Posted by

Posted on

December 12, 2023

Posted under

history, movies

Comments

3 Comments

Historical drama film review: Cromwell

Continuing a tradition with the Japanese poster this time. I love this poster design too.

I know I started that Hollow Crown watchthrough a while back that I’m only three films into, but I’ll try to justify covering this one in between, because it’s sort of relevant in some sense. Or maybe I’m just bullshitting, but it’s fine — this one’s about a king of England too, so it’s close enough.

Cromwell is a 1970 big costume/war drama detailing the events of the English Civil War of the 1640s, when the country was torn between King Charles I and the rogue Parliament. Or Charles was the rogue one, which turned out to be the case as far as victor’s justice goes when he lost and got his head cut off in 1649 (sorry for the spoilers.) I’ve had my eye on this film for a long time, since the war is interesting to me for the power struggle and legal history behind it, and also for its legendary leads: Richard Harris as Oliver Cromwell and Alec Guinness as the doomed King Charles.

I should preface all the stuff below by saying as an American, I didn’t grow up with this war in my cultural consciousness the way the American Revolution and Civil War very much were. Being neither English, Scottish, Irish, nor Welsh (though I have some distant cousins in all those countries like many Americans do) and neither Catholic nor Protestant, I just don’t have a dog in the race.

That said, I don’t think Cromwell is a great film. It doesn’t seem like a lot of people do considering the ratings I’ve seen, so maybe that’s not a hot take anyway, but this movie did have some major problems. If it weren’t for Harris and Guinness especially carrying the entire film on absolute talent, or for the nice costumes and sets, there likely wouldn’t be much reason to bother with Cromwell at all.

But first, the basic plot: King Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland is pissed because he needs money to wage war in Ireland against his own probably pretty unwilling subjects, but to get that money he needs to convene Parliament. At this time, Parliament wasn’t anywhere near the powerful institution it would become starting in the next century, but it already had a long history as a body of England’s top guys representing the lords and the commons and approving certain vital measures presented by the monarch. This was a serious problem for Charles, however, because Parliament was pissed off at him already for his imposition of heavy taxes and arbitrary rule, and so if they were going to open the purse, it was going to be on condition that he be less of a shithead absolutist.

Charles wasn’t into that, however. In response to Parliament’s demands, he dissolved the body and ended up at war with them and their supporters, one of whom was a member of Parliament named Oliver Cromwell. This guy was a landed gentry type and a major Puritan, which meant he even hated the moderate Protestantism of Charles’ Church of England. Even worse for the Puritans, Charles had a French Catholic wife and was suspected of being a Catholic sympathizer. There’s a lot more to the religious aspect of the conflict, almost none of which figures into Cromwell, so forget about any of that high/low church controversy, the major role the Scots played in that controversy, or anything at all about William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury who also got his head cut off.

Cromwell ended up one of the leaders of a rebellion against the king, or the legitimate government’s fight against the rebel king as Parliament saw it. After a lot of fighting and failed diplomacy by the king, including trying to get a Catholic army from Ireland to quell Parliament, he ended up on trial for treason and convicted, sentenced to death, and beheaded (and see also King Louis XVI a century later.) Then a few years later, Cromwell was called in by Parliament, which as it turns out was full of assholes who couldn’t govern properly without an executive, and so he became Lord Protector of the new Commonwealth of England. The end.

Except there’s a lot more to it than that, like the fact that Cromwell did serve as Lord Protector for several years after Charles’ execution and that he did a hell of a lot of war crimes in Ireland that he’s remembered for there to this day. Cromwell ends far too early to touch any of that material sadly. Granted, there’s only so much you can put into a single film like this, but maybe instead of Cromwell the film should have been titled Charles I, because I think he’s more central to the film’s events than Cromwell is. That’s all aside from the other simplifications of the actual history, making Cromwell’s early role in the war larger than it actually was and doing weird stuff with the chronology.

Cromwell kind of reminds me of Richard II, about another king of England who tried to invade Ireland by taking money from people who got pissed off at him and killed him. All the more so since Shakespeare also wasn’t that concerned with historical accuracy, himself fucking around with timelines, events, and entire characters to tell the story he wanted: if he hadn’t died in the reign of Charles’ father King James, Shakespeare probably could have written a Charles I that might have been something like this in terms of the story structure.

But then character motivation is also hard to tell at times, maybe partly because of this compressed timeline. Why did the king agree to execute his buddy the Earl of Stafford, for example? That was a major event leading up to the war, but here it takes about two minutes in the film for the king to sign that warrant, and it’s not clear really why or how he was made to agree to it when it’s extensively documented in real life. The film’s battle tactics don’t make a lot of sense either as they play out, but since I’m not at all a military history guy I can’t say much about that, except that that Battle of Naseby I wrote about back in my review of King Crimson’s Lizard, partly a concept album about that battle, is also featured in this film. They even have Prince Rupert himself here, played by Timothy Dalton years before his James Bond fame:

I’m still not a fan of either this film or of Lizard, but damn if there isn’t some good acting here at least. Despite my problems with it, I think Cromwell is worth watching if only to see Richard Harris being really pissed off for an entire movie and to hear Alec Guinness talking about his authority and divine right, rolling his Rs in a way I could never get down to the disappointment of my Spanish teacher at grade school. Both were legends, and of course in any one of these clips you’ll see comments like “Dumbledore kills Obi-wan”, so hopefully the kids are getting to know their deeper bodies of work. The film also does at least address some of the struggle around whether countries need kings at all, with even a little mention of the proto-socialist Leveller movement that Parliament’s leadership crushed (though if this had gotten a full miniseries treatment like I, Claudius, that could and should have had near a full episode dedicated to it.)

I can’t address the religious controversy stuff too much, since I don’t have a dog in that race either, but I know the film glosses over a lot of both the religious and legal aspects of the conflict between king and Parliament. For a nice overview of both, I recommend Historia Civilis’ videos on YouTube here and here. The trial of Charles I was especially significant in creating a sort-of precedent, even if Charles’ son Charles II did end up coming back and blowing up the English Commonwealth shortly after when he won back his father’s throne in 1660 — even then, he was never able to exercise the kind of absolute authority his father attempted to grab.

Though considering his reputation as the Party King, Charles II might just have been too concerned with getting piss drunk with his many mistresses to care about that authority, but he was wise not to try to take it anyway since neither the common people nor the lords were putting up with an arbitrary monarch anymore, and especially not a Catholic one (see Charles II’s brother James II, who became king after Charles’ death because all his royal brother’s kids were bastards — remember those many mistresses — but who was also a barely secret Catholic and ended up ousted in favor of his possibly gay Dutch Protestant son-in-law. History takes some strange turns.)

Now that’s some diplomacy. I’d take Luxembourg, seems like a nice place.

Anyway, I said it would be a slow month, but I think when I get deep into a depressive state, on a long low end of that wave like I feel now, I always end up writing a lot more than usual. It’s the best distraction I have outside of work, and lack of sleep probably helps. Don’t take me as a role model, kids. Until next time, whether it’s more anime, history, or No Man’s Sky, I hope you’ll return.

Posted by

Posted on

December 9, 2023

Posted under

games

Comments

3 Comments

Sky diary #2: Unwelcome visitor

Back in No Man’s Sky, and back to my waste of a planet. Though since last time, I have found enough resources to build this computer somehow that allowed me to name my base. I wanted to give it a welcoming name, even if it is just a shitty shack and a couple of trailers in the desert. (Points if you get it, though you can’t spend them anywhere.)

After scouring the area and drilling for copper and other metals, minerals, and gases, I managed to brew some spaceship fuel. This seems like a dangerous proposition, but I guess my character is proficient at this kind of stuff being a space pilot.

I also made a small addition to my house, from two floor panels in area to four. Truly living the good life now. Also see this fun camera angle, staring at my character’s flat ass, the poor guy. Or maybe that suit is just too bulky.

But now it’s finally off into space again. I’d like to find a better planet than the last two busts, but first I need to visit a local space station. But even before that, let’s appreciate the nice graphics. I’m not much of a graphics guy, unless we’re talking not ultrarealism but rather specific art styles, but this does look pleasant. I like the color in space above the atmosphere, though I’m not sure how accurate that is to real life. Maybe we’re in a gas cloud or something?

I also wonder whether I can fly into the local star. I did that quite a few times in a certain other space exploration sim, but in this one it seems like you need to very deliberately fly into it given the far larger scale.

There might be time for self-immolation later, but for now, the station, which looks like one of those talking balls from Portal 2.

This thing also looks like one of the Portal 2 balls. Must be important with its central positioning in this station, with the light shining down on it as though it were God’s himself. This looks more like a futuristic temple the more I think about it.

This station is home to a lot of this space bird civilization, the Gek. I’ve begun picking up their words from talking to other pilots in the station and from mysterious stones back on my current home planet, so I might be able to manage a conversation soon, but not yet.

But finally I get to customize my look. There are plenty of options here, though none that let me see what I look like under the visor. Maybe that’s for the best, since I don’t seem to have any opportunity ever to take it off — I live in an eternal hell trapped in this pressure suit. I have to assume there’s some eating and evacuation mechanism in there like real-life astronauts have. Maybe it’s better not to think about such details.

My new look. All pink to really stand out in any environment, and all slimmed down to the point that my character now matches me in probably not being able to physically cope with life as a space colonizer.

I really don’t know about this language-learning mechanic. I don’t mind the concept, but it feels awkward to have to talk to everyone on a space station just to learn one word each from them. Also not sure whether “DESTRUCTION” is the best way to start to show that I’m friendly to these penguin reptile aliens, but this one didn’t seem to mind.

The station core, or the central computer more or less. Some asshole just wandering in off the street like me probably shouldn’t even have access to this, much less have the ability to get special permissions with a code. I guess people out here are pretty trusting.

Back to the desert planet now, which is pretty easy since I now have a teleportation device that links directly to that station. I’m not sure whether this works on Star Trek “scramble your particles” rules — the problem with that system has been discussed a lot already — but at least it’s convenient.

My focus is now not on expanding my base any further but finding a better planet. That signal I need to locate will hopefully help me out with getting me out of this star system. But on the way, I stopped by an old manufacturing plant that also seemed abandoned. There has to be good loot in a place like that, and if it’s abandoned, then hey — there aren’t any laws about not breaking and entering on this planet that I know of.

I tried shooting the door with my mining beam, which was both totally ineffective and triggered automated drone guards nearby to start chasing me.

Thankfully, the sprint button helped me escape from the armed drones, who gave up looking for me once I was over the ridge. I guess I need more tools before I can raid these old facilities and properly defend myself from security.

But I finally found that signal, coming from the wreckage of a crashed ship. Can’t say I’m too invested in this story yet with the total lack of actual characters in this game so far, but maybe that will change? More importantly for now, I also received plans for a hyperdrive, which is exactly what I needed. After some more boring rock-shooting with my mining tool, I got the stuff I needed to make this advanced engine, installed it in my ship, and was off once again, though still without the special warp fuel I need to use it.

Before I can leave the system, it’s off to still another planet in this one, this time with almost no atmosphere and low gravity. I wouldn’t have bothered with this place, but it was home to yet another signal the game wanted me to check on before I could progress. Here I found another abandoned and wrecked facility inhabited by a new alien lifeform.

That doesn’t sound good. I’m not sure I want any dealings with whatever “The Eye of the Anomaly” is, but it sounds like this Eye is interested in me unfortunately. It also seems to have tentacles, which is even more unnerving. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if No Man’s Sky turns out to be a cosmic horror game, or at least if I can opt in to play that section of the game if it exists, because that sounds like more fun than just a giant sandbox.

I didn’t want to use the term Lovecraftian, since that term is probably very overused these days, but when I see a “Whispering Egg” attached to another tentacle I can’t help it. And of course, when I saw this thing, I reacted in the only way I knew how: by shooting it.

That was yet another mistake. Multiple tentacle creatures emerged to defend their friend, or maybe it was all one entity buried under this lunar landscape. I didn’t stick around to find out, using my sprint button and my jetpack (which I haven’t mentioned until now somehow, but it’s very useful as well especially in low gravity) and fleeing back to my ship to get the hell off this rock. I got what I came for anyway — apparently all I needed to do here was read that mysterious message.

Fleeing back to my temporary home, but very soon I’ll find a better place to settle down in once I make this antimatter I need to fuel that warp drive and get out of here. Hopefully the grass really is greener in the next system over.

Never mind, the whole region is green on the map, even though that doesn’t seem to match up with anything I’ve found so far. Next time, it’s off to this Sunanj system.

Posted by

Posted on

December 6, 2023

Posted under

anime

Comments

6 Comments

A review of Planetarian

Last month was pretty slow here, I know. December will probably be slow too as my work continues to ramp up. But naturally, I’m not going to not write about something depressing here at least a few times a month, so here’s Planetarian, a post-apocalyptic five-episode anime adapted several years back from the classic Key visual novel. I played/read Planetarian a long time ago, a few years after its 2004 release through a fan translation (nearly the only way to get VNs in English back then.) I also wrote about it in some depth a few years back here, though with a lot of spoilers that I won’t be getting into this time — I already covered them in that post, and since the story of this anime is taken from the original work unchanged, I don’t want to rehash what I’ve already written.

But don’t worry: I wrote that post in 2020, and there’s plenty more to write about the subjects raised by Planetarian here at the end of 2023, and almost entirely for horrific reasons. This is a warning that I’ll also be getting into heavy subjects here considering the weight of this story, so if you don’t want more of my typical doom, this might not be the post for you. (And by God I could write about things now that would be far heavier even than these. Also, a bit of a politics warning. I know, but it fits this time. Maybe.)

Here’s the story, and a pretty simple one: our protagonist, simply called the Junker, is a guy who salvages materials from dead cities following a civilization-ending global biological war. The Junker is working alone, trying to find anything of value in one of Japan’s ruins, when he’s forced to take shelter from the many automated weapons roaming the area in an old department store (modeled after the real Matsubishi Department Store in Hamamatsu, so that’s our city, though still a dead one in this future nightmare world.)

Inside, the Junker is looking for materials to salvage when he comes across the department store’s old planetarium and its operator, Hoshino Yumemi, an android. He’s surprised to find an android still in working condition after so many years of desolation, but the store turns out to have had an emergency power line running and providing just enough juice for Yumemi to power herself and run for short periods. And despite the fact that the city and everything around it is a ruin, now devoid of human life, Yumemi continues to carry out her duties as well as she can, standing at the entrance to invite customers to the planetarium’s daily projection shows.

Yumemi is excited to finally see a new customer after so many years and insists that the Junker stay to watch the projection. The Junker is understandably suspicious, but once he realizes that this situation isn’t some kind of elaborate trap, he’s just annoyed by Yumemi and her constant talking. His concern is finding food and at least one bottle of unopened and unspoiled whiskey, not with the stars. Yet Yumemi manages to wear him down with her chirpiness, and so he finally agrees to sit and watch her projection, but the show is interrupted by the fact that the projector itself (“Miss Jena” as Yumemi calls it) is broken.

Against his better judgment, the Junker decides to fix the projector using the few intact parts remaining in the department store so Yumemi can put on her show, reasoning that it’s too dangerous to leave at night anyway. As he works, however, something unexpected happens: he starts to get to like Yumemi. This android who’s “just a little broken” by her own admission has a cheerfulness that rubs off on even this gritty imbittered guy.

A recording made by Yumemi just before the city’s evacuation three decades earlier, when her human colleagues were forced to abandon her.

I won’t get into the rest of the story here — instead, you should watch this series yourself. Or play the VN if you prefer, but I know a lot of people just aren’t into visual novels. If you are, good news: Planetarian got a fully voiced HD remake a while back and is available on Steam, that absolute dump.

If you’re not a VN-reading type, however, you won’t miss out on anything by watching the ONA instead. Both are pretty compact — from what I remember, the VN is only a few hours long, and it’s one read straight through with no dialogue options or branching paths. The anime is likewise about the length of a film and was paired with an actual film titled Planetarian: Storyteller of the Stars that looks to have a lot of overlap with this one. David Productions is another studio I wasn’t familiar with before watching Planetarian, but they did a nice job especially with the apocalyptic city scenes outside the planetarium, and the production is generally good. They didn’t fuck with the source material, which I appreciate — the simple story and its characters stand well enough on their own.

Key’s VNs are well known for being tearjerkers. I don’t usually go in for stories like that — “it will make you cry” is really more of a turn-off for me, since I’m usually looking for an escape from the horrible bullshit of daily life and from the world in general when I watch or play something. I get that some people are looking for that cathartic effect, but it’s not a pleasant one for me — it usually just depresses me, and God knows I don’t need more of that, hence why you’ll never see a few certain popular anime series reviewed here.

But hell, I guess I need to make an exception sometimes. This VN is one of the very rare instances when a story got me misty — not even tears, but that’s more than enough for me. It wasn’t at the part you might expect if you’ve played or watched this work either, but rather at Yumemi’s projection. Despite its horrific setting, I think Planetarian is an optimistic story, and a lot of that is expressed through Yumemi, who presents an outdated pre-apocalyptic view of humanity as stumbling but doing its best to learn from its mistakes, finally reaching out into space.

Even when I first read the VN back in the mid-2000s, when our situation didn’t seem as immediately dire as it does now, this hit me pretty hard, but now it hits me all the harder. Call me a bleeding heart liberal if you want (to get political, because I really don’t give a fuck anymore, I even reject that “liberal” tag at this point considering how limp and weak they’ve been in my country on vital issues that they claim to care about) but humanity has utterly fucked the environment. This absolutely should not even be a polarizing political issue, since the end result will affect all of us equally aside maybe from the ultra-rich living in their offshore private cities as they watch the rest of us scrap to get by, but there’s just the point: I believe we’ll destroy ourselves through short-sightedness and self-interest, and since human nature hasn’t changed much if at all since ancient times and we’ve never learned a single lesson from history, there’s no reason to believe we’ll ever get any wiser.

We don’t get a lot of background for the world-ending conflict in Planetarian (though there is a prequel I should probably watch that might explore that more) but since the Junker refers to a massive biological weapon attack that started that final war, it’s safe to assume the same was true of his world. But still, Yumemi’s optimism is what gets me emotionally every time I’ve played or watched Planetarian. Despite being an android, she has a genuine love for her work and for her human colleagues and customers and wants to continue helping humans, even as her weaponized robotic counterparts threaten both of them.

Yumemi, you’re too pure for this world

That brings me to the other interesting point I found about Planetarian when I first played it and still find now: Yumemi herself. At first, when the Junker realizes what she is, he treats her like a malfunctioning object that he doesn’t have any use for. That’s pretty much what she is, as Yumemi herself says, but over the few days they spend together, the Junker ends up becoming probably about as close to friends with her as he can handle, being the gritty loner he is.

With the advent of large language models and analysis tools that fall into that broad AI category, some people have been wondering whether it’s possible for an artificial intelligence to form meaningful emotional bonds with a human. That’s a far older concept than even the internet, of course, but it’s all the more relevant today, even more than just a few years ago when I wrote about Time of Eve, an anime that addresses that issue somewhat.

I have no idea whatever that’s possible, being someone with no practical technical skills or knowledge, but there’s another realm I can reach into to find some possibly relevant information. It’s a realm you won’t be shocked at me knowing something about: that of VTubers.

Some who even don’t know anything about VTubers might have heard of Neuro-sama. She’s a VTuber, but not the regular kind, a human controlling a rig like a digital puppet: Neuro-sama is controlled by an AI created by one Vedal, a programmer who wrote a chatbot and attached it to a VTuber rig.

Almost every AI-related entertainment or artistic project I’ve heard about in the last year or two has turned out to be either a short-lived novelty or complete garbage. The undying horror that is Anna Indiana, an AI singer-songwriter who debuted last week, is just the latest in a line of abysmal failures. And over on Twitch, the old fake AI Seinfeld that captured everyone’s attention for about a week died and was replaced by an extremely boring Seinfeld-like that continues to drag months past the point that anyone cared.

However, I say “almost” for a reason: Neuro-sama. Despite the fact that she’s a soulless AI with nothing behind her beyond her programming, she’s managed to get well past novelty status and has become legitimately popular, getting Hololive/VShojo-level concurrent viewer counts when she streams. And for once, I can understand why, having seen a couple of collabs she had with human VTubers like Kiara: she’s actually pretty damn entertaining, at least in those situations. Even if it’s all just hollow, Neuro can kind of carry on a conversation and make jokes, and even her weird self-contradictions she’s known for are just another part of her charm.

Maybe a part of that is also that she’s still clearly an AI. No one would ever mistake Neuro-sama for a human, and the same is true for Yumemi — unlike many other instances of the popular android girl character, she’s not just basically a human in a robot body but rather really a robot, if an intelligent one. Or see Aigis from Persona 3, the only other example I can immediately think of.

I might be way off in this analysis, but I think this may be a common element to these endearing AIs, both real and fictional, that set them apart from the rest. When Anna Indiana stares into my soul with her unblinking robotic gaze and her unnaturally unmoving face, she falls right into that good old uncanny valley. Her creators may be trying too hard to make her seem human, even though they’re open about the fact that she’s not, and the “emotional” song with ChatGPT-penned lyrics emphasize all the more the fact that she’s an AI.

Meanwhile, characters like Yumemi and real-life chatbot VTubers like Neuro don’t seem to be trying to pretend at all: they’re janky and a little bit broken, but again, I think that’s part of their charm. Until or unless humanity manages to bridge that gap and create perfectly human-esque AI, that’s the best and in my opinion the only good at all we can expect out of these AI devs in terms of entertainment. Whether we actually want to bridge that gap is another question, and one I don’t think I can effectively address at all. Though considering just how much greater the supply of human entertainers is than the demand for entertainment, I still don’t see any need for them, even if I can see the appeal in Neuro — at least she and her creator/manager aren’t presenting us with worthless trash and calling it a heartfelt work of art.

Now that I really think about it, though, maybe the key is just attaching the dumb AI to an anime girl.

What was this post about? Right, Planetarian. Here’s a screen from the VN in case you were curious about that.

I guess this “review” was mostly wild, unhinged tangents, but is that a surprise coming from me? Never mind — you can ignore everything else I rambled about if you like and just take away my opinion that this Planetarian anime adaptation is pretty good and a nice substitute for the VN if you’re not interested in that medium. The story is also sadly becoming increasingly more timely, at least potentially in my own mind.

But I wouldn’t do the doomsday bunker thing anyway, even if I had the resources, which I don’t, so it’s just as well. What’s the point of hanging around with the snakes and roaches left alive and the rest of civilization demolished? Go ask those ultra-rich prepper assholes about that, or else someone who’s actually capable like the Junker. No, when the good Lord comes for me, I’ll be ready to go.

Posted by

Posted on

December 2, 2023

Posted under

games

Comments

4 Comments

Sky diary #1: Making a mistake

I may have made a mistake, yeah: I bought No Man’s Sky during a Black Friday sale. I’ve been looking for a space flight/exploration sim that’s not too demanding, that I can just fly around in, and that seemed to fit the bill especially following the game’s apparent massive improvements. Or maybe it wasn’t really improved and they just made the thing more boring — since I hadn’t touched it until now, I have no idea what it was like at launch beyond a few videos I watched.

But everyone says it’s great now, and half off seemed like the best I could do, along with a couple of DLCs for the copy of Crusader Kingdoms II I bought years ago also on sale. Apparently I have to pay extra to play as a Muslim kingdom, which is pretty bullshit for a game titled “Crusader Kingdoms” in my opinion, only getting to play one side in a war/diplomacy-themed base game. Paradox makes some interesting games, but fuck that. Look forward to my playthrough where I attempt to re-reconquista Spain from my base in Granada and proceed to form a pan-European empire where people get legally mandated four-day weekends and THC is free for all.

Away from my political incompetence and back to No Man’s Sky, to document the scope of my potential mistake, I decided to start a series of posts about my adventures in this galaxy. Potentially boring ones, and I don’t expect anyone at all to read any of this — it’s more for my own entertainment. But if you want to read along with what’s essentially a screenshot Let’s Play, the kind that’s over a decade obsolete at this point, you’re welcome. This is just my disclaimer that these posts will probably be devoid of even the little value my writing usually has.

So here’s the tutorial planet, a shitty wasteland with a toxic atmosphere covered in these horrific H. R. Giger tentacle egg creatures. I wanted to leave this place as quickly as possible, and the game wanted me to leave too, since the tutorial was all about how to gather resources and fix my broken ship. My character also has amnesia, because of course he fucking does (and note that the character apparently is not given any gender, but I guess I’m kind of self-inserting here in case anyone has an issue. The player character seems like a completely blank slate, so why not.)

So I got the hell out ASAP after doing what I had to do. I didn’t take too many screenshots since I was preoccupied with not dying on this toxic garbage heap of a planet. Not sure why I left a flag here or whether that was even me, and since my character has amnesia I guess he doesn’t know either.

Flying off, I figured any planet must be better than that one, and there was a signal I had to track anyway for some reason, so I headed off in this direction. Flying and landing are both easy and convenient, with lock-on and boost capabilities that make flight pretty automated, at least for now.

The above planet is apparently undiscovered, even though there’s a signal being sent from it, so someone must have been there before me. Maybe the game means it’s undiscovered by me?

A desert world. This looks a lot like what I think parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas look like — a lot of barren sandy stretches with cacti around. It would be nice if I could find some way to extract agave from some of these plants to make tequila. I can still drink in games, at least, and the margarita was always my favorite cocktail among the few I bothered to drink (I was always much more of a beer/bourbon enjoyer.)

But there’s no time for margaritas now. I don’t even have the salt yet. For now, I just have to trudge around this just slightly less shitty planet and gather enough resources to refuel, since my ship is out of juice following my escape from that toxic hellhole.

If I’m supposed to be the first being to discover this dump, I’m not sure why there are spacecraft constantly taking off and flying overhead. I don’t even know who the hell these people are or where they’re coming from, but at least they’re not attacking me.

This planet is also home to flying sand worm/dragons, one of which is constantly burrowing into and out of a hole very close to my landing spot. I don’t plan to get eaten by Shai Hulud anytime soon, but my ship can’t move until I make more fuel.

Of course, this Boruths Prime planet is also covered in horrible toxin-spewing plants. Though really, I’m the asshole, since it’s their planet and not mine. I’m just here extracting resources and destroying local plant life, a little like a colonizer, only there’s no apparent sentient life here. A lot of my No Man’s Sky experience so far has been “shoot rocks and plants to get resources, use resources to make and fix stuff and recharge my extraction gun so I can get more resources.” This all makes it feel like Minecraft in space, only the building options are far more limited so far.

Speaking of, here’s my very first base. The only part I built was the prefab shack to the right; the rest was an already existing but mysteriously abandoned complex. I’m guessing these are dotted around the landscapes of most of the planets I’ll come across. Some nice loot to find inside, and they do provide shelter from the harsh nighttime cold that will kill you if you hang around in it long enough without resources sufficient to restock your life support.

About as well furnished as my first apartment in a strange town where I had to move within two days to start a job years back. I was living out of my car for a few days and had to sleep in a shitty Motel 6 one night where the door wouldn’t lock. I didn’t sleep that night. At least on this trash planet, I’m pretty sure there’s nobody else to bother me, aside from the various animals who thankfully just ignore me.

For now, I’ll leave my self in this crappy shack in the frozen desert night. I had planned to post an anime review, but it turns out I have a lot more to say about it than I thought, and I’m still sorting out my feelings about it. I’m also watching Stardust Telepath, which is pretty nice if you don’t mind an incredibly sugary slice-of-life, but it’s about model rocketry, so a slight connection there. No idea what I’ll have posted next time, but until then.

Posted by

Posted on

November 23, 2023

Posted under

history

Comments

8 Comments

A list of podcasts I like

Yet another low-effort post today, since the end of the year at work is turning out to be extremely hectic, and I don’t expect that to change until after the new year comes. At least it’s some distraction from the rest of the world, but it also takes away from the things I actually like doing that don’t make me feel like I’m in a half-alive limbo shadow state of existence or something. You know the feeling if you’re also a corporate drone. Maybe one day I won’t just be one tiny cog in this evil parasitic system we’ve built here?

If you’re also a corporate drone, you should also play the short VN Endless Monday: the most accurate representation of that life ever created. Especially in this one scene. Fuck performance reviews.

Until I break free, which will be never, I’ll keep writing here, so here’s another post with the most straightforward title possible. This was motivated partly by the hybrid arrangement at work a lot of us have now, with a return to the old commute. Another downside of living and working in a large American city is that traffic is hell and public transport is absolute shit unless you’re in New York, DC, or maybe a couple of other old (for the US) cities where the train actually goes places on time that people want to go to. I don’t live in one of those cities, so I have to spend two to three hours a day on the highway on my in-office days.

Thankfully, despite all the horrors of the 21st century world that make King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man” feel like a good theme song for this period so far, we have a few positive developments like the podcast. The following podcasts are totally free to listen to aside from the usual Patreon setup where patrons can get episodes early and/or some bonus supplemental episodes and material, but even if you’re not paying a cent, there are hundreds of hours of no-cost entertainment and information out there to find. And I hope you like history, because that’s the only kind of podcast I listen to.

Revolutions

Starting with an obvious one. Creator Mike Duncan is one of the few history podcasting originals alongside Dan Carlin and his Hardcore History podcast, which I’m not even giving an entry because Carlin puts out maybe two podcast episodes a year now if we’re lucky (still great work, but man come on.) Duncan got his start with The History of Rome, a podcast that completed a run of several years back in 2012 or 13 — ancient history now, but that one is also well worth checking out if you’re interested in Rome at all.

The reason I’m highlighting his later podcast Revolutions instead is both its broad scope and depth. Duncan completed his podcast early this year, and over its nearly ten-year run he’s covered the English, American, French, and Haitian revolutions, the Spanish American wars of independence, the French July revolution of 1830, the revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune of 1871, and the Mexican and Russian revolutions. Not being a historian, I can’t vouch for his sources (and that’s going to be true of every other podcast I list here) but it seems like he’s done a great job telling these stories without getting bogged down in too much detail where it’s not necessary. At the same time, there’s plenty of depth as well starting with the French Revolution series, where I’d recommend you start — not that the first two aren’t also well-done, but they’re a little thin compared to the rest.

Behind the Bastards

Here’s a podcast that’s been running for years but that I only recently found thanks to a few recommendations I received. Hosted by internet comedy writer/war correspondent Robert Evans with a rotating set of guests, Behind the Bastards is a history podcast that focuses on the worst people in history, their lives, crimes, and downfalls (or sadly, more often, their fading into obscurity or into comfortable retirement without consequences for their actions.)

If you want to be pissed off about absolutely everything, and who can avoid that these days, this is a good podcast to check out, especially for those who are all right with morbid humor. Some might not appreciate that when the subjects are so heavy, naturally all the way up to genocide considering the subject of the podcast. However, Evans and his co-hosts treat such heavy subjects with due respect when they come up, and the show generally shines a light on past injustices many of which are barely in the public consciousness at all. Get entertained and pissed off at the same time and listen to this podcast. Here’s a fun one to start with, though it’s all good stuff. Or for an extremely relevant pair of episodes as of this writing, start here.

The British History Podcast

Speaking of a bastard — if you’ve wondered about exactly why I occasionally shit on William the Bastard (aka King William I of England, a true bastard in both the older biological sense and the modern moral one) go listen to The British History Podcast. This guy goes into astounding depth, diving into aspects of life on the British isles that I had no idea about. Being an American, really all the education I got about this land was that there was a big battle in 1066, then we beat King George in 1781 at Yorktown, and then the British Empire and World War II.

Of course, there’s a lot more to the story, so much that this podcast is just now in about the middle of King Bastard’s reign in the 1070s after several years. I like the host Jamie’s focus on the Celtic Britons and the Anglo-Saxon and Danish periods of rule in England, periods that barely even get glossed over in most popular history, but I expect at the pace it’s going that he’ll be continuing to make this podcast in another decade, assuming the total societal collapse hasn’t started by then. I any case, this guy has my dream job: a lawyer who escaped from the practice of law to do what he loves, and I envy the hell out of that.

The History of English Podcast

As a kind of pair to the above podcast, check out Kevin Stroud’s History of English, a podcast about the history of the English language. That might sound too dry for your taste — it did for me at first — but Mr. Stroud does a great job of documenting the evolution of English and tying it into the history of England and of Europe in general, detailing how other languages have affected that evolution. If you’ve ever wondered why some seemingly unrelated words sound similar, or why English grammar and spelling are so utterly, absolutely fucked, this is the podcast for you.

The Pirate History Podcast

Pirates are certainly one of the most popular types of historical person, up with ninjas, knights, and samurai among boys (at least I’m assuming drawing from my own childhood experience playing with my old Lego pirate sets.) But there’s a hell of a lot of history associated with sea piracy, from the ancient world all the way up to today. The Pirate History Podcast covers the stories of many of these pirates in great detail, with descriptions of sea battles and biographies of famous pirates, but also with some focus on lesser-known but still interesting figures and on how these figures sometimes dramatically affected world politics. It’s interesting to hear those deep historical cuts especially, but I’m also looking forward to how he handles Blackbeard’s bumbling friend Stede Bonnet.

Chinese Lore Podcast

There’s a lot of old Chinese literature that’s at least partially inaccessible to someone like me, lacking both the cultural and linguistic knowledge to really get a lot of that work as fully as I might. Thankfully, here’s one John Zhu, who has run a series of podcasts detailing the events of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, and is currently digging through Investiture of the Gods.

Zhu provides some good insight into some of the less understandable aspects of these stories for someone like me, whose only exposure to this stuff for a long time was Dynasty Warriors. Learn about just how overrated Liu Bei is (carried by Guan Yu and especially Zhuge Liang; also a reminder that I have to finish Ya Boy Kongming!) and how conniving and fun Cao Cao was (if you count getting people’s heads cut off for Machiavellian reasons fun, but at least the guy was a good poet.) Water Margin is also very fun and not nearly as well-known over here probably, so be sure to check that out if you like epic tales about outlaws fighting authority.

There are more great podcasts I’m probably missing here, but the above should provide you with plenty of listening material if you’re also damned to 10-15 hours on the highway per week like I am and as long as you like history. It might even distract from the fact that our roads and transport infrastructure in general are such absolute shit in America that I’m reminded of my days in Beirut, which thinking back might have actually had better roads than the city I live in now in this supposedly first-world country.

But hey, we’re all going down the tubes anyway. And next post, I’ll probably be covering a post-apocalyptic anime, because it seems like I’m just in that mood right now. Sorry, but I’ll hopefully see you next time.

Posted by

Posted on

November 13, 2023

Posted under

anime

Comments

7 Comments

A review of Slow Loop

Newly minted high school student Hiyori Yamakawa, soon to be Hiyori Minagi, is going through a lot of changes: new school, new stepfather with her mother’s second marriage, and new stepsister included. To get away and clear her mind, Hiyori does what she loves, going to the docks to go fly fishing. However, while there, Hiyori runs into a strange girl, Koharu, who has no experience with fishing but seems fascinated and excited by it. Hiyori gives Koharu the basics on fly fishing, and after spending a while getting to know each other, Koharu mentions that her father is getting remarried and that she’s supposed to meet her own new stepsister that day. But of course, as they now realize, Koharu has already met her.

Slow Loop is yet another slice-of-life anime I picked up. Anime schedules are still crammed full of isekais that I have zero interest in, but we also get the odd SOL cute girls doing cute things sort of series like this one, which aired last year. As usual, I’ll credit Yuru Camp for getting me somewhat into this genre of anime last year. Maybe it’s no surprise that I took to Slow Loop, since it’s extremely Yuru Camp in its premise and execution, though it’s hardly just a copy of that series, with a few character relationship elements that set it apart.

Not awkward at all: Koharu with her father, left, and Hiyori with her mother, right

The similarities with Yuru Camp are obvious even from the premise. Slow Loop focuses on the various styles of fishing, in rivers, lakes, and the ocean, the many types of lures and baits, and so on. Just as with Yuru Camp and its focus on camping, and with Super Cub and its focus on motorbikes, I have absolutely no knowledge of the subject of Slow Loop. But also as with those series, that lack of knowledge didn’t stop me from enjoying the show. Regular campers, cyclists, and anglers can likely enjoy and relate to those respective shows on a deeper level, but I never felt confused or, on the other end of that scale, talked down to as a total know-nothing.

Those similarities extend to our main characters. Hiyori, a pretty low-key girl with a love for and intense interest in her fishing hobby, bears a strong resemblance to Rin, while Koharu, the high-strung and enthusiastic novice, is our Nadeshiko. And while there’s no official fishing club this time around, the cast of Slow Loop is filled out with their parents — including Hiyori’s deceased father and Koharu’s deceased mother who show up in a few flashbacks each — and a few of their friends who also take an interest in fishing. Just as with Yuru Camp, there’s also barely any focus on the characters’ school life, even less this time around — it’s easy to forget Hiyori, Koharu and co. even attend school considering how little time the show spends there. Instead, we get plenty of fishing trips to lakes, rivers, and the seaside, where Hiyori shows Koharu the ropes and also learns a thing or two herself about styles outside of fly fishing.

And of course, Slow Loop also has a strong focus on cooking, with a natural focus on seafood this time, and with Koharu as the resident cook to pair with Hiyori’s fishing skills. I maintain that these slice-of-life shows make for better “food porn” than even the Food Network here in the US (not a big fan of that term myself, but if it brought you to my site and to this review, so much the better, because this show is for you.)

Seafood seems to be one of those love or hate kinds of foods. I fall on the love side of that argument, along with my love for the also controversial mushrooms and olives (the best pizza toppings, don’t fucking @ me about that)

Finally, both series take the unusual step of actually acknowledging that these high school students have parents and don’t just live in a weird vacuum without any responsible adult support (see K-On!, where the only prominent adult is kind of halfway responsible at best, and where parents are entirely absent.) I don’t have much of a problem with that lack of focus on the family, especially in the romantic series where the natural focus is on the leads (Takagi-san, Nagatoro, etc.) but Yuru Camp and Slow Loop benefit from their active inclusion of parents and siblings — that life in the slice-of-life feels more real, especially when said parents and siblings aren’t just tacked on for the hell of it but actually play important roles in their stories.

Hiyori’s childhood friend Koi with her younger twin brothers. Koi’s father is kind of a Jimmy Buffet type who only wants to fish and has a remarkably hot wife — definitely the most fun-looking family in the show, even if dad drives his daughter a little crazy with his irresponsible behavior.

Despite all the similarities I just highlighted, I don’t mean to say that Slow Loop is just a carbon copy of Yuru Camp only with fishing instead of camping. It seems likely that manga author Maiko Uchino got at least some of her inspiration from Afro’s manga, especially seeing how both ran in Manga Time Kirara, a manga magazine known for running this kind of slice-of-life CGDCT stuff. However, Slow Loop has its own unique character thanks to its deeper focus on the family lives of its characters and their coping with past tragedies. Hiyori learned everything she knows about fly fishing from her late father, who died of a sudden illness a few years before the start of the story, and Koharu still cherishes the memory of her late mother and younger brother, both killed in a traffic accident.

Having never gone through that kind of loss as a kid, I can’t say how I would have handled it. Losing your grandparents as an adult is naturally very different, especially when their end is more or less expected and everyone’s prepared for it, and after they’ve lived full lives — by contrast, it’s hard for me to imagine seeing your own father or mother’s life cut short as a child and the trauma that must follow.

Slow Loop features some appropriately downbeat moments, especially during the several flashbacks through which we see Hiyori and Koharu’s memories of their father and mother, to important points in their younger years, and to the aftermath of their deaths. However, the series doesn’t drown in depression and melancholy either, instead focusing on the creation of a new family, both between Hiyori and Koharu’s surviving parents and between the stepsisters themselves. The pair take to each other pretty quickly, bonding in part by teaching each other to fish and cook.

The relationship between the stepdaughters and their respective stepfather and mother is naturally more complicated. Even if both parents are pretty obviously decent, pleasant people as the parents in Slow Loop are, I imagine the act of stepping in as a kind of replacement for a deceased father or mother can cause some resentment and bitterness (again, not speaking from experience, aside from my parents divorcing when I was a young adult, which is a very different situation.)

Slow Loop doesn’t ignore this issue. Koharu comes right out in her straightforward, even blunt, way and admits to Hiyori that it feels strange having some new lady in the house, guessing that Hiyori feels the same way about her father. I can imagine another series in which the stepdaughter characters don’t deal with their new family arrangement as well — plenty of opportunity for drama and character development there. Slow Loop features some character development especially in Hiyori, who’s able to break out of her shell a little (and see also Rin in Yuru Camp again) but she and Koharu are remarkably mature about the situation. I won’t even say mature for their age, because I’ve known people who can’t handle such changes even as adults: just one of the several reasons I’ll never work in family law.

I also liked the focus on fishing’s perception as a male hobby, with Hiyori, Koharu and friends breaking out of that mold. Since I’ve never really gone fishing (unless drinking beer on a dock near people who were fishing counts) I can’t say much about that on a personal level either, but in American culture fishing does seem to be a stereotypically guy thing — think of all those 90s and 00s sitcoms where the goofy slob of a husband tries to get away from his nagging wife for a weekend to go fishing or golfing and gets in trouble for it — and maybe it’s the same in Japan.

Hiyori at work being asked a difficult question by her younger family friend Futaba. Yeah, it’s a true slice-of-life show: of course they had to find an excuse to put at least one character in a maid outfit.

But then there’s obviously no reason that girls can’t be into fishing, just like there’s no reason guys can’t be into dressmaking. That gendered hobby theme isn’t as prominent in Slow Loop as in Bisque Doll, but both stories take this question on in an effective way, with the younger Futaba worrying about how her best friend will look at her if she’s open about her love for fishing. As with Hiyori and Koharu’s family dynamics, the characters turn out to be extremely mature, even the grade school kids, with Futaba’s friend immediately accepting her and even asking why she thought she had to hide her passion.

The characters of Slow Loop avoid drama so easily and smoothly that it doesn’t feel quite realistic, but then I felt the same way about Yuru Camp and especially last year’s movie, in which Rin, Nadeshiko and the crew were able to come to a resolution that made everyone happy instead of falling into a more likely fight over land use and a complete bureaucratic nightmare. Having seen a few dispute like that up close in my profession, maybe my mind just automatically goes to conflict as the default. But just as I said about the Yuru Camp movie, I don’t mind this more idealistic approach — I think Slow Loop presents another case of the world as it ought to be more than as it actually is, which is fine with me, especially in the increasingly shittier world we actually live in. Maybe that’s just another reason we need series like Slow Loop all the more.

I haven’t been out in nature for years now; being trapped in an urban/heavy suburban area of a big city for years has probably warped my mind even more than it already is anyway.

The only other real conflict I found in Slow Loop was in Koharu’s slight insecurity over Hiyori and Koi between such close childhood friends, but even that’s mainly played for comedy with Koharu just getting a little pouty and Hiyori making fun of her a bit. As usual with these slice-of-life series, you shouldn’t come to Slow Loop expecting character conflict and drama. This medium is stuffed full of it, so full that people have been using the term “anime” the last few years to refer to anything suspenseful or dramatic. Slow Loop is instead more soul-healing material, and hell if some souls don’t need healing. I know mine does.

Seeing this ideal world and then thinking about our shit one is actually making me a little more depressed, so I’ll end the review here.

So there’s another recommendation if you want it. Slow Loop doesn’t seem to have made much of a wave outside of probably the committed Manga Time Kirara slice-of-life fans, but if you’re interested in finding some slightly less-talked-about and underrated anime and you need a break from all that drama, try it out. Crunchyroll is a piece of shit streaming service, but if you don’t mind fighting with the app to actually play a single damn episode without crashing or using tedious workarounds to take screenshots, you can find Slow Loop in their catalog. Or just use the alternative.

Posted by

Posted on

November 9, 2023

Posted under

misc

Comments

3 Comments

A few more things I bought, part whatever

I’m trying to cope with the news these days by writing no-effort posts like this one. As an American born and raised with partly Palestinian family roots and pretty strong cultural connections through them, it’s felt like taking the usual dose of frustration multiplied by a thousand, especially when people speaking up for their rights in this country are often wrongly vilified as extremists. Though of course that’s nothing compared to what millions of people are going through right now.

And since I can’t very easily talk about this sort of thing anywhere at all given all the bullshit that I can’t afford to deal with, here’s my place to vent by writing about a few new interesting things I bought over the last couple of months, two from a convention (my first since COVID) and one from a coin/stamp/card shop, because I’m in that depressing part of the Venn diagram where those two interests overlap. This is the only way I can keep my sanity, between a job I dislike and a nightmare world that seems on the edge of collapse where all you can do is watch and despair. Maybe that’s not a good coping mechanism, but it’s by far the least unhealthy one I’ve discovered.

Tanned Girl + Blue Hair Anthology by Neyuki Rei

So then why not have a look at some 18+ art? This is a small full-color piece, kind of between a doujin and an artbook, fully translated and published in the US. J18 Publishing is in the business of localized physical doujins, which I fully support. If I were the fucking Monopoly Man I’d pour money into that business myself. (Also, not a sponsored post, but I will sell out for money and/or free doujins; let’s talk.)

All I can do is occasionally buy a new book that looks appealing, and for some reason, Tanned Girl + Blue Hair did it for me. This is a collection of cheesecake featuring this tanned blue-haired girl just like the title says. I hadn’t seen Neyuki Rei’s art before, but her style reminds me of Nan Yaegashi’s, the guy who draws for Senran Kagura. Very soft-looking, and the focus on the back end is also appreciated. As long as we have such art, life can’t be completely miserable all the time. I’m still building that physical collection to survive the apocalypse and total breakdown of the electrical grid. Next goal is to learn how to grow crops.

Me at lower left. I’m honestly not quite that masochistic, but otherwise this cover is just some kind of weird animal abuse that the artist maybe didn’t mean to imply.

Comic AG Vol. 51, Jan. 2007

This one is just straight up pornography, no cheesecake or borderline stuff here. I bought this partly because it was cheap, partly because of the cover (of course, my brain just saw the catgirl dominatrix and said “buy”) and partly because it’s a novelty to me. I’d never seen a manga compilation in a a more typically western comic format, though this one does read right-to-left.

Not much to say about the contents; they’re porn. Just a lot of fucking with some weird circumstances attached like these stories usually have. There are probably talented writers who can expand on those kinds of stories, but I’m not one of them. To me, the most interesting thing about this volume aside from the cover is the fact that it was published by J-List — these guys are ancient in internet history terms — and that they were localizing physical h-manga complete with English translations and decensoring back in the 2000s when even now, after the massive anime boom, localized hentai is an extremely niche market. But I already know far more about this subject than I’m supposed to.

That’s some photo composition there

10 Million Mark note, Germany, 1923

Another thing I know far too much about are old scraps of paper that have no practical use. Money is always good to have, but I’ve also collected some old money denominated in foreign and/or dead currencies like this one. There are some beautiful old banknotes out there a lot more interesting-looking than our boring dollars, and some of my favorites are these German notes from the 20s. The democratic Weimar Republic had replaced the fallen empire after World War I, but Germany soon went into economic collapse after territorial losses and enduring heavy war debts. The ultimate result of all this was the rise of Hitler and the disaster that followed, but in the early 20s people had the immediate problem of having their money constantly becoming more worthless.

The government first responded to the hyperinflation as they usually do: by printing notes in larger denominations. This happened most recently in Zimbabwe with its famous 100 trillion dollar bill, but it reflected a lot of what happened in 20s Germany, with people ending up dragging sacks of thousand, million, and billion-mark denominated notes. The Social Democratic cabinet in power at the time managed to kill the mark and replace it in 1924, ending the downward spiral, but there are still a lot of these hyperinflation notes around, many of them very affordable, in the several dollars range. And if you’re wondering what’s on the back: nothing. These and many other notes from the period didn’t have reverse designs at all, since everyone figured they’d be worthless within a month anyway.

I also picked up a few other things, like a very classic film-looking poster for Mononoke-hime and a nice and thankfully cheap artbook by Ume Aoki, the Hidamari Sketch/Madoka artist, but there’s not much to say about those except they’re good. I just had to write something so as to keep level. Until next time, when I might just have another short post to share.

Posted by

Posted on

October 27, 2023

Posted under

music

Comments

3 Comments

Nine more songs to hear (anime and otherwise)

Look, I have to admit something. I am a weeb. Yes. I’m sure you didn’t know, so this may come as a shock.

I say that to partly explain my next point, which is that there’s something about Japanese pop you can’t find in the American variety. To sound like a complete snob, American pop has never interested me all that much. Just to be clear, I’m not counting the Beach Boys or Fleetwood Mac or Michael Jackson in with “pop” in general here — I mean the more recent Top 40 stuff.

Meanwhile, Japanese duo Yoasobi gave us Idol. The OP to this year’s big-name anime Oshi no Ko, “Idol” is just the kind of song I didn’t think I’d like back when I was in high school if you had described it to me, but it is extremely fucking good. I especially like the almost martial section in the middle, but there’s plenty here you won’t find in typical pop — see 0:40, all that staccato starting at 1:06 on what almost sounds like a harpsichord, the chorus itself, and all the great bass lines (a running theme in the Japanese pop I’ve heard.)

I don’t normally give a shit about chart numbers, but it was nice to see “Idol” hit the top worldwide and here in the States for a bit. A recent conversation here on the site reminded me that non-US artists too often go ignored here in the States, and “Idol” is a good sign that that might be changing (also the legions of BTS fans over here.)

Continuing with the anime theme, here’s another song you may know if you’re into the scene. “Fukashigi no Carte” is the ending theme to Bunny Girl Senpai, which I swear is on my short list to keep watching. This version in particular, featuring all six female leads’ VAs, is beautiful:

Apparently there’s a lot of context here I’m not getting, so I’d better go watch the show, but even without watching it you can easily appreciate the theme. I love that old feel it has, like an old jazz standard.

Speaking of old-fashioned, here’s a song that sounds meant to resemble the old French chanson style. “Etoile et toi” is the ending them to the Kizumonogatari series of films that I reviewed a few years back:

At first I thought they might have covered an old classic, but “Etoile” was apparently an original written for the films. Probably helps that I’ve seen the movies, since there is definitely context to this ending that gives it more emotional impact. But it’s good all on its own too.

Leaving the anime realm for now, though not leaving Japan — not quite anyway. This next song is also French, an instrumental piece by Japanese fusion guys Casiopea and cover of Maurice Ravel’s solo piano Pavane pour une infante défunte / Pavane for a Dead Princess. That title is already pretty damn grim, fitting the story behind it, and Ravel’s original is accordingly beautiful but somber.

Casiopea’s version adds some interesting flavor to the piece with its synth tones that Ravel couldn’t have hoped to get back then. I can and will criticize some of Casiopea’s cheesier synth uses (I’ve come around on some of their music after their debut that I didn’t like at first, but “I Love New York” still sucks) but they use their instruments effectively here. It feels even more emotional than the original in a sense, or maybe emotional in a different way. Still mournful enough for the subject matter.

The only other thing I can say about “Pavane” is that the title must have inspired ZUN of Touhou Project in naming Remilia Scarlet’s theme in Touhou 6, “Septette for the Dead Princess”, even though musically the two have nothing to do with each other — “Septette” rips off the third movement of Beethoven’s “Pathetique” for a few bars instead. Saying that knowledge would have got me shoved in a locker in my old school, but thankfully the late 90s/early 00s were a different time.

Next up is not “Septette” (though it’s also great) but a legendary meme song from the old internet of 14 years ago: an arrangement of the Touhou 4 theme “Bad Apple”:

It’s been a while since, but this song was huge back then among the kinds of weirdos who went to anime cons, like me. Touhou fans were and are an even weirder, more obsessive subset of that group that would be impossible to explain without its own dedicated series of posts (maybe a subject to revive that deep reads series with?) So I can’t say why “Bad Apple” got so popular, given how many good Touhou covers are out there, but it deserves that status. A lot must have to do with the cool changing silhouette video. Good thing for me it’s an old one: I actually recognize all these characters, since I fell off from the series just a little after this “Bad Apple” cover got big.

I guess I shouldn’t just be a damn weeb for at least one entry. So here’s something from a western game: the entire soundtrack of Outer Wilds.

I know this isn’t a song but a whole album, but can you complain about getting more music out of this post? Maybe, but listen to the whole thing anyway, because it’s good. I forget whether I referred much to the music in those two review parts I wrote a while back, but if I didn’t, I’ll say here that the soundtrack adds a massive amount to the game itself, both in creating atmosphere and in tying into the story of the game itself. I won’t say any more about Outer Wilds itself for fear of spoilers, but if you haven’t played it, you should anyway. (But note, I haven’t played Echoes of the Eye, so I can’t comment on that. I heard it’s horrifically scary and I’m a coward.)

Something now that I might have been embarrassed to admit to liking 20 years ago. The next song is “Bubble Tea” by Soundcloud composer dark cat:

Man, how the hell do you squeeze so much sugar into a song and not have it be unbearable? It’s really good, though, with a nice beat and mix of synths, cute vocals, and a few weird fart sound effects and those ultra-high-pitched vocal samples that I usually hate but that seem to do okay here. They call this music “catstep”, whatever the hell that means, but dark cat seems to be pretty cool whatever label you choose for them.

Something very different and part of the way around the world now: Sastanàqqàm by the band Tinariwen from northern Mali. That’s a hell of a lot of desert, the Sahara itself, but the Touareg people have managed to live there for a long time and with a long musical tradition. Just look up Timbuktu and music on Google.

I like the mix of more regional/traditional instruments and electric ones, and there’s a great beat and groove to “Sastanàqqàm”. I’d like to find more music from those parts in general — west Africa is responsible for a lot of modern American music for a historically obvious and depressing reason, so maybe we should all have more interest. Maybe it’s part of why Talking Heads and Peter Gabriel and other artsy 70s musicians got into it in the 80s with New Wave. I only hope the extremist jerkoffs don’t manage to take over these regions and ban music again like they did in 2012, in addition to all the other bad and worse shit extremists get up to.

Now to the final song, back to my weeb roots and to the one song on this list I’d consider marking NSFW unless you have a very cool boss. And a VTuber song no less (of course, yeah.) It’s “I’m Your Treasure Box” by Houshou Marine:

What can I say, it’s a catchy song. Sounds and feels very cabaret-ish with the instruments and Marine’s cute but supercharged sexy singing, and also considering it’s about the horniest song ever written since Prince was writing songs. The lyrics are about as lightly veiled as possible, and the music video adds plenty to the appeal of the song itself. Especially the last couple bars of the chorus from 1:37. You tell me that’s not what it looks and sounds like.

But all the sex is justified and in character, Marine being the sexy pirate captain character of Hololive who’s constantly meme’d about being horny. It’s a perfect character theme as far as I’m concerned. That’s coming from a totally dignified and learned musical position too, no other possible reason I could like this song.

And that’s all for now. This was a pretty thrown-together post, but sometimes I just have to do that to keep the momentum going. Quality control, now that’s not such a priority.

Posted by

Posted on

October 21, 2023

Posted under

anime

Comments

4 Comments

A review of Gunbuster

The Earth is threatened by space insects, and the only ones who can save humanity are a set of students piloting giant robots. That’s a tale as old as time, or at least as old as 1988 when the OVA Gunbuster was released (in Japan as Aim for the Top! Gunbuster.) This six-episode series came from Gainax and from first-time director Hideaki Anno, and if you’ve seen Evangelion you might see some of its seeds in Gunbuster. But this isn’t just an older proto-Evangelion — it’s interesting all on its own.

Gunbuster is also one of the couple really “old anime” I’ve watched, now alongside LOGH. Maybe now that 2000s anime like Azumanga Daioh is being considered old, I’m also feeling old, and so I wanted to feel comparatively young by watching an 80s one.

Whatever my motivation was, here’s Gunbuster.

A far sadder story than you might imagine. (Also spoilers, though coming on 35 years I don’t know if that’s necessary.)

Noriko Takaya is a typical high schooler, except for her father having been the admiral of a massive space fleet on the front lines of a galactic conflict with parasitic aliens bent on destroying humanity and all other living beings in the galaxy. His death in battle when she was just a kid still haunts her, but Noriko pours her feelings into training so that she can follow her father, join the fleet, and fight the aliens to the death.

Sadly, Noriko doesn’t seem to have much ability in piloting the mech she’ll need to use in space. Despite her best efforts, she’s still lagging behind her classmates and can’t catch up. Even so, her coach pushes her to work harder, convinced that she has the innate talent to excel. After proving herself in a one-on-one mech fight with another student, Noriko pairs up with her beloved senior classmate Kazumi and flies off to the flagship Exelion to begin their real training in defending Earth, leaving behind the rest of their classmates including Noriko’s best friend Kimiko.

Defending them from these ugly bastards I guess

The five episodes that follow tell a pretty usual “unlikely young hero saves the world” kind of story, but with plenty of style to set it apart. I had no idea what to expect from Gunbuster going in — maybe a typical mecha anime, but then since I’ve barely watched any mecha anime not even that would help me. But good thing I landed on this anime for whatever reason, because it was interesting and impressive in a few different ways, though not without some minor problems that keep it out of the top tier for me.

The most immediately obvious difference in Gunbuster from what I usually watch is that old 80s/90s anime look it’s got. Aside from the older look of the animation, Noriko and friends have that vintage anime girl look to them. I don’t know if there’s a term for it, but you see it a lot on vaporwave album covers and throwback neon-colored print t-shirts these days. I like the style, and it worked great in Gunbuster.

Noriko looking determined as hell

The nice visuals extend to the many shots of ships, machinery, and aliens. These Gainax guys clearly loved this tech and mechanical stuff for how much they show it off, and the aliens look suitably alien and terrifying. And the Gunbuster and the other mech suits look cool, though again, I’m not much of a judge when it comes to mecha. I can’t distinguish any of the giant robots from each other too much, aside from maybe the Evangelions for their unique looks, speaking of Hideaki Anno being the director.

But the whole giant mech thing fits in well with the grand scope of Gunbuster. It’s about the length of a movie, a little over two hours in total, but the scope here is so damn grand that I ended up feeling the show was too short and could have used at least a full one-cour run. Maybe Gainax couldn’t afford a longer series for all the detail and effects, or maybe it was a conscious decision — Mr. Anno is known for making unusual choices that might not have anything to do with budget concerns, so I won’t even speculate about that. In any case, the scale of the war in Gunbuster is absurdly fucking massive, with swarms of alien monsters shoulder-to-shoulder forming a rank of 80 astronomical units, 1 AU being the distance from the Sun to the Earth. And this nightmare army can be wiped out by a couple of schoolgirls in giant mechs with some backup from Earth’s space navy.

A short of Earth’s fleet from the black-and-white last episode, nice classic film look to it with the widescreen format.

There’s plenty of battle in Gunbuster like you’d expect, but the core of it and the more interesting part was the focus on the main characters’ personal struggles. I got the giant robot fighting action I expected, and also the focus on Noriko dealing with her father’s death. What I didn’t expect was a meditation on traveling near the speed of light, then getting back to Earth and finding your best friend from school is now a mother while you’ve barely aged at all. Time dilation is a real phenomenon, having something to do with relativity that I don’t understand that well. The point is, the faster you travel relative to someone else, the slower they perceive you as moving, to the point that the two travel through time at vastly different speeds. Something like that, but however it works, Noriko and Kazumi end up aging about a year in the span of well more than a year on Earth because of the incredible speeds they have to pilot the Gunbuster and other mechs at to fight the aliens.

Noriko, just now graduating, sees Kimiko with her daughter. Time didn’t wait up on Earth.

This causes some obvious problems, like watching your friends and family age rapidly while you stay pretty much the same age. Upon returning to Earth after her first major battle, Noriko runs into Kimiko, now a decade older than her and with her own family. While they’re still friends, that gap in time and aging would be shocking for anyone to deal with, though Noriko seems to take it pretty well considering everything else she’s been through halfway through the series.

That gap is harder on her onee-sama Kazumi, who’s in love with their coach Ota, a grim badass guy who always wears sunglasses and the very man who kept pushing Noriko to succeed. Ota, left behind on Earth with space radiation sickness, manages to hang on long enough to marry Kazumi before he dies — sort of a happy ending, but about as melancholic a happy ending as you can get.

Nice Miyazaki film references here. It’s been 20 years since I saw Nausicaa, but I know Anno was responsible for some of its designs. That’s probably worth a rewatch.

A lot of Gunbuster deals with these sacrifices made both by Noriko and Kazumi and by those supporting them. Noriko’s doubt surrounding her own abilities also plays a large part in the story, especially when her love interest, fellow pilot Smith, gets killed while they’re on a mission together in the third episode. While Noriko blames herself (pretty unfairly, but survivor’s guilt is a serious issue as well) she eventually uses her feelings for Smith and her grief over her father’s death as motivation to push herself beyond her limits, quite literally saving the world in the process together with Kazumi.

There’s more of that optimistic but melancholic feel, which runs through the very end of the series, which I don’t want to spoil for you even if I did set down a warning about spoilers above. If you’re a fan of bittersweet and want to check out some older anime, you might like Gunbuster a lot. I don’t seek that kind of stuff out myself too often, but it works in this story where the emotion is high throughout, especially for Noriko, who both breaks into tears on a regular basis and has moments of pure concentrated rage while fighting the alien hordes.

Also, lots of these kinds of shots shoved in as well. The 80s weren’t that different from today in that sense. I also like this fake beach room on their space battleship — it reminds me of the infamous Underground House in Las Vegas with its walls painted to simulate the outdoors.

That’s not to say Gunbuster is perfect. The series feels rushed at points, especially with Noriko and Smith’s relationship, which barely had ten minutes to get established before he dies — not enough time considering how central his death is to her increasing resolve. And again, the scale of the story could have easily justified a longer run time in general, but maybe I’m just spoiled. Gainax had only been around for a few years at this point, so if they were restricted in what they could manage in 1988/89, that might just make Gunbuster all the more impressive.

But then, once again, I have so little background in either mecha anime or 80s anime in general that it’s hard for me to make those kinds of judgments or to compare Gunbuster to anything else, aside from LOGH, which it barely shares anything in common with aside from the space military theme. I just took the series as I found it, and I liked it, for whatever that’s worth from someone with no authority to talk about this genre or period of anime.

I also want to acknowledge this cybernetic space dolphin. I have no idea what it’s about, and it’s never mentioned or explained. If there are any diehard fans reading, please let me know what’s up with this guy.

I liked Gunbuster enough to want to watch the 2004 sequel Diebuster, so I’ll probably be checking that out soon. As for where you can find Gunbuster if you’re interested, it’s on Crunchyroll, but I’ve had it about up to my neck with that fucking site, this class-action settlement against Crunchyroll and its owner Sony being the cherry on top of all its bullshit. I’m not sure thirty dollars per user is going to actually make us whole after having our information sold to Meta — of course to Meta and of course without our consent — but I’ll take my money if that’s all we’re getting. Meanwhile, the pirates get to feel a little more justified in flouting copyright law. Again, I can’t outright support that, but it’s pretty obvious that Sony has no interest in maintaining any moral high ground when it gets up to shit like this.

Everything is bad for you

Escapism through gaming

Historical drama film review: Cromwell

Sky diary #2: Unwelcome visitor

A review of Planetarian

Sky diary #1: Making a mistake

A list of podcasts I like

A review of Slow Loop

More YouTube channels and videos for your eyes and ears

A few more things I bought, part whatever

Nine more songs to hear (anime and otherwise)

A review of Gunbuster

Nov	DEC	Jan
	14
2022	2023	2024