of Breaking Bad. The best villains are the ones with very good reasons for their actions, ones that create conflict in the minds of the audience. Fring is vindictive, calculated, intelligent and he is one of those characters where you feel that something important could happen at any time whenever he is on screen.

I could gush about how much I loved this character and talk about how they made him a wonderful example of Machiavellian evil but I'll be here all day. So instead, in no particular order, my favourite scenes and moments featuring Gus.

I thoroughly enjoyed Gus' behaviour when he is shown to be working at Los Pollos Hermanos and hiding in plain sight. The best example of this is when Walter is told by Hank to put a tracking device on Gus' car when Mike is clearly watching and Walter is struggling for a reason not to do it. The scene itself manages to be both tense and comedic at the same time somehow but what makes it is when Walt goes inside to see Gus to inform him about what's happening. Fring calmly tells him to "Do it" with a smile and a cursory nod. Like in every scene, all the actors do a wonderful job at portraying human reaction to ridiculous situations but Esposito's malicious smugness is just gorgeous.

Fring's revenge on the cartel is beautifully done but his interactions with the empire undoubtedly reaches a peak when he steps out of the laundromat to face the music with his arms in the air. You cannot help but think that he's cool when he walks through those sniper shots and looks directly down the scope. That's something else about his state as an antagonist, he is frustratingly likeable because of how brilliant he is.

Gus is so good that I feel silly even writing this much about him because it's so obvious that he's a brilliant character. You get the picture. I can't get enough of Gustavo Fring and he is sorely missed in the fifth season.

Hank Schrader: A Study of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

I was pleasantly surprised with the direction that they took Hank Schrader's character. Not only does it differ massively from the regular outlandish cop going against the grain of the police force trope but it subverts your expectations of who Hank is to begin with. I feel like the show really, properly analyses the comparitive realities for the kind of person Hank is presented as in the office, particularly in the first episode. As a result of things that he's seen and done, he changes and evolves beyond just being a policeman with a glock who busts drug dens and batters minorities. The "Not the man I thought I was" monologue with Marie in the bedroom perfects the character they're aiming for and the stark differences between who he's around dictates his behaviour and actions. The outcome of discovering who he is really hiding behind his boardy exterior is beautiful.

I love that he goes well beyond the bog-standard comic relief character and that he is actually a brilliant deducer when it comes down to it. My favourite part of his character arc is the realistic nature in which he questions the clues and the hints presented to the DEA to throw him off the scent. I feel as though the progression is natural. The game of cat and mouse doesn't go in to the staggered, drawn-out territory nor does it venture into ridiculous. Hank isn't a clever individual but a committed and experienced one.

The actual catching of said mouse, I'll go into more detail in my next point. How the fifth season plays out and my reaction to it factors in ASAC Schrader amongst other things.

My Strange Feelings about The Final Season

I'm just going to come right out and say it. This was a fucking weird season in the grand scheme of things. IN MY OPINION.

The first part struck me as especially odd, pacing-wise. The first few episodes struck me as a dwindling. Random characters and elements of the scenario are being stuck on to the end of the previous season which I feel has a pretty satisfying conclusion. Now I get it; Hank needs to catch Walter, Walter needs to become like Gus, Jesse needs to conquer Walter's manipulation and get his comeuppance. Walter ends the series by saying outright that he "won" and I was comfortable with that.

However, there's all this rigmarole with the extremely irritating Lydia, the exceptionally bland Todd and his army of Nazi biker dickheads, something about Mike needing money to pay off imprisoned people in the know. It just felt glued on to the fourth season as a way of continuation, for the sake of Hank finding Walter. I get the point that Walter seeking out this kingpin, empire lifestyle that Gus had isn't all that it's cracked up to be. It isn't that easy to be Gus and I liked that they tried to get across that Walter wasn't realizing that he was trying to become like him. Gus worked for this empire and influence his whole life and Walter is never satisfied with money he's earning.

I also find that everyone in this season is acting incredibly weirdly and out-of-character and I have reasoned with myself that Walter's actions have changed those around him as well as himself. But it still strikes me as odd that everyone in the story is so keen to dismiss this man that they've known their entire lives because he has meddled in the drug industry. I feel as though the only one with real solid reasons for complaints are Skyler because of the danger he's put his family in. But Marie is supposedly angry because she has blamed Walter for Hank's troubles when there isn't really concrete evidence that he had anything to do with Hank being shot. I get that she is supposed to be an irrational person. I get that Hank has been after Heisenberg the whole time and is driving himself stir-crazy with it.

But I find that Hank becomes pretty unlikeable in this season because he seems to only be angry on deadset on catching Walter because it will be good for him. He isn't really bothered about all the damage he's done and all the people he's killed despite him listing all of it off in a confrontation with him. It comes across like he's miffed that Walt lied to him. At no point does anyone in the story go "Can we just hear Walter out? Maybe he has some kind of explanation?" but they don't and it's incredibly infuriating to sit through.

I have to reason that this is the point, however. Conquering. Comeuppance. Consequences. Conclusion etc, etc, etc. Total alienation is reached. As an audience member, not only do you not know who Walter is anymore but you don't really know anybody. The unconscious evil has to be met with unconscious good to be conquered. You're just watching a car crash happen at this point. Post Mike's death, it's almost feverish chaos. The only one you have left to root for is Jesse and that's famously snuffed out in "Ozymandias" - the prime example of narrative alienation. All that being said, it still makes for an unpleasant watching experience.

Walter White's Ending

"Granite State" and "Felina" almost feel seperate from the final season. It's a redemption arc or an epilogue. A full stop to a journey and I loved both of the episodes. Controversially, I preferred the former episode to the much lauded "Ozymandias" - the only episode that I knew the title of before watching because of how famous it is. It's not that I didn't like it or even love it;- Maybe expectations were too high, I don't know.

Anyway, I thought that despite my grievances about the last season, Walter White's conclusion was done expertly. There aren't many finalés you can say that about. TV shows rarely end with unanimous agreement. The cartharsis of him finally admitting that after all this time, he did all this for himself. He just wanted to live a little and any excuse will do to make money. It wasn't that it became clear throughout the show that he was finding reasons to keep going further and further to the point where money had nothing to do with it. It's not enough to just want money and to do anything to get more of it, it's to have an insatiable greed that makes evil.

The cerebral nature of Walter's actions remains present throughout the shooting of the nazis and the threatening of the Schwartzes and that works so much better than White giving up and turning himself in or going out in a blaze of glory. The reason being is that he knows that he has done so many wrongs that righting them is herculean task. The least he can do his enact poetic justice on those who have it coming to them and finally allow Jesse to run free of his own authority and agency.

It was perfect.

Conclusion

To say I was pleasantly surprised by Breaking Bad would be an understatement. Without hyperbole, it has restored my faith in television. Truth be told, I find myself to very skeptical and outright cynical about the medium. My general view of TV is of endless, disappointing monotony of an exploited, decaying premise. All shows die on their feet before they're firmly in the coffin and six feet under. I've started many, many shows but never, ever come close to finishing them. You can only borrow so much of my time. Part of why I tend to write about animé and video games is because there is an ending. Even if you don't complete a game to it's entirety, you still feel like you've experienced enough to put the controller down and still feel positive about it. What I enjoy about animé is that often, there are only one or two seasons of them. Short and sweet. If it's too much, then I won't bother.

Breaking Bad opposes every complaint I just had. It is NEVER boring, it is NEVER disappointing, it is NEVER monotonous. It ENDS. The seasons aren't chocked full of episodes that are a thousand hours long, written by a million people. It starts and it ends. That's it. There is something to be said for concluding.

Favourite Episodes:

Season 1

Most Favourite: Crazy Handful of Nothin'

Least Favourite: Cancer Man

Season 2

Most Favourite: Peekaboo

Least Favourite: ABQ

Season 3

Most Favourite: Half Measures

Least Favourite: Green Light

Season 4

Most Favourite: Salud

Least Favourite: Bullet Points

Season 5 (Part One)

Most Favourite: Dead Freight

Least Favourite: Madrigal

Season 5 (Part Two)

Most Favourite: Granite State

Least Favourite: Buried

****3/4/***** (Four and Three Quarter Stars)

#breaking bad #bb #talking bad #better call saul #breaking bad review #breaking bad analysis #breaking bad retrospective #retro review #breaking bad spoilers #el camino #TV review #tv review #tv shows #amc #hank schrader #walter white #jesse pinkman #heisenberg #saul goodman

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thominospizza · 1 year

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The New Peril in To Your Eternity

I think it wouldn't be too harsh of me to say that, for the most part, this episode was forgettable. At the time of writing, I watched it three hours ago and, without any notes taken, I can't really tell you what happened in it. The basics are that Hayase Jr (x8) is in love with Fushi but none of his bodies can accept his love because they are all inherently disgusted by Hayase and her ancestors, I guess.

Also, the prince is going to hand over Fushi in exchange for his freedom and Fushi is told by un-named plot device that he is going to be killed if he doesn't hand him over. So next thing you know, Fushi is seemingly being forced to perform a miracle, he doesn't and then Todo just fucking dies (He's fine, don't ask me).

In the skirmish where they just black out the scene, Fushi is an iron fortress and the prince and Todo (Alive). The prince concludes that Fushi could not perform the miracle of bringing people back to live because he wasn't familiar with the corpse in question.

Now we're past all that boring, weightless direction, we can get to the interesting stuff in the episode. In true Eternity fashion, all the good stuff in the episode happens in the last five minutes. Outside of the shock factor of sudden and immediate danger, it's directed and storyboarded wonderfully to illustrate the terror of pain of being trapped in molten lava with no way out.

In a moment, there is a whole new peril, a whole new enemy. The Church of Bennett has been in the undercurrent for a while but they've been solidified in this episode as proper bad guys that are actually threatening as opposed to just having threatening auras. There is a whole new challenge for Fushi to overcome. This entire sequence through an enormous spanner in the works and has built brand new intrigue. I just wish I didn't have to sit through all that other stuff. It reminded me of plain, run-of-the-mill fantasy.

The problem with things only "looking" promising is that there is no "promise" that anything good with come with this and at this going rate, I don't have many more benefits of the doubts to give. Their reputation proceeds them.

I'm sorry that this article wasn't great but not only was there not that much to write about in this episode - and I am flagging with this series in general - but I am in the middle of a new nightshift job with demanding hours. I have a lot of writing to do and this is at the bottom of my pile, frankly. I'm only really doing this out of some weird traditonal duty and respect for the show.

** / ***** (Two Stars) MAL: 4/10

#to your eternity #your eternity #fumetsu no anata e #fumetsu no anata #fumetsu monday #fushi #to you the immortal #anime fantasy #fantasy anime #anime #fantasy #light fantasy #fall 2022 anime #fall anime #new anime #to your eternity review #to your eternity analysis

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thominospizza · 1 year

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Finally: Some Evolution in To Your Eternity

I can't believe it. Stuff actually happened in this episode. It wasn't much but I would take week-old bread at this point. That's how dull this series has been so far.

Having said that though, I do feel like they committed to a drastic change in direction, presentation and writing of the Prince. I haven't bothered to learn his name and he doesn't really deserve it so we'll only refer to him as "Prince". Anyway, they have changed said prince in lieu of the flashback and, in order to explain what I mean, I have to spend the next few minutes sounding like an English Literature student.

This is a tactic deployed in writing on cinematic mediums to deliver an unearned poignancy through flashbacks when it's convenient for the narrative with the purpose of changing your mind on a character. A good example of an effective use of flashbacks is in Great Pretender. I could point to various flashbacks but I'd rather refer to their overall use of the narrative device.

Pretender uses flashbacks throughout to often echo what the characters are thinking in their head by showing us their memory. They all think about their past and they have good reason to. It's effective because they're all latching on to baggage from their childhood or teenaged years and their past is coming back to haunt them all in the present. In that sense, you're put in their shoes which isn't easy because there is only one protagonist. Abby, Makoto and Cynthia have all got shit on their mind and monkeys on their back that they need to shake off.

A bad example of this is in Re:ZERO so spoilers if you're yet to get around to the second part of the second series. So they try and make Otto interesting by introducing the fact that he can communicate with animals like Dr. Dolittle and as soon as they do, we're put through a fifteen-minute long flashback that explains this. This is a big no-no from me because the writer is effectively treating the audience like they're playing them in a card game by deploying a flashback card to try and win the game. This is opposed to treating your playing cards like you're a magician. You should be thinking about wowing and mystifying - entertaining. However, they just want you to feel unjustifiably bad about Otto even though as a character, he is fine the way he is.

Live footage of Re:ZERO fans reading negative criticism

Simply put, as a writer, you have to effectively plan out your character development and present it in a natural manner. It's particularly egregious in the case of the prince because the flashback seems to have nothing to do with they way he is acting now. They are just visually acknowledging that he can see the spirits that have passed to explain how he identified Fushi in the first place. I know all this stuff happened in the previous episode but I'm going somewhere with this.

For some reason, in this episode, he is acting completely differently with no real explanation at all. Sure, he is still flamboyant and show-offish but nowhere near as intensely irritating as before. The prince was arrogant, self-serving and demanding. Suddenly, he cares about Fushi, his well-being and his emotions after he was all for killing him in his initial episode. I could go on but my point is this: his change has happened for no reason. They have presented you with a backstory packaged in with an attempt at sympathy and an explanation for who he is. After said flashback is over and we return to the present, he is now acting in accordance with what the writers hope is your changed mind.

You can think this isn't important and you're probably right. It isn't important but what I would rather is that the same effort was put in to the storytelling that was ever present in the previous arcs. When I see/read/hear stuff like this, it just represents a loss of confidence in yourself to deliver compelling characters and your reader to be able to grasp the basics of story based on what you've delivered to them.

Anyway, the episode. It was fine overall. I just needed something to talk about because heaven knows I'm running out. It was probably the best episode yet but that isn't really saying much. There was actual plot progression. I liked that Fushi's concept and perception of love was analysed based on what he has experienced and how Mr. Hayase is analysing Fushi himself in the story progression. You can feel the undercurrent of malicious sociopathy at any point in which he is interacting with or discussing Fushi.

Fushi is now able to regenerate life which is kind of a big deal but because of the nature of how they framed it, you can't really enjoy it. Hopefully, there's still time to feel some type of way about it. Fushi doesn't know about it and prince guy won't tell him because stupid plot reasons. It's not explained how he suddenly can do it but I trust that it will. Hayase Jr. asks Fushi to marry him but because animé is heteronormative (and this show has demonstrated it is no exception), it has to be written into the story that man-Hayase has to talk himself into Fushi being a woman because he likes dolls or something? So then, it's okay for him to pursue Fushi romantically? I get what they're doing but I don't care for it.

Oh yeah: There was a fight scene but it was over before it really went anywhere interesting.

I don't know really what to say other than what I've already written. It was fine. Hardly a return to form but it's sad to think about what I was writing about this show this time last season. Here is a taster:

"I simply cannot get over how good this was." - S1E1: The Last One "I love this very, VERY much." - S1E2: The Rambunctious Girl "This episode was incredible." - S1E3: A Small Evolution "The ending was a heartstopping conclusion, the likes of which I don’t think I’ve seen before." - S1E5: Those Who Follow

Now, I'm not saying that I'm entitled to the dizzying heights from yesteryear and that I should be expecting the animé to best itself week-on-week. I'm not even suggesting that this is a dramatic fall from grace from the once great highs of the first season because it was dropping off slightly towards the end. It's just been too long now.

I know you have it in you.

**1/4/***** (Two and a Quarter Stars) MAL: 5/10

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thominospizza · 1 year

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To Your Eternity: My Growing Indifference (S2E4)

I don't know if it's just me but I feel like this animé isn't going anywhere and this particular episode exemplified that fact. Nearly half of the episode was a flashback that was pain-stakingly searching for sympathy for the prince character. I felt like it was scratching at my skin to force some reaction out of me and I just didn't care.

That sums up this season so far for me. The only good bit was the poisoning scene - a triumph which they promptly undid in the following episode. It's trundling along, going nowhere fast which is somewhat ironic because Fushi is going everywhere quickly.

The first half of the episode was some shenanigans about a napkin, a horse and Fushi building a house brick-by-brick. I didn't care. I don't react well to wackiness and this prince character brings it in abundance. I don't know what brings people to both write and draw characters like this and for viewers and readers, I don't know how they can possibly enjoy it. He is infuriatingly shallow and empty. In Shakespearean productions, jesters appear for one line or two for comic relief and that's it but animé fans are prepared to have entire series about just them. Totally lost on me.

I somewhat enjoyed Fushi building a house himself like an Animal Crossing villager. The visual is very cute but it only lasts a couple of minutes or so then it's back to straight-faced tedium. This is probably the first time in this whole series where I am waiting for the characters involved to meet their inevitable end. Looking forward to it, even. I want this entire royal family to die as soon as possible.

So anyway, the prince can see the ghosts of those who have passed over into the paradise land. The way he's treated reminds me of the stories about how Jehovah's Witnesses and other restorationist faiths treat people with mental illness and other serious problems. It isn't because he can see ghosts though, it's just because he has feelings for a commoner so he has to be exorcised. This would be impactful if you observed how he changed in some way but you know he lives and ends up the same as he was so who cares.

They cut his arm open slightly to let out the demons or whatever and that's kind of the top and tail of the flashback. There's some hogwash about the king preferring his brother as the sole heir but I do not feel sorry for him. The other thing that pissed me off about this episode was the irritating sprinkles of queerbaiting in the undercurrent. I understand and appreciate the fact that this will annoy me and only me but I still can't help but bookend this with commenting on one of the most vapid hallmarks of desperation.

Something better happen soon. The romance between Gugu and Rean looks like an acid rollercoaster by comparison.

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thominospizza · 1 year

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A Comprehensive Reevaluation of The Great Pretender's Ending: A Franchise Suicide

The following blogpost contains spoilers for the finalé of Great Pretender.

On the 3rd of November in 2021, I had this to say about the season finalé of Great Pretender:

My question is: why? I don’t understand what the point was of any of this because it seems to serve no real greater purpose other than trying to fool the audience. They live by the principle that if any of them fuck up, the group won’t stick up for each other. It is on the individual responsibility to carry their own weight. It’s bothers me because it’s used as a sort of fake plot device to carry the mystery and tension of the scene even though it’s a performance for nobody. All these Yakuza aren’t going to have a clue about what they’re talking about. As Edamura announces that he’s finally going beat Laurent at his own game when he hasn’t really.

Whilst I still stand by that statement, reading that is probably nothing new. The pitfalls of the ending are immediately obvious at the scratch of the surface. It's not necessarily an ending that has plotholes and whilst some would call it that, I would argue in favour of another term. A word that doesn't define an inability for the author to create the perfect house of cards but rather, a problem maintaining that the cards - whilst still shaky - are still essentially cards. What I'm looking for, we'll just call it social and/or interpersonal collapse of a character or "SOC" for short.

So let's start at the beginning (or the end, I guess) and we'll forget all the audience cheats that only I seem to care about. I'm sure when Sophocles was employing dramatic irony in his plays circa 500 B.C, he knew that employing the opposite of what he was achieving would be a stupid idea. I digress. Here is a short list of five crucial errors that occur within the ending of Great Pretender. Strap yourselves in because this is going to be a longun.

5. They Got Too Greedy.

This one is an obvious one to start with but the writers here demonstrate full SOC when they opt to incorporate the three villains from the previous series into the final twist. The show takes the long, arduous and calculated process of introducing the means, motive and operandi to take down Eddie Cassano, Sam Ibrahim and James Coleman and leave them with nothing. On the way, we get some extremely good character development out of Edamura, Cynthia and Abby.

This is all thrown out the window because they got too greedy. They fall of the illusion of structure whereby you do the same thing at the end as you do at the beginning (They do this in another way too so hang on for that). They want to have Edamura pull a fast one on Laurent for revenge so he somehow contacts all three of them - without really explaining how - even though it's heavily implied that the three of them are in prison, bankrupt or both. Finished. Edamura, it should be pointed out, was left to be the least likeable by the point of view of Edamura. It's also shown that he is deeply moved and emotionally invested in the relationships between Cynthia, James and Thomas and Abbey and Lewis Muller.

But I guess he doesn't actually give a shit because he bankrolled them all for a prank.

This is the part where I imagine that you say "But ThominosPizza, Laurent has effectively been financing pranks at Makoto's expense". To that, I say "fair point". HOWEVER, there was something to gain for Laurent and the others. Above all the mockery, there was a practical and sensible explanation that doesn't exist with Makoto so it's like he doesn't learn any real lesson at all. That brings me to my next point.

4. Having Their Cake and Eating It.

They got too greedy. Again.

They were clearly at odds with how to end this so they decided to just do all of them at the same time. They want the emotion that comes with the twist of Makoto's betrayal without him actually betraying them. They want the emotion of Makoto being killed by his own Father without it actually happening for real. It's not helped by the fact that Makoto's father easily talks him into trusting him, pretends to act scared in the fake execution and, just as easily talks his son back into trusting him again. All for the sake of pulling a fast one on the audience. As I mention in the original post, the sequence in the chairman's office is a performance for nobody.

The problem here is that they are caught between a rock and a hard place. If Makoto betrays Laurent and everyone else, no more team confidence and probably no more animé. If Makoto - or anyone - dies then no more animé. So they have to all survive, right?

Wrong. If they were any good at their jobs, you can easily write a story out of Makoto and Laurent being enemies with their own gang of confidence men. Or even the element of Makoto falling for the organized crime syndicate after all because then you have a compelling cat-and-mouse situation. Instead, they went for the safest possible option: Everyone lives and they are all still friends after all. The result of this is that the animé ends on a damp note and possibly for good because now, they have nowhere else to go. There are no more backstories to explore, no more motives and no goal.

This would be fine if they didn't tease that the show must go on at the end of the final episode with some utterly uninspiring U.S politics guff and the fact that Dorothy is somehow still alive. Yes. They couldn't EVEN kill her off. The only person to die in the whole series is Makoto's Mother and I wouldn't be surprised if they went back on that as well.

3. A Failure To Explore Makoto's Character.

It was right there.

This point comes back around to the previous in some ways because this is the offshoot of their attitude towards the ending. Makoto Edamura's character has been steadily building throughout the series in a way that I would definitely argue is masterful. Throughout the first, they explore his fragile attitude and his erratic way of thinking through scenario and emotional exposure. You get a cauldron of recklessness and fear and it's compelling to watch. The second series however, delves more into the relationship between him and his Father which has been a dangling carrot for a while. This is when the character development goes from masterful to completely amateur.

Suddenly, all interactions between him and Laurent and his Father are done for fast-tracked emotional manipulation and shock value. It's like switching from a three-course gourmet meal to a TV dinner. Nothing is natural anymore. You are almost convinced that he is going to intend on betraying Laurent et al. but because he doesn't, all this build-up between him and the Wizard is a complete waste. The way the two of them go from trusting each other to hating each other at the flick of a wrist is handled about as delicately as a unicycle with a punctured tire.

Also, as a result of Makoto not doing the dirty, the incredibly believable and touching exploration of his search for motherly love from the Chairman is pissed down the toilet as well. The ending means that he was never falling for her at any point even though he really did want to shoot and murder his own Father and was convinced that he had done. What you're left with is Makoto projecting his own Mother and her habits onto this mafia boss just because he's a sociopath I guess. Again, this is a performance for nobody.

A wasted opportunity. SOC, dare I say.

2. Abbey and Cynthia

This isn't a huge deal but I did feel like both characters were pushed to the background during this season. Despite smatterings of further character exploration teased in the beginnings of the second season, they are moreorless pushed to the side in favour of Seiji Ozaki, Laurent Thierry and Dorothy Noname. This is fine because they have had their characters fully explored prior but in this series, they are seemingly stripped of their identities. They are just pawns in the greater operation and hold no greater status than Kudo or Shi Ohn. The writers pretend to kill them off. Sure. Fair enough.

But they have scores to settle. Abbey's relationship with life and death is already kicked to the curve by the third arc in the previous season. At this current moment in time, Abbey is just a girl who beats people up but she can't even have that ever-so-unique character trait to fall back on because the whole gang demonstrates during the final scene that they can hoid their own if they have to. Her roles in this are a fake naked princess who is held prisoner and then a riot squad member in the final heist.

I have to re-iterate that this isn't a huge deal. I just miss when everyone had a comprehensive part to play. It felt more like a team effort.

1. The Island: Going Out With a Bang?

This element of the heist might seem unrelated to how they inadvertantly killed in the franchise and could easily be interpreted as simply dumb and rightfully so. It is dumb. How they managed to build it in such short notice, what the real point of it was and how everyone involved fell for it. Not to turn this into a CinemaSins video but I can't buy into how you wouldn't notice the uncanniness of a very specifically designed room and building being copied nor can I buy into them not realizing that they were drugged considering they're all very experienced in organized crime.

But forget all that. I am about to go full nitpicking-nerd mode.

My qualm is that faking the building and taking them to an island retroactively defeats any believability that Makoto was going to turn on them. Why are any of them really buying Makoto turning on them or Cassano and the SWAT team showing up if it isn't even a real building in the first place? Because what would Makoto's supposed gameplan be if he was going to link up with the world of organized crime? From their perspective, how is he going to get out of this situation? They do specify that Team Confidence were close to falling for it in the epilogue. Why are they so stupid?

My point is that there would be actual stakes if it was a real building but if the plan was all along that they were going to leave them abandoned on an island then who cares what happens inside the fake building? None of it has any bearing on anything. If Makoto turns heel then he is abandoned as well. Again, a performance for nobody - SOC.

All of this characterized contrivance just to fool the audience at the end and at what cost? I guarantee almost everyone watching this - after the fantastic elation of the ups and downs - were just left saying "Oh. Okay."

This kills the franchise because you cannot trust any information that the show is willing to give you anymore. Everything is a farce even at your own expense. So why bother? Who are these people anyway? Why do you care what happens to them now? All the stakes of their past have been removed. All of their money has been earned. What are their goals anymore? They don't have any.

I just wished you ended the series gracefully. Instead of a tightly-knit pocket of a fantastic animé that starts and ends with immense satisfaction, it will now be remembered as a wasted opportunity with unfulfilled potential. You fumbled the bag, writers.

Just like Team Confidence, you got too greedy.

#the great pretender #the great pretender review #the great pretender analysis #anime retrospective #anime review #anime analysis #netflix anime #wit studio #laurent thierry #makoto edamura #edamame

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thominospizza · 1 year

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Will This Episode be an Improvement? A Review of S2E3 of To Your Eternity.

I guess we're entering the new generation. The controversial new timeframe in which To Your Eternity takes place. A puzzler but I'll give it a try. We'll see what a century will do. Also: I defend myself and my opinions about the previous episode (S2E2)

Honestly, there isn't a lot to say about this episode. It's one of these transitional episodes that you get in this series in which Fushi arrives at a place and becomes accommodated with new people he may or may not like. Then the next episode is the exploration of that relationship before the assumed conclusion. Sorry to be cynical about the formula this early on but you can hardly blame me.

What looks interesting to me in this second season are the greater consequences in the world left behind by Fushi. I want to explore the larger world of Yanome and Jananda and how they've changed over time but I get the feeling we won't. What is explored however, is the idea of a prophet or prophet-like figure still walking the Earth and having to deal with believers, non-believers and the other trappings of religious fundamentalism. This looks promising for the series because the last was more about how Fushi perceives the world whereas this is about how the world interprets the Immortal One. I like that.

I will admit that they had convinced me that this new descendant was going to be a good guy this time around but by the end, I was less convinced. I'm still on the fence but I don't see why you'd have any reason to trust The Guardians if you were in Fushi's position. They protect him from harm, sure but at the eventual cost of his agency like every other instance.

I guess we now also have to contend this wacky and bland lavish French prince-villain archetype for the remainder of this arc, at least. I'm not crazy about characters like this being in the quiet universe of To Your Eternity but what do I know? A tiny fragment of the universe right at this very moment is the answer to that question. There is still time to win me round but precious little if you ask me. Clock is ticking.

The rest of the episode is boring. Reminded me of the infamous "court" episode of Re:ZERO but not as bad. I don't care about royal societies being injected into storylines just for the sake of doing an arc about one. Everything looks pretty generic, even the outlandish prince character which I feel like I've seen a million times before.

The episode concludes with Fushi saying that he will pack up shop and give up his many forms to the Nokkers if someone he holds dear falls foul of the Nokkers again. This meaning that he will have to start at a molecular level once again. Gasp. Will he really throw away his many lives if he vicariously experiences death again?

What do you think? Pete's sake...

This episode was completely and totally fine. Nothing to write home about but I'm nowhere near as venomous in my hatred. A transitional episode which vaguely outlines goals, motives and the greater universe in a fairly competent fashion.

**1/2 / ***** (Two and a Half Stars) / MAL: 5/10 - Adequate.

Now that that is over with. I can now defend myself for my opinions about the last episode which, if you aren't aware, I declared S2E2 of To Your Eternity to be the worst one of them all.

Did I overreact? Yes, you could reasonably say I did overreact but I do have to address something which I failed to communicate in that surmisation. It wasn't necessarily the content that offended me or that it was deemed to be fine within the universe. What annoyed me was that the content of the episode was completely barren and that it seemed like they were scratching for dilemmas to fill up time. I was annoyed that that was the best that they could come with. To me, it represented the bottom of the barrel.

I will admit that it did come across as pearl-clutching about sexualized content or depiction of illegal acts (without getting flagged by Tumblr) but there was barely anything else to write about in that episode. I just felt like the show was moving nowhere fast and I had to sit through an awkward and embarrassingly written scene.

I do stand by my general feelings about it but I will concede if it comes to the end of the season and it's been a worthwhile endeavour.

I doubt it though.

You can stop sending me aggressive messages about me being a member of the snowflake generation and leaving comments saying that I don't understand anything about writing. Thank you x

#to your eternity #your eternity #to you the immortal #fumetsu no anata e #fumetsu no anata #fumetsu monday #to your eternity review #to your eternity season 2 #fall 2022 anime #fall 2022 #anime review #anime #fantasy anime #anime fantasy #yoshitoki oima #oima yoshitoki #to your eternity s2

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