#It’s like having all the Pokémon in pirated format

[dank-banshee]

Meta meta meta meta….*mon* *mon*

[Image ID: Four digital pictures depicting. A blue haired, yellow-eyed cartoon character with the Pokémon Ditto. In the first image the character is delivering a flower bouquet on yellow rollerblades while Ditto holds letters for the recipient. The next image shows the duo enjoying a burger lunch, with Ditto assuming the shape of a burger. The next image is the duo in motion, with Ditto assuming the form of a bird Pokémon carrying packages behind the character delivering letters. The last is both characters facing the viewer, throwing the ‘peace’ sign. /.End ID]

#Dankart #Pokemon #ditto #metamon #digital doodle #Give me a ditto now #It’s like having all the Pokémon in pirated format

[inspector-montoya-fox]

let’s discuss how Sly 3’s lack of “typical” levels damages its potential as a game

both Sly 1 and Sly 2 have a set of levels which can fit into specific categories:

Raleigh and Dimitri’s levels can be seen as the tutorial level, with blue as a major colour in their palettes welcoming the player (Raleigh’s episode can also be seen as the ‘sea level’)

Muggshot has the ‘desert level’

Miz Ruby shares her style with both Rajan and the Contessa, as the latter two split Miz Ruby’s spookiness and jungle setting. we therefore have the ‘spooky levels’ and the ‘jungle levels’

Panda King and Jean Bison have the ‘snow levels’

Clockwerk and Arpeggio/ClockLa have the final levels, which can both be linked by their mechanical themes

to any player, this is all very reminiscent of other games (off the top of my head: Mario Kart, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Uncharted, Pokémon, etc.). i’m not saying a game has to categorise its levels in this way to be good. not wanting to fit into these stereotype boxes is ok! this format feels tired nowadays anyway.

Sly 3 was ambitious, surely. what we got was:

Venice instead of Paris (the latter being a tutorial in the first game, a level in the second game, and a theme in both games as well as in the lore). this could be seen as the equivalent of the ‘tutorial level’ (Raleigh, Dimitri). this was a cool hub: it had moving gondolas, Carmelita was roaming the area, the main buildings of interest were unique (Police HQ, Octavio Clock Tower, Opera House, Ferris Wheel, Plaza)

Australian Outback as a ‘wild level’ (?) if that even makes sense. this was a misstep: red rocks and mountains did not make up for lack of buildings. the hub felt redundant, the crane in the centre had limited use, the details were scarce. the main concept here was like Nature V Artifice, but i can’t imagine a player ever thinking ‘gee, i wish i had a construction-themed level’

Holland had Carmelita... i guess? she wasn’t even there permanently. whereas with the other Sly 3 levels i can squeeze out an excuse for a theme, Holland as a hub doesn’t have anything unique. the windmills ok. what then? the wolf? hm maybe ok. the castle? the same castle we didn’t get an interior for. no ma’am. absolutely f not. the blimps were a nice touch, but other than that, it was a depressing hub. the only thing i absolutely loved about this episode was the hotel. it didn’t have much going for it, but this was the first and only time we met actual, innocent civilians in a playable hub. think about that. the mission where Murray rows Sly to the rooms via sewer is one of my highlights from the game

China was the exception. i talk about it in more depth in my Tsao essay (https://inspector-montoya-fox.tumblr.com/post/188231490502/hi-heres-a-personal-opinion-tsao-is-an) but basically the hub was vast with lots of great details such as the pagodas, the Chinese boats and Carmelita (ofc), the other locations were fun as well (Panda King’s retreat, Tsao’s bamboo spot, the palace’s interior, the treasury). it also happened to fit the ‘snow level’ slot

Bloodbath Bay was the ‘sea level’... supposedly. overshadowed by that godforsaken pirate ship map gameplay, there wasn’t much to discover. the guards were great, the rocking pirate ships were nice. what about Skull Keep? why wasn’t there a mission exploring the interior? Sly 2 relied heavily on interiors (Contessa’s various spooky rooms, Rajan’s spice operation lab, Rajan’s ballroom, Rajan’s guesthouse, the lighthouse, Dimitri’s nightclub), why didn’t Sly 3 continue with that formula? didn’t SP consider that the players would be curious to find out how the Keep looks like inside instead of bashing the same palm trees again and again? but credit be given where credit be due: although empty, the prehistoric lizard island was an ok hub

I cannot stress how much of a disappointment Kaine Island was. SP went ahead and designed the ULTIMATE ‘final level’. it was ALL the evil lairs combined into one: laser sharks, laser bats, mindless minions, a huge Frankenstein’s monster turtle thing, all on a mountain surrounded by watch towers and sunk in an acid tub. and what did we get? well, not a playable hub to begin with. we got unconnected missions all glued together hastily, each one being even worse than the other (cottdamn diving gameplay, plane and RC car gameplay... ffs). and then the Cooper Vault... it wasn’t bad. it just wasn’t great. it wasn’t worth the hype Sly built over the course of the recruiting procedure. looking at the ancestors’ stuff and going through all the traps they set was fun. that being said, too many unanswered questions were created. what about the other ancestors? where was Sly supposed to build his own section if the Vault ended at Connor’s section? did everything get destroyed when the island collapsed? basically, not worth the headache...

Australian Outback, Holland and Bloodbath Bay: what these three levels had in common was their lack of character. as Sly players, whenever we hear ‘Prague’ or ‘India’ or ‘Haiti’, the levels from Sly 1 and 2 instantly pop up in our mind. the episodes left such a mark in our brains that we will always associate them with their real counterpart locations. they had detail: cobweb fences, satanic goat skulls, dead turtles, little French cars parked in the streets, a fucking lighthouse maybe idk??? and most importantly: they had groundbreaking music. i’m not saying Sly 3 didn’t have these things. but in comparison to Sly 1 and 2, Sly 3 didn’t have shit.

to get back to where i started: a game’s levels don’t have to fit under the stereotypical categories - but it helps. because when you have a specific theme or characteristic in mind it helps to build upon that. like use the spookiness, the snow, the lava, the sea as a foundation and then build up amazing structures, designs, characters. i’m not a game developer but i feel like i’m making sense. if a game level doesn’t follow these (today considered) clichés, then it has to stand out because of something unique. Arkham City didn’t have a theme. it was just a dark abandoned section of Gotham. but Rocksteady sprinkled so many details and easter eggs across it that i spent hours just flying around (i know i’m comparing Arkham City and Sly Cooper, shut the fuck up). see my point?

#gee #essay time #sly cooper #not my best tbh

[paulisweeabootrash]

Retrospective Review: Rewatching Azumanga Daioh as an Adult

This may seem hard to believe if you are a younger reader or one who got into anime only recently, but there was once a time when recommendations spread by word of mouth, it was absolutely commonplace for anime seasons to last longer than 13 episodes, and the vocabulary of the anime fandom wasn’t nearly as full of internet-originated in-jokes.  A time when the internet-savvy congregated on forums dedicated to specific topics instead of social networking sites, and the imageboards that generate so much of the internet meme landscape were just starting to take off among lonely nerds as an obscure haven for perverts, racists, and assholes instead of the role they have today as… uh… well... a well-known haven for perverts, racists, and assholes.  A time when there was no such term as “weeaboo trash” because that Perry Bible Fellowship comic hadn’t been published yet, let alone used for that meaning.  It wasn’t some golden age, but it was different, and today I’m taking a self-indulgent trip back to the end of that period, when I was in high school in the mid-2000s.

Azumanga Daioh (2002).

1. Why is this show important to me?

My introduction to anime consisted mostly of Pokémon and Sailor Moon, and took off with scattered episodes of several other shows that aired on WB and Cartoon Network, which were generally driven by action and combat.  I can’t remember the circumstances or even who did it, but someone who owned, or perhaps pirated, a copy of Azumanga Daioh must have shown me a few episodes at some point.

Here was a show that had been on the leading edge of the moe trend a few years earlier, and although certainly available, such things were not yet common.  Moe has, of course, taken over a large chunk of anime since, to mixed reception since it can range from innocently delightful to extraordinarily creepy.  Azumanga is close to the innocent end of the spectrum, and absolutely delightful (as, BTW, is the author’s current ongoing manga series Yotsuba&!), with a softer, cuter art style than I was accustomed to and instantly-lovable characters.

It was clearly in a different genre and had a different sensibility about how to make a show, too.  It had few repeated or filler elements, unlike any of the shows following the “monster of the week” formula.  It was broken up into several vignettes per episode — a practice that I was familiar with from the format of many Nicktoons, but while American shows with that format told multiple self-contained stories, the short segments here were typically parts of larger episode-long stories, often focusing on different parts of the same event or different anecdotes about the same character.  It showed us, the foreign audience, something about life in Japan, and at least for me was the first time I’d heard of distinctly Japanese school practices like applications for public high schools, students cleaning classrooms, or the particular kinds of seasonal festivals they have.  It lacked story arcs driven by overcoming some enemy and instead was driven by character relationships themselves and the instantly-relatable experience of school.  It was an encounter with something utterly different — and it made an excellent first impression.

Eventually, I bought a copy of the complete series of the manga it’s based on.  Azumanga Daioh was originally, well, a manga, written by Azuma Kiyohiko and originally published in the form of a 4-panel comic strip that ran in the magazine Dengeki Daioh.  See, it’s Azuma’s manga in Dengeki Daioh.  Azuma manga, Dengeki Daioh.  Azumanga Daioh.  Ha.  Clever.  Anyway, in there, I encountered largely the same characters and interactions, a mix of believable school life and quick gags, just presented in a different format.  I eventually got the DVD box set of the show, too, and I’ve rewatched a few favorite episodes several times, but this review is the first time I’ve revisited the whole series in years.

2. Who are all these people?

Rather than focusing on a small core friend group like Three Leaves, Three Colors, another much more recent adorable high school slice-of-life I greatly enjoy (and should maybe review?), Azumanga has a pretty large ensemble.  Most of them are students and the “story arc” such as it is follows them through three years, from entering to graduating from high school, over a single 26-episode season.  So rather than cover a plot synopsis, I think it would make more sense to dive into specific characters and their relationships.  The show its at its funniest and sweetest with the dynamics of certain combinations of the main characters, and there are a lot of combinations available.  Covering all of the recurring named characters approximately in the order we meet them (except a few characters who show up only in an episode or two each and another classmate named Chihiro who shows up on the periphery as a friend of Kaorin), let’s look at the relationships that stand out:

Yukari and Nyamo: Yukari Tanizaki, the English teacher who is the homeroom teacher to most of the cast, is unprofessional and insensitive from the first moment we see her, traits which are elaborated in later episodes into a sort of impulsive over-the-top-ness that clashes with the fact that she actually is a pretty good teacher.  Emphasizing her less-serious attitude, students even refer to or address her by her given name (although the subtitles exaggerate this a bit by consistently calling her “Miss Yukari” when she’s usually just addressed as “teacher”).  Minamo Kurasawa, the gym teacher, is a long-time friend of Yukari.  She and Yukari (who calls her “Nyamo”) were even classmates at the same high school they currently teach at.  In addition to being central to the gym class/sports-related episodes, she’s also Yukari’s more caring, approachable, and professional foil, which sets up interactions where Nyamo tries to be helpful and manage situations in the face of Yukari being antagonistic (and, outside of school hours, drunk) towards her and the students.  Yukari in particular prods at Nyamo’s sore spots: being single and having done embarrassing things in high school.

Tomo and Yomi: Tomo Takino is 100% genki girl.  I mean, come on, she’s the illustration for the TV Tropes article by that name.  She’s not only enthusiastic, but loud, intrusive, and pointlessly competitive to the point of being just plain mean.  She’s the kind of person who might mature into a less competent Yukari if she burnt out a bit.  Koyomi Mizuhara, on the other hand, is much more serious and self-conscious, and although she still genuinely is Tomo’s friend and goes along with some of her silliness, she barely puts up with Tomo’s teasing and flurry of bad ideas.  She is the Nyamo to Tomo’s Yukari, complete with Tomo enforcing a nickname on her, so she’s almost always called “Yomi” throughout.  Yomi is much more considerate than Tomo, too.  This often comes out in Yomi scolding Tomo’s insensitivity, but it’s also seen less directly when they are giving Chiyo (more on her below) birthday presents — Tomo offers first a joke that doesn’t go over well, then a magic wand she apparently expects Chiyo to believe will make her grow taller, which Chiyo dismisses, while Yomi offers a book which Chiyo enthusiastically accepts and says she expects to enjoy.

Osaka, Tomo, and Kagura: Ayumu Kasuga is a distractible and soft-spoken transfer student from Osaka whom Yukari, Tomo, and Yomi pester with misinformed questions and assumptions about her home city.  Tomo, naturally, saddles her with the nickname “Osaka” as if that is her entire identity.  The nickname quickly catches on, with even Yukari calling her that instead of her actual name in class.  She is accepted as a friend by the other students who still consider her eccentric and baffling, but not annoying or embarrassing like you might expect.  (In fact, the other girls react more and more to Tomo as the annoying and embarrassing one.)  During the second year of school,  she bonds with Tomo and Kagura (introduced as a star athlete from Nyamo’s homeroom during the first year, she becomes a major character in the second year) over their similar incredible forgetfulness and poor academics.  Yomi calls them “bonkura”, translated as “knuckleheads”, and the three of them adopt the name for themselves as they study together — an idea which is doomed from the outset.  The three of them together, or any two of them, play off each other wonderfully.

Chiyo and Osaka: Chiyo Mihama, a child prodigy who is only 10 years old at the beginning of the series, is so academically gifted it can upset and embarrass her classmates, but on the other hand is naive, and not just because she’s a child.  She is in fact clueless about the outside world.  She fails in the first summer break trip (ep. 5) to understand that the other characters’ families are nowhere near as rich as hers, and in the second summer break (ep. 14), even after a year and a half of being around high schoolers, she entirely fails to understand Nyamo’s off-screen explanation of “adult relationships” (kids innocently being oblivious to what sex is seems to be a common basis for jokes in Japanese media).  Chiyo being five years younger than her classmates — and on the other side of puberty from them — also makes her lag far behind them in athletics.  On the one hand, this makes her very self-conscious and afraid of being a burden on her classmates in team activities, and on the other, it sets up a running gag of Chiyo and Osaka teaming up to be by far the worst pair of athletes across the board.  Oh, and Osaka’s dream about Chiyo’s pigtails in the New Year’s episode is one of the weirdest and most authentically dreamlike dream sequences I’ve ever seen.  Although maybe that just says more about my own dreams than about the show.

Sakaki and Nobody (or, Multiple Kinds of Unrequited Feelings): Sakaki is considered effortlessly cool and somewhat intimidating — Kagura calls her a “silent lone wolf” — but she’s not big on that reputation.  Students openly admire her, especially for her athletic talent, and treat her with distance and respect by almost universally calling her “Miss Sakaki” (since this is apparently her family name, not given name).  She does not enjoy this treatment, but is also too private (and perhaps too insecure) to complain about or discuss it.  She is indifferent to sports despite excelling at them, and doesn’t even recognize Kagura when she proclaims herself Sakaki’s rival, presumably because the first-year sports festival just didn’t stick out in her memory the way it did in Kagura’s.  Despite calling it rivalry, however, Kagura quickly inserts herself into Sakaki’s life in a friendship that Sakaki responds to more with quiet tolerance than reciprocation.

Kaorin, meanwhile, mistakes Kagura’s one-sided friendly rivalry for a very different kind of attention, and accordingly treats her one-sidedly as a romantic rival (although she does eventually calm down about it).  Kaori (family name not mentioned), usually addressed by the more affectionate “Kaorin”, is shown at first to ambiguously admire Sakaki, but it quickly becomes clear that she is infatuated with her.  And, despite the insistence of many fanfic writers since, Sakaki never catches on to this, even with Kaorin gazing dreamily at her while dancing with her, or clinging to her arm while posing for a picture together.  I'm sure, given how over-the-top she is, that Kaorin’s unrequited feelings are supposed to be funny, but I find it sweet and sad and end up rooting for her.

Sakaki and Cute Animals: Sakaki is not unfriendly, or even very socially inept, though.  She gets along well with the main cast, especially Chiyo.  But she is aloof, not just because of shyness but because she has a secret love of all things cute, especially cats and dogs, and gets caught up in her own thoughts about cute things.  Although she loves animals, they don’t necessarily love her back.  There is a series-spanning running gag with a cat in the neighborhood whom she repeatedly tries to pet, no matter how many times it bites her for doing so.  In fact, in that very same episode where Kagura declares her rivalry, the strongest emotional reactions we see from Sakaki are horror directed at Kagura for scaring that cat away and, later, being moved to tears by a story she’s constructing in her head about another cat while Kagura is trying to talk to her.  Sakaki’s thoughts on cute animals also yield a second running gag: "Chiyo's dad".  An orange cat-like doll (evidently some kind of character or mascot in-universe?) that appears numerous times in the background early in the show appears in Sakaki’s New Year’s dream and introduces himself to her as Chiyo’s father, so Sakaki refers to the doll as “Chiyo’s dad” for the rest of the series without explanation, much to the confusion of the other characters.  While he’s an inanimate object in the background before the dream, afterwards he appears as alive and magical, sometimes in Sakaki’s imagination and sometimes intruding into the real world as short transition clips between scenes.

Kimura vs. Everyone (mostly Kaorin): Last and certainly least, let’s consider Mr. Kimura, the literature teacher.  Within a minute of the first time we the audience see him, Tomo asks him why he became a teacher and he blurts out that it’s because he likes high school girls.  Which a group of creepy boys in the class call “brave”.  Ugh.  This presages chronic inappropriateness of varying levels from Kimura — from unsolicited suggestions for cheerleading uniforms to hanging out during gym class to watch the girls swim to heaping unwanted “favors” on Kaorin, to whom he is obviously attracted.  Beyond the increasing variety of his inappropriateness, he doesn’t really develop as a character.  He is, interestingly, shown as an otherwise decent person outside of school, but this is not portrayed as excusing him.  Rather, it’s made clear that his creepiness is contextual, and his role throughout the series is consistently as a grotesque comic relief, not a sympathetic character.  Kaorin even consciously tries to improve her opinion of Kimura because his wife is so nice, leading her to believe that this means Kimura himself must have good points to deserve someone like that, only to be immediately shown otherwise.  We the audience are laughing at him, not with him, and at some points are genuinely upset at him on the girls’ behalf.  Or at least, I hope that’s how the rest of the audience takes him.

3. Yeah, but there's some kind of progression, right, even if it's not really a story arc?

Again, it's not the kind of show that has an overarching goal or conflict.  The goal, such as it is, is the characters' graduation from high school.  The topic of what they'll each do after graduating comes up several times, as you might expect, but isn't that much of a plot point.  Not all of the main characters even have clear plans laid out that we know of, but the plans we do know about match their established personalities well.  Tomo changes her mind repeatedly between several half-baked ideas.  Osaka decides at the last minute to try to become a teacher based on Chiyo straining to think of something fitting Osaka's... unique way of looking at things.  Chiyo is perhaps overconfident, planning to study abroad in America despite being only 13 when she graduates.  Sakaki anonymously showed interest in veterinary school early on, but didn't discuss it with her friends until much later, after she started showing her weakness for cuteness in front of them.

The main progression that happens is some evolution in the characters' relationships and attitudes.  There is of course the progression from strangers to friends among the main cast, but also some character development growing out of things that started as gags.  Osaka, for example, begins as the butt monkey of the class, but by the end of the first year, she is very well accepted by her classmates, and she even gets along particularly well with Tomo, who was originally shown teasing and stereotyping her the most but has now toned it down a bit.  Nyamo’s miserable singlehood, previously a running joke, leads her to open up to the idea of trying matchmaking instead of dating.  Sakaki becomes more willing to express her love of cute animals in front of the other girls, starting with Chiyo, and her running gag experiences with the hostile cat play out to a resolution when she adopts, of all things, an endangered wildcat which is the only cat that doesn’t bite her, then has a final encounter with the hostile cat where she tries to make amends.  Chiyo's academic talents were met with light irritation and mockery at first, but by the end, her new friends are grateful for her help and rise in applause when she is recognized for her grades during the graduation ceremony.  Kagura relaxes her Tomo-like tendencies more and more, and shows a degree of gratitude and sentimentality towards her new friend group that would’ve been shocking when she was first introduced.  Even Tomo, usually the show's last bastion of immaturity, shows tiny bits of improvement: self-reflection and regret during a serious conversation with Yomi over what American audiences would call "finding your passion", and later leading the applause for Chiyo.  To compare Azumanga to Three Leaves, Three Colors again, it’s true that this show doesn't go into as much depth in character relationships as that one despite running for more than twice the number of episodes, but I don’t think that’s a flaw in Azumanga so much as a combination of Azumanga’s larger main cast, gag comedy focus, and choice of a different “zoom level” on the main cast’s lives.

The show itself evolves a little bit, too.  As it goes on, more episodes have segments that flow together and they contain more references to events in previous episodes.  By the last few episodes, with graduation looming, it almost feels like it has become a conventional plot-driven show.  The shift from shorter to longer segments, shorter to longer jokes, etc., is seamless — and pretty typical of comic strips where perhaps the author hasn’t “figured out” their own characters at the beginning.  Surreal elements also get more common, like the “Chiyo’s dad” running gag and increasingly-elaborate looks into what characters are imagining.  As I recall, these changes reflect the stylistic evolution of the original manga, but... uh... my copy of the manga is with my parents at the moment so I didn’t check myself on that.

4. How is it different in retrospect?

As I said, I first saw this in high school, so I was about the age of the main cast.  Perhaps this was one of the things that made it so enjoyable.  The characters seemed relatable, and I lacked the aversion to depictions of ordinary life that some people had because I didn’t have a particularly negative high school experience despite being decidedly uncool.  (I was, in fact, neither interested in being cool nor in being self-consciously uncool, and was content with the set of people I got along with.  I was never really an angsty teenager so much as a sad one.)  My experience of the show is, if anything, even greater appreciation now.  Some of that difference comes from knowledge and some from aging.

I’ve become a bit less of a poser and/or snob about some things since then.  I’d seen a lot of obviously-atrocious dubs growing up, and they really put me off the idea that anyone actually cared about dubbing into English well.  Since then, I’ve lightened up a bit, partly because it seems like nowadays distributors do a lot less 4Kids-style butchery of shows when they’re translated and partly because I’ve realized that there is plenty of bad Japanese voice acting, too, so sometimes the English version is just plain easier on the ears.  So I’ve watched this mostly in the English dub this time around (some episodes in both to check the different versions of specific jokes) and I really enjoy it.  The voices are character-appropriate and the English lines fit the lip movements better than the original Japanese voice track while only rarely resulting in rhythms and stresses that sound unnatural in English, which really impresses me.

Just from the sort of vocabulary one picks up by being weeaboo trash, I occasionally notice differences in meaning between the dialogue and subtitles when watching the sub version.  And I even picked up on an interesting translation choice for a joke I hadn’t noticed before.  When Yomi tells Osaka that Chiyo is a child prodigy in ep. 2, Osaka responds comparing Chiyo to a boy she knew growing up, resulting in her expressing a different misunderstanding in each version about how the boy was described by adults.  In the English dub, Osaka says something about him “smarting off”, the joke being she thinks that means he’s smart.  In the English subtitles, she says he was “precocious”, to which Yomi says she doesn’t think that meant he was smart by calling him that.  This time around, I finally caught that the Japanese dialogue there clearly uses the phrase “otoko no ko”, insinuating that the boy is a crossdresser and/or gay.  Even though I don’t understand the full Japanese joke, the implication is clearer than it was in English (because I, um, also didn’t think of the double entendre on the word “precocious” until now), as is the degree of the misunderstanding.

I appreciate now how many scenes are psychologically-savvy.  Just in the episode in which the main cast of students move up to their second year of high school, we see two scenes that just click with me as “yes, people do this, and I don’t know why we don’t seem to notice it!”.  I mentioned above Kagura wanting to compete more because of the sports festival while Sakaki thinks nothing of it at all, which hinges on the simple difference in the sports festival having been a memorable event in Kagura’s life but not Sakaki’s.  That episode also features a scene in which Tomo eggs on her classmates to eat their lunches early because it’s a thing that (according to her) second-years do, which sets up Mr. Kimura to arrive the room for literature class, see everyone eating, and therefore assume he must be the one who has the time wrong and go back to the faculty lounge for his own lunch.  This tendency to defer to others in decisions in our own lives, not through peer pressure per se but through assuming that something done commonly or confidently must be correct, is just something I don’t see portrayed or acknowledged much in Japanese or American media.  And I love it.  For those two scenes alone, this is one of my favorite episodes in the whole series.

As far as the characters, I still find the students charming and relatable, and I’m willing to bet that everyone knows someone like most of them in real life.  They fit Japanese character archetypes to a certain extent, but are also developed enough especially in their interactions with each other that they come off as realistic to me.  So they hold up well.  But mainly, I find I have much more appreciation for the teacher characters as an adult.  I can think of times when I’ve been the Yukari in a situation, whether that means being overbearing and inconsiderate when I think I’m being funny or whether it means or digging through a messy desk swearing that I know exactly where something is before creating a landslide.  And I can think of times when I’ve been the Nyamo accidentally antagonizing the Yukari by trying to be helpful.  I even appreciate Kimura, not because I think he’s relatable or a good guy, but because he’s distressingly realistic.  His creepiness comes at the same time as genuine competence and, as far as we are aware, a normal and functional home life.  It is widely-acknowledged yet never stopped by the administration, even though it ranges from unprofessional obnoxiousness to genuinely alarming sexual harassment.  Kimura is unfortunately plausible and all-around frustratingly topical.

Revisiting these characters, I’ve also realized something about myself.  When I first watched this show (and read the manga), I got a serious crush on Osaka.  She would go solidly in the “endearingly pathetic” column if I were to evaluate her that way, and she also reminded me at the time of a few different confidently strange and spacy people I went to high school with.  And then, getting older, I realized…  She’s endlessly distractible by trivial things.  She asks weird hypotheticals and follows odd tangents to other topics.  She often misunderstands people.  She’s hopelessly unathletic and clumsy.  Oh no.  I'm the Osaka of my circle of friends.  So, uh, that’s a thing that happened, and I have no idea what to make of it.

Azumanga is relaxed, wholesome, and hilarious, and its characters and major events are believable even when highly stylized for comedic effect.  When it's not in hyper-simple comedy mode, the art can be downright beautiful.  It’s clearly an artifact of its time given, for example, the lack of cell phones (even basic ones) and persistence of film cameras, but that kind of aging happens to any show.  The situations are still relatable despite not being topical, which makes me think — or at least hope — that this can last well into the future as something new audiences find worth watching.

—–

W/A/S Scores: 8 / 3? / 3

Weeb: There are lots of little things that will seem odd if you go in believing that Japanese school schedules and activities are the same as American ones, but anime is so saturated with high school comedies nowadays that it is much less weeb now than it was then to expect that background knowledge.  Many non-school things like flower-gazing or the fact that seasonal fairs in Japan have different activities and expected clothing than in American ones will seem distinctly foreign but understandable to a naive audience, while a few episodes might need some looking up to “get” because they expect audience familiarity with things still obscure to most Western audiences, like lucky dreams in the New Year’s episode or the yōkai in the second culture festival episode.  Mostly, familiarity with the conventions of other anime or of Japanese culture will enhance enjoyment but aren’t strictly required to enjoy it.  The art style sometimes shifts for specific gags to a particular style of minimal-movement chibi characters on very simple backgrounds which is more at home in the 4-panel comic world in which Azumanga originated (and in pre-moe-era comedy anime, or at least the few I've seen) than in other manga formats or newer anime, creating an additional small hurdle even for those with different Japanese media exposure.

The show runs into more of a barrier with hard-to-translate jokes than anything else, leaving the viewer the choice between replacement jokes with similar general ideas in the dub vs. the occasional feeling that there should be a joke but you’re not quite getting it in the sub.  One particular joke that they made no attempt to adapt ended up being utter nonsense in both the sub and dub unless you get that "Mr. Yukichi" refers to 19th Century Westernization advocate Fukuzawa Yukichi, who is on the ¥10,000 bill, and I gave the show an entire extra point on the Weeb scale just because I had to look that up.

Ass: Unless you’re Mr. Kimura, probably no “ass” score at all as far as sexualizing the characters, but there is the occasional sexual joke or implication.  Even the obligatory beach episodes aren’t fanservicey in the way or to the degree that a contemporary moe high school show often is.  Probably the single most sexual-looking thing is characters holding their skirts down in the intro, which is tame by comparison to anything released in the last decade.  Kimura, however, does make the show unsuitable for audiences… well… younger than the show’s main cast, probably.

Shit (writing): I have very little problem with the bulk of the content.  I think the show works and the characters are relatable and delightful.  But I do have some gripes about translation, mostly in the dub.  Although I still maintain the dub is unusually good in acting and synchronization, they do take more liberties than I’d like with changing jokes, and the dub and sub both lose some subtlety in how characters address each other, as mentioned before.

On top of that, there are some odd localization choices in the dub.  For example, the way Yukari, their English teacher in the original Japanese, is not portrayed as teaching a foreign language at all in the dub, while still making a big deal of her foreign language skills outside of class, or how characters repeatedly say “taiyaki pastry” in the dub instead of just establishing once for the English-speaking audience that taiyaki is the name of a specific style of pastry and using the name “taiyaki” from then on.  Also, I know this is very small and specific, but I noticed a place in ep. 17 where they inserted a strained pun in the dub where there was intentional awkward silence in the sub, so that’s just… weird.

Shit (other): The animation is often sparse, and although this is usually fine, it does sometimes come off as cheap.  The biggest problem visually is that the DVDs I’m watching have noticeable and pretty frequent combing, which I was able to reduce but not eliminate by fiddling with video player settings.  On the other hand, kudos to the director for hitting a sweet spot on shots that are lingered on or actions that are repeated for “too long” (e.g., Nyamo demonstrating chopstick use, or any of the scenes of Chiyo and Osaka failing at sports, or Osaka trying to wake up Yukari) because they end up hilarious when they could have been tedious.

Oh, and I love the soundtrack.  Some people may also find the frequent use of recorders annoying, but those people are (1) wrong and (2) not writing this blog.  The soundtrack is appropriately lighthearted and/or relaxing.  The opening theme “Soramimi Cake” is catchy and accompanied by an opening credits sequence that decently shows who the main characters are.  But “Raspberry Heaven”, the ending theme… ah… the sequence accompanying it is a beautiful dream and the music is movingly bittersweet for reasons I lack the music theory background to articulate.  Like, this is a really weird example, but it conveys my feelings: have you seen Soylent Green?  You know the scene where Sol is listening to a medley of classical music while he’s being euthanized?  If the last thing I ever heard were “Raspberry Heaven”, I would die totally content.

Content Warning: Kimura.

—–

Stray observations:

- I think Kaorin may have been the first unambiguously gay character I saw in any anime.  Sailor Moon or Cardcaptor Sakura would’ve beaten Azumanga to the punch with representation, but I grew up on the butchered-for-pearl-clutching-audiences versions of those shows.

- Kimura has, incidentally, produced one piece of lasting weeb culture.  While trying to save his illustration for a proposed magical girl cheerleading outfit, he drops a picture of a woman.  Tomo picks it up and wonders out loud who it is.  Kimura responds, in heavily-accented English, “my waifu”.  So… yup.  We have him to thank for the whole waifu/hasubando phenomenon.  Or, well, the terminology, since attraction to fictional characters is probably a phenomenon as old as fiction itself.

- More of a fun fact than a stray observation, Kuricorder Orchestra, who collaborated with Oranges & Lemons on the Azumanga soundtrack, recorded two Yotsuba-inspired concept albums, which are also adorable.  They’re hard to come by in official copies, but I can’t help but notice that nobody seems to be stopping anyone from uploading them to YouTube...

- The background music in the cheerleading scene in ep. 6 is the “Grandpa Polka”, a.k.a. “The Clarinet Polka”, which fans of various other weird geeky media may recognize as the melody for the Candy Mountain song in “Charlie the Unicorn” and/or as the song between “Love Shack” and “Pump Up the Jam” in Weird Al’s medley “Polka Your Eyes Out”.

- My junior high, oddly, did have sports festivals somewhat like those depicted in anime, but I don’t hear much about other American schools doing similar things.

#weeaboo trash #retrospective review #anime review #azumanga daioh #this post is way too long

[metroid-prime-ribs]

Review - Metroid: Zero Host

Part 4 of Human: Zero Host Review - For @eevee-nicks

To start off, I’d like to thank you for writing such an awesome series. Human is ridiculously enjoyable, and just so happens to be really relatable, at least on Earth, to my personal life. I really hope to see some more writing of yours, even if it’s not Metroid content. Also, I’m really sorry about what happened with the Bar. I seriously mean it when I say I hope I can do something to help you feel better.

I am no professional, or even amateur writer. I’m taking a creative writing class currently, but I can’t do too much beyond page editing, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Zero Host starts out with Samus on the run from the Federation, immediately following the events of Metroid Fusion. It then recaps what has happened since the previous installment of Human. Those first few chapters are really nice, because they definitely do work to convey to a person who is starting on this story why things are the way they are. It also holds a really great explanation for how Adam dies, which works way better than the Other M version of events. I’m personally not a fan of setting the stage for a chapter, only to pull a “Two Weeks Earlier…” only because at the start there isn’t any momentum to try to slow with a flash back. It feels a bit weird to me to start a story and basically immediately restart sooner, before jumping back to the present. It works well enough here, being not the first installment in a series, but on the whole I don’t personally like the immediate jump back.

To contrast what I just said, the flashback sequences that specifically describe Adam’s fate were very enjoyable, if extremely sad, parts of the story. I have never been able to come up with a solid idea myself on how he died, but your version, as well as Prioris’ from the Electronic Intelligence series, are pretty much the general format I like to picture. Adam ordering Samus to shoot him in order for her to be able to save at least one of them was rather cruel of you, but it does work with how I tend to imagine it, as well as what we’ve seen of Samus’ companions throughout the games.

I also enjoy how you more or less took the key points of Other M, but scrapped the rest of it. I like to bash it a lot, but there were a few details that were important to the story, namely Adam’s death, the legal status of bioweapons, and revealing how the Federation isn’t all that much more moral than the Space Pirates. Zero Host really drives home how much more advanced the Federation has become over the course of Samus’ career. From needing her to basically fight what you deem the ‘Space Pirate War,’ to the Disruption beam the FederationForce guys hit Samus with, and Renpo’s creation of a replica PowerSuit. Now that Samus Returns is out, and we’ve all seen the Chozo memories, I kinda want to see little bits of it thrown into the mentioning of SR-388, but it doesn’t have to be a part of this story.

The Dreamboat Annie arc of the story was also very fun, even though there wasn’t much action. Though I am still curious about the crew. I had hoped they were going to stick around more, or at least pop in and out a bit more than you had. Especially after setting up Azrael as being so powerful. Like the truth detector thing. That had me intrigued, and I thought the direction it would go was to use that ability in court to demolish any sort of false testimony that was given about BSL’s Metroid program. As I mentioned to you before, Chance kept reminding me of the Pokémon Chansey, which wasn’t a problem on your part, but on mine for not taking the time to fully read his description. I think that throughout the story you lack a little bit of detail about what the characters look like at any given time. I don’t remember a second instance of describing Chance’s appearance, and while something like that works for Samus, it’s not quite as clear with original characters. Also on the note of Samus’ appearance, you often mention the Phazon scars on her face, that’s an example of how you could describe other characters throughout the story. When they are introduced, try focusing on one particular trait, and revisit it occasionally to jog the reader’s memory of how that character looks. It works like chewing gum while studying, then chewing the same flavor gum while taking the test.

Ruth was a huge bitch, dude.

General Harper is also a bitch. But she is an interesting antagonist. I was drawn in by her stature first, cause how many people, let alone women, are taller than Samus Fucking Aran? She also becomes a bit of a twisted combination of the worst traits that belong to Samus, while adopting a superficial connection to Elisa with the artificial arm. I really liked that comparison, and had hoped for the fight with her to be drawn out a little bit longer, not the longest, but I felt like she should’ve made for a slightly more aggressive villain. Injured Samus just kinda swept her up into neat, bloody pile and that was that. Though I liked the touch of throwing her decapitated head into the conference room.

This story was certainly more of a Samus vs. The System compared to the rest of Human, where she goes up against more specific villains. This doesn’t create any problems, but it left me feeling like Harper, the FederationForce guys, and the Urainian Party in general weren’t really Samus’ combat enemies, so much as idealogical enemies. I didn’t expect it per say, but I feel like Samus personally “cleaning up” the corruption in the Federation by hunting each individual member was a less logical solution, but a more Samus Aran style one.

Overall, I have picked out every instance of me disliking parts of the story. Which is very little. Although, I highlighted how much I like the section on Adam’s death because of how much I did like it, having seen it done many different way, and worse in the canon. There isn’t really anything more I can think of to say beyond how much I loved to read the entire series. I don’t really know any words or phrases to convey it. There were tons of little references and jokes that I adore like, “There are no biosigns coming from that sector and I've taken out the security drones. It's not like they're going to immediately respawn or anything when you go back into the room” making a joke about the games respond features or how you wove Federation Force into a story from a tabloid. I appreciate the dedication and knowledge behind Zero Host and Human as a whole.

So to close, Thank You. Thank you so much for making such a wonderful Samus Aran.

#wow that was long #metroid prime ribs speaks #eevee-nicks #eeveenicks fanfiction #Metroid zero host #hey my review was exactly 1200 words #metroid

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[savetopnow]

2018-03-21 07 GAME now

GAME

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Hyper Light Drifter coming to Switch this summer

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