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#some bits are okayish but the pacing is weird
xodiumdotnet · 8 months
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To preface this blurb, I absolutely stan Cigarettes After Sex. I love most everything they do, which is why the words I'm going to write here feel weird.
It's been slim pickings as a CAS fan because we haven't really had much in the way of anything new since 2019/2020, and I understand that's also because the pandemic happened and they're getting all the touring done that they wanted to before. But from 2020-end of 2022, it's been a musical desert.
December brought us Pistol (which was really good), and a few months later we got one hell of a bomb drop: Bubblegum would finally be releasing. Now, some reading this might stop and say "what do you mean by finally? Bubblegum is a new song!"
Ah, but it actually isn't; just up until July 2023, it only ever existed as a crudely recorded live performance. Go watch it if you haven't already. Maybe keep it on tap in another tab or something.
Short of the relatively mediocre sound quality, the earlier version of Bubblegum was well in line with CAS' typical sound, and it sounded absolutely amazing.
The version that we just got in 2023, however...it feels like a very rare miss from CAS. The overall structure of the song is similar enough, but the guitar is toned down a lot. A little too much. The solo present in the live/early version is completely missing in the studio version, the job of carrying the song in that section being left to bass and keyboard.
The guitar really only gets to strut its stuff during the chorus (and a bit at the end where it's just repeating the same melody over and over) where it feels like it's fighting Greg's (excellent) vocals for prominence.
I feel like 2023's Bubblegum would otherwise be a very okayish song in a universe where the early, live version didn't exist and wasn't vastly superior. It's a shame too because I feel like 2023's version could easily be made better by just allowing the guitar to shine through a bit more than it does. I know CAS loves their bass and keyboard, but it feels like 2023's Bubblegum was carried too hard by both, and it shows.
(On the flip, if you want an example of an old song of theirs being brought forward with excellent results, Please Don't Cry is a good one. Originally appeared on an early album of theirs that's out of print and it was more fast-paced rock, but was performed live in 2018 with their current sound and it absolutely blows me away.)
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ac-liveblogs · 2 years
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I mean, it’s not like Genshin events aren’t always weird and unsatisfying, but I do generally think they’re getting better.
I see a lot of people (mostly on Twitter) talking about Unreconciled Stars and to a lesser extent the Chalk Prince and the Dragon being the best events, but those were like. The worst of them?
Unreconciled Stars especially. It started basically... very shortly after I started Genshin, I don’t think I’d even finished Liyue yet (AR woes), and I... was very used to FGO events, which are quite lengthy and usually have at least one or two character arcs, a full complete story, comedy chops, etc. depending on the genre of the event, and always have a very climactic finale with a huge boss fight that the event slowly builds up to. And because I’m, like. Used to narratives, and read books and play games, I had certain... reasonable expectations about the way the event’s story would be paced anyway.
Like for example, the expectation that when Fischl was introduced, she’d be a focal character in the story and she’d have a complete narrative within the arc. I’d kind of assumed she was telling the truth about being from another world at first because I hadn’t read her profile (because I didn’t have her), so I thought the stars and her being from another world would tie together and it would turn out that she was relevant to whatever it was that was happening. I also assumed that when she left the event, she would come back, because we’d spent half the event travelling with her and getting to know her so why on earth would our companion just bounce and not return after having done... basically nothing?  
Well, I was wrong on all counts. Fischl was just there, travelled with us a bit, had no narrative relevance to the event in any way, contributed almost nothing and then left and didn’t come back after passing us off to Mona. Also she wasn’t from another world, she was a chuuni, which is already kind of... making your fantasy world less interesting right out the gate? You really wonder why she was even there in the first place.
But okay, fine. Mona... Mona was... Mona was there mostly for gameplay and exposition purposes, and she saved us from Scaramouche when he tried to attack us. She didn’t have any greater relevance beyond “I’m helping solve the mystery”, which was okayish when I thought Fischl was still coming back, but less so when she never did. And Scaramouche...
Okay, so like, a boss shows up and meeting him is treated like a Big Deal. You reach the climax of the event and he shows up again and you, naturally, are like “oop! here it is! the big climactic finale! we’re gonna fight him!” and you’re gearing up for a boss fight because why wouldn’t the event end with a bang and then he just makes you fight some mooks, cackles about some baffling plot revelation that won’t pay off for IRL years and bounces. and the event ends. 
I was so disoriented playing it. It ended on this weird lore dump about some guy that died centuries ago that wasn’t... even super relevant to anyone in the cast, and Fischl, Mona and Scaramouche didn’t do anything. I should’ve taken it as a warning of things to come, but I figured it was just messy first event syndrome and things would improve. Which they have somewhat but uh, the bones of all the problems in later events and chapters were definitely already there.    
Chalk Prince is also pretty anticlimactic and strange. It tacked Albedo’s character quest onto the start of the event, which padded things out, but it also ended without a climactic boss fight and also just loredumped about a dragon that had been dead for centuries. I don’t know - when we saw this dragon heart beating in a mountain I went “oh, we’re going to fight the dragon as a ghost or something” or maybe “oh man, something’s going to make us fight Albedo?” and “there’s something really ominous about that sword that’s going to bite us later”.
But the dragon really was just a talking piece, and this super dangerous sword that only worked for us really was just a free weapon, and the random flower that burst out of the ground was just an evil flower, and then the event was over. The climax of the event was Sucrose getting knocked over by Pallad and the flower showing up which, to my mind, was like, a miniboss at best. 
Is that partially on me for underestimating the scale of whackiness or drama that Genshin was willing to reach? Yeah, maybe. Genshin is not a game where you can expect to fight ghosts,  or evil swords to be ominous, or there to be princesses from other worlds, and its on me for not realising that it might not have stories like that. But it’s really not my fault for expecting the stories to feel complete or for the characters to have stories within the events they’re the focal point of. 
At the time my thought was “Genshin is for some reason making regular story chapters events and that’s why they aren’t complete narratives/don’t have character arcs/just exist to set up future plot points and character arcs” and to an extent I still think that’s true of those events, because functionally that’s all they did, but man, those two events were bad. Genshin’s definitely improved on making events self-contained stories since those two - the events are still a little bland, but they don’t end as suddenly and they do try to use their cast better. 
Lantern Rite’s story was dull, but they spent the event establishing our goal (taking Xiao to the rite), so it was a satisfying enough finale to finally convince him to watch the fireworks. Windblume also wrapped up nicely. I think those two worked best because they didn’t have some Big Plot that was meant to hint at something happening in the future - they were really just about Xiao and Mondstadt, so the writing was less ambitious. Summer Isles were... messy, and still set up future events (Alice....), but less offensive. 
I can only hope Genshin won’t use events to set up future events - they are not good at this - and stick with telling self-contained stories, but we’ll just have to see how it goes I guess
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nautiscarader · 4 years
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Glitch Techs - review
Okay, so I’ve finished the Glitch Techs, and it was... profoundly okayish. Some spoilers below.
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The show is an average buddy friendship team-up where two teenagers learn lessons while going on wacky adventures. Except there are also computer games everywhere that glitch ALL THE time, and into our world, no less, so the company that makes them, Hinobi, needs a whole heap of tech teams, called Glitch Techs to defeat and contain these glitches Ghostbusters-meet-Men In Black-style.
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Before I continue, I should disclose some biases: I don’t consider myself a gamer. I occasionally do play games, but I most certainly am not obsessed with them, and I didn’t grow up with retro consoles like NES and Genesis actually Xboxes are considered retro now. Wow, I’m old.
I also might have a slight allergy to the fad of pixelation that has been going on for the last decade or so. I’m not against it, but... Come on, people, we have anti-aliasing. And vector graphics, which are superior anyway. 
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So, as you might expect this show didn’t exactly “click” with me, and the final element that made me take so long to finish it was the lingo. Oh dear lord, the cringy, cringy lingo. 
See, Miko and Five don’t go to work, they “do quests” to “get EX PEE”, by defeating an “NPC” that “aggro’d” on them and then they can exchange said XP for “power ups” when they “level up”. Could they be any less subtle?
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I mean, imagine a show about people working in a pet shop, and when they go out, they go “in herds”, refer it to a pizzeria as “a waterhole”, and their leader is “an alpha”, it would be a bit over the top, wouldn’t it?    
Once I take those annoying parts from the equation, though, we get a rather standard show for kids. We have an episode about lying, about working in a team, about not pretending to be someone else, taking care of your pets, you know the drill. Some episodes were painfully predictable, though. In Castle Crawl, for example, that broken sword, described as “the worst weapon” was a perfect example of Chekov’s gun, but with extra Bethesda floating quest-marker pointing to it in case you missed it. It was still funny, though.
I also have to admit, though, they nailed the depiction of the e-sports obsession .
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It looked as ridiculous in the show as it does in real life. Also, I thought they would address more gaming-related problems, like lootboxes or microtransactions. They kinda touched the subject of pre-ordering craze, but not that much.
The animation is pretty good, typical for western cartoons, with occasional dive into anime-inspired madness, and its style benefited the fast-paced nature of the chases and battles.
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Also, even though it’s full of used tropes, the friendship between Miko and Five, as well as Miko and her incredibly extended family was very well done. Her parents sure had lots of DLCs (see? annoying!). 
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The quote-unquote douchebag villain was delightfully facepunchable, and I am looking forward to seeing him got punished more. 
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Also, in episode 2, we got a glimpse into a potentially darker storyline featuring a LEGENDARY glitch urban legend, so that better be good.
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But there is one thing that really irked me, and it’s that I don’t think the show really understood what potential video game glitches can be. 
A glitch, as a concept is amazing. And the idea of something like that happening in our world is fascinating. Computer programs are ruled by logic and math, so an error there can turn the world upside down - literally, sometimes - create effects so random and unpredictable, decided by machine’s relentless dedication to doing its job, your brain cannot comprehend them. 
And in the show it was all boiled down to random monsters showing up in the world. That’s Pokémon Glitch Go, they even parodied it with Flunkies.
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Which is ironic, because one of the most famous glitches, MissingNo, comes from Pokémon, and if they did that, I’d be madly impressed. Imagine if someone’s pet turned into A BLOCK OF PIXELS OR A SKELETON OF KABUTOPS.  
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Hell, when it comes to glitches, Matrix did that better years ago. That scene with a deja vu cat? That is a glitch. And an even better job of depicting glitches was shown in an animated short “Beyond”, a part of “Animatrix”, and anthology of shorts in Matrix universe, which I cannot recommend more. It is a fantastic movie.
In this short, a woman finds an abandoned creepy house, where Matrix has glitched, and it causes temporal and spatial anomalies: lack of gravity, localised rain, time distortions, etc. 
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That’s what a glitch could do if it leaked into our reality! 
(oh and BTW, Thor 2 stole that whole short and put it into the opening scene when Jane finds the Dark World thingy in that abandoned tower, and I’m still mad about this).
I would be okay with video game monsters escaping, if the carnage they did matched with the abstract nature of glitches: give me buildings that suddenly are made of hot-dogs instead of bricks because the tile palettes were swapped. Give me a coffee machine spawning endless coffee because the end loop command was never executed properly. Give me a person who suddenly knows what the person next to them is thinking due to memory OVERFLOW. That would be interesting!
And instead we have a bird that vomits pixels.
...which, you know, would be still weird, but not very creative. On occasions they brushed that pure abstract madness of glitch art, but nowhere near close as I expected.
Also, I have to ask: this company, Hinobi... They have portals.
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And can spawn items.
And can create virtual reality.
And can erase memories, through tv no less.
...what is stopping them from overthrowing all the governments, exactly? And if you tell me that is a higher level quest, I’m gonna strangle you with my mouse cord-wait, no, I have wireless one, dammit.  
Also, for an organisation who has a dedicated glitch-capturing team, their tech glitches itself A LOT. Hm. Maybe that’s what stopping them...  
Watching this show gave me a major “Cyberchase” vibe, but I was fine with that, since it was an old show that taught you math, so I was willing to see past the clichés there, or the fact that they referred to “cyber space” as real space, and what do you mean it’s still going. “Wander of The Yonder” was cancelled after two season but this thing is still on air since 2002 what the FLUNKY DETECTED! 
So, yeah, not a huge fan of this show, but from what I understand, there are more episodes done and some potentially in making, so maybe it will get more interesting. And the game parodies were clever enough for me to get lots of laugh, so, as I said, it was o͓̳̩k̔a̯̭̭̻̤̗͌̓̎̽ͧ͒y̻͔͓̞͙̻̩ͪ͌.̭̯̼̞̇
See, even I can do that.
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shadowthief78 · 4 years
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What I Think About “Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba)”
Before I begin, everything stated in this answer is an OPINION about a FICTIONAL series with FICTIONAL characters. You’re all welcome to think differently, if you don’t want me to influence your views then don’t read. 
Spoilers for anime-only watchers.
TW for: blood, gore, death, violence, bodily horror, etc. Read at your own risk.
Overall Rating (1 is lowest, 5 is average, 10 is highest):
3 out of 10
Thoughts and Ramblings:
The beginning feels very rushed. So many things happen in the first three chapters and it’s confusing. This isn’t uncommon, as new series have to get the readers’ attentions when serialized. It’s a weakness of the manga format, because if your series isn’t popular enough (as determined by weekly reader surveys) then it’ll be dropped for financial reasons.
Fantasy manga, like KnY, are often hardest hit because they have to set up not only the characters and premise, but the setting. It’s easier for series like BnHA, because the world isn’t so different from ours. The easiest would probably be something like slice-of-life that has a world exactly like ours.
Okay, maybe a cold take but: I HATE THE MAGIC SYSTEM AND THE WORLDBUILDING IS SLOPPY
It’s “soft” magic. I strongly prefer “hard” magic systems. More on hard/soft magic systems here: https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/
Breath techniques are never explained properly. We get Tanjiro using “Breath of Water” all of a sudden with no explanation of what it is or how to use it or what it does. How is it any different than swinging a sword? What are the strengths and weaknesses of different breath types?
There are ghosts when it’s convenient, but we never get an explanation of how Tanjiro can interact with them on the mountain when he’s trying to split the stone or what their capabilities are. We also never see ghosts appear like that again.
Nezuko doesn’t turn fully into a demon, but we aren’t told why. Also, the doctor, Tamayo, feels really flat and weirdly convenient - another deus ex machina.
We don’t get a full, complete, concise explanation of the demon or demon slayer rankings or powers. We get scraps of information every now and then and some of the more observant fans can keep it mostly organized. 
A counterexample is Hunter x Hunter, where the magic system is well thought out, there are logical limitations, and we get summaries of the information presented. 
This could be seen as an easier task, because while Gon and Killua are new to Nen and thus need it explained in great detail. But Tanjirou is ALSO new to breathing and it's just. Handwaved away. 
The power rankings from opposite sides don’t make sense at all. What I mean by that is: if you look ONLY at Demon Slayers or ONLY at the demons, it’s okayish. Small inconsistencies that I can mostly overlook, but when you try to mesh them it gets super messy. See next point.
A Pillar has to fulfill two qualifications at least: Breathing specially 24/7 and killing at least 50 demons (or 1 moon). It’s said that it takes about 3 pillars to defeat 1 moon, but from what we’ve seen that ‘rule’ is broken in almost every fight. I HATE little inconsistencies like this!!
I didn’t like first arcs (Tanjiro’s family dying, Giyuu trying to kill Nezuko, the whole training and final selection arc) because they’re really rushed. We’re told two years passes in less than one chapter. 
I know this is a weakness of the format, like I said before, but if I were writing I’d spend more time with Tanjiro’s family before killing them. That would give readers more time to connect with the characters, make the pacing a bit more even, and also help the worldbuilding.
The characters all feel one-dimensional at first but they get (slightly) better. Tamayo’s assistant, Yushiro, is a prime example. So is the Love Pillar, Mitsuri. I thought she was a token ‘sexual gratification’ type character at first, so her fighting and being capable was a mild but pleasant surprise.
It feels so weird. The first 50 chapters are rushed, then it slows down a bit to more acceptable territory around chapters 51-100, then the final battle begins and it’s so slow and drawn out.
I’ve said this many times before in this post, but: WE ARE NOT GIVEN RELIABLE INFORMATION ABOUT MANY IMPORTANT PLOT POINTS! 
How did Nezuko not turn into a demon? What makes her specifically so special? 
The first Dance of the Fire God user must have had other descendants or Tanjiro wouldn’t be around, and are we to assume that they were never attacked or turned into demons?
What does the marking do and how do you maintain it?  Why does it shorten lifespan and why are some *special* people able to disregard its effects?
How did that one Dance of the Fire God guy live past 25? 
How did the Stone Pillar, at age 27, manifest a mark? 
This is only a few. Also. . .
Logistics don’t make sense!!! Demon Slayers are not recognized by the government, and yet when Tanjiro and the Sound Pillar destroy about 2 blocks of the red light district nobody comes after them for fines, witnesses, court dates. . . ? 
And even if the Demon Slayer Corps were a government organization, there would still be people demanding compensation for damages.
How would ANY government overlook this illicit organization that causes damage and deaths and claims that supernatural “demons” are responsible for everything? Remember, demons’ corpses crumble to dust when they die, so there’s no proof other than (supremely unreliable) eyewitness testimony!
If there are many demon attacks, how can they be overlooked? A few hundred or thousand people saying that demons exist isn’t something that can be brushed under the carpet.
How have none of the Pillars gotten seriously hurt? We’ve seen how powerful the moons are, and yet people only begin losing limbs and dying when Tanjiro comes in. Have the moons and Muzan somehow been laying low this whole time? Unlikely, seeing as demon attacks are still commonish.
Yes, there are good points: character designs, the story is pretty compelling, nice art, backstories, etc. I like how demons always se part of their human life when they’re about to die and how that gives some insight to the story. But guess what? Those things are NORMAL. I expect good character designs, backstories, etc in EVERY series I read.
And, I’d like to remind you that this is all OPINION. You’re free to go on liking the series, stuff like what I’ve said has nothing to do with whether you like it or not - heck, I like it enough. But this isn’t enough to make me adore it and want to join the fandom at all.
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