Erik's Favorite Things: Koudelka

Okay, I've mentioned Koudelka before.  In fact, I think I spoke pretty highly of it.  If I was to keep talking about it, I might mention how, if I sat down and thought about it, it'd wind up on whatever my "favorite games of all time" list would wind up being.

But...just why do I love this bizarre little RPG so much?

Let's dig a bit deeper.

Danganronpa 2

Yesterday I discussed a video game that I think might have had one of the most profound emotional impacts on me since the time I tried to foolishly save everybody in a video game about the zombie apocalypse.  Today I discuss its sequel, which handles being a sequel better than most games I've played, and still manages to be one of the most amazing game experiences I've had in a long time.

We're talking Danganronpa 2.

Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers - Episode 15: Search For The Castle's Treasure!

Okay.  I have a frosty drink (root beer), some snapea crisps (truly the food of kings) and I'm ready to work with you, series.

Sure, you hurt me last time when you brought in Whipla- er.  When you brought he He Who Will Not Be Named.

I was just really starting to feel comfortable with you as a series, so to suddenly see that side of you was just really unnerving.  However, I'm willing to give this another shot.

So please.  Be kind.  I've been hurt by animated series before.

Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers - Episode 14:The Man Who Controls The Whips Of Darkness!

After a brief reprieve I'm back in the thick of watching cartoons about superheroes!  You know, for writing purposes.  It gives me something to use to fill a post on Thursdays as opposed to having to go out and find something that costs money to enjoy different each time, and it connects each week to each other.

But enough justification of my hobby, it's time to get into the thick of things!  Let's dive right in for a story about...um...whips.  And darkness.  And a guy.  And- okay, did I wander in to the Fifty Shades Of Grey animated series?

Review: Shining Hearts

Some time ago I did a review of a game for the Playstation 2 called Shining Tears.  It was a simple Japanese role-playing game that I felt had a lot of neat features and ideas that rose it above a lot of the (let's be honest here) mundane RPGs that were flooding the market in those days.  What I didn't learn until much later was that the world was deeper than just one game, and other games and animated series linked to it were steadily coming out in Japan and not making the slightest effort to make their way over here.

Seriously, I will pay someone to sit beside me and translate Shining Wind for me as I play it.

One thing that did make its way over here, however, was an animated series called Shining Hearts, and seeing that it had some of the same things I liked about the original game I played (amnesiac swordsman, Tony Taka's artwork), I figured I'd give it a watch.

Never before has bread mattered so much to a story.

Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers - Episode 13: Gravity Control! Graviton!

It must stink to be a construction company in a comic book universe.  On the one hand, you always have work available to you since heroes and villains are always destroying giant structures around cities.

On the other hand, they destroy them before you even have a chance to finish them sometimes, which must be extremely frustrating because then you need to deal with insurance, overtime, contract renegotiations, suppliers...

It can't be fun.

So on that note, let's jump right into this week's episode of Marvel Disk Wars!  It opens with a huge fight at a building currently under construction!

A place truly doomed the moment the contracts were signed.

Erik's Favorite Things: eX-Driver

I am not a car person.  I have only the most basic understanding of how a car even works (key goes in hole, pedals and stick determines if car goes or not), and watching car movies like The Fast and The Furious, Days of Thunder, or most other car-centric movies bores me to tears.

There are exceptions, of course.  I loved Duel, but that was more psychological terror than "car" movie.  Bullitt has one of the best car chases in history.  And yen here's one of my all-time favorite animated series to come from Japan, a series that I honestly can't even explain why I like so much, because where Moribito broke every single stereotype it could find, this series embraces a ton of them.

But anyway, here's my adoring, gushy love letter to eX-Driver.  Watch the opening theme then click to read more.

Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers - Episode 12: The Unstoppable Force, Juggernaut!

Okay, admittedly, it's been a while since I've done one of these, but the last few weeks have been rather... interesting, to put it simply.  I'll have some personal updates shoved into a Let's Talk soon, but for now, let's just get into another episode of the best Avengers program to happen outside of the movies...and in some ways, better than the movies.

Besides, in this episode, we finally get a massive threat to the Avengers.  Someone who isn't normally one of their own foes, and is wildly remembered for a pretty terrible meme that came out in 2005.

I mean, I just watched the video it came from again, and I still think it's terrible.

Moribito

For a long time, anime drove me bonkers.

I loved it, and I watched a lot of it, but there were certain things that I kept seeing all the time that just made puzzled, confused, and...well, honestly, it made me fascinated by the cultural aspects of a nation that would shape their entertainment this way when it was clearly so different from American entertainment.

For instance, I could go on and on and on about how only teenagers are able to save the world.  Whether it's being the best pilots of giant mechanical armor suits, the best magic-wielders, the best soldiers, or just the best at, well, anything, Japan seems to flourish in its animation by having it feature teenagers that the audience connects with.

That isn't to say that American studios don't do the same thing.  Harry Potter is a pretty good example of "hey, this kid could be YOU, he's so bland!"  Lots of cartoons for kids feature either children or teenagers as the stars, whether they're turtles fighting ninjas or just someone with two wacky magic-casting fairy godparents.

But look at some of the biggest names in movies these days.  Iron Man, Batman, Superman, Captain America, these aren't kids.  Robin was originally introduced to the Batman mythos because someone at some point realized it's easier for children to connect with "a kid who really loves Batman" than "Batman."

I'm getting drastically off-topic, but this is one of the many tropes that I didn't expect this series to not just avoid, but stomp on in full view of the audience.

It's easily one of my favorite things I've seen this year.

Phantom of Inferno

Years ago, I was in a Suncoast Motion Picture Company store (remember those?) and I stumbled upon a DVD.  I was neck deep in my fixation with animation from Japan, and I saw mention of a game company that made, essentially, "visual novels" where you could make decisions in a game, and then see where the story went.

I knew that such games existed, and for the most part, they were all pretty terrible.  There were a few great ones, though.  But considering I knew that Japan was pretty crazy for interactive stories (even if most of them were little more than "choose your own porn adventure") but this looked different.  For one thing, it had people holding guns on the cover.

Plus, it was in the clearance bin.  I pretty much threw some money at the register and took this new prize home.

Sword Art Online

It is a sad fact of life that video games portrayed in other media will always beat the video games we actually have in real life.

The graphics are always better, the interactivity is always better, the stories are always better, and the gimmicks are always better.

For example, I'm still waiting for a copy of Brainscan to appear on store shelves.  And why couldn't the Power Glove be as awesome as the movies made it seem?  Why didn't we ever get a playable version of Sugar Rush?  WHY?

But these days, it's about augmented reality and virtual reality, seeing just how close we can get to actually experiencing the game.   I just reviewed Ready Player One in my last post, which involves a virtual reality gaming experience that the entire world embraces, now we're looking at a another hugely popular video game world that comes with a twist.

Namely, a Japanese anime that addresses the idea that someone rigs up a whole bunch of virtual reality consoles so that if you die in the game, you die in real life.

Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers - Episode 11: A Present From Tony!

Japanese cartoons can be a bit weird about story flow.  Say you have a manga (a fancy term for "comic book") that's really popular, and you decide to strike while the iron is hot and create an animated series based on the manga.  You want them to tell the same story, but there's one pesky problem:  you can cram a lot more story into a half hour of animation than into one small "chapter" of a manga.  What's the solution?

Well, you can either take the Game of Thrones approach and decide "eh, screw it, TV's better than books these days anyway" and spoil everything for the readers, or you can cram in a whole bunch of filler episodes that fit between key story points.  How many filler episodes do you need?  Well, depending on the series, they can sometimes be up to 40% of the entire 400+ episodes.   That's 40% that take the smooth flowing narrative of someone's story and just starts jamming random side stuff into it.

Even aside from filler, you can sometimes wind up with really disjointed breather episodes that just don't fit in.  These can sometimes be filler, but it's often just a chance for the characters to "catch their breath."  These episodes often suck.

This is a breather episode.  But it doesn't suck.

Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers - Episode 10:Showdown! The Silver-Donned Samurai!

The last time we did one of these, we got through a huge confrontation between the Avengers and Loki's forces, and the plot moved on to the next stage of Loki's plan.  Playing off the fears that Spider-Man was killed in battle, Loki used his government "secret identity" to get the President of the United States to pass a bill requiring all superheroes to work for the government.

Tony Stark, possibly without even realizing he was doing it, managed to outmaneuver Loki by having the Avengers and their new child "handlers" move out to Tokyo, free from the rules and regulations they'd have to face back in the States.

So after a huge conflict and political tension, we ended the story with Tony and Akira going to meet the head of the Japanese underworld, the Silver Samurai.  What's Tony's next idea?  Is he really willing to make a deal with a proverbial devil?

Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers - Episode 9: Spider-Man Is Missing!

It's been leading up to this, folks.  Ever since the beginning, our heroes have been divided, torn apart by Loki's machinations.  S.H.I.E.L.D. is frozen, unable to act to help anybody.  Nick Fury himself is in prison.  Heroes and villains were scattered across the globe, trapped in DISKs.  Spider-Man's been getting smacked around as if he was Frog-Man (there's a shout-out for you hardcore Marvel fans).

Finally, just finally last episode, our core five Avengers were finally reunited to face off against Loki's forces.  However, Loki's nowhere around, which means he must be up to something...

Enough chit-chat, let's get into it.

Marvel Disk Wars The Avengers - Episode 7: Hulk VS. Captain!

Man, it's been a while since I've done one of these.  That cold I had (possible pneumonia, I'm not sure, really) really laid me out and made it hurt to breathe, much less type.  But hey, I swore to get through this series, and I last left off at a pretty great moment...I think.  Let's get a brief refresher.

Our five heroes (no, not the Avengers) were in pretty dire straights.  Akira and Hikaru (hey, I remembered!) had control over summoning D-Smashing Iron Man and Thor, respectively.  Chris, the slacker with no real goals in life besides "figure out what his goals in life are" is tagging along but for the most part refusing to get involved in anything.  Over on a tanker, Jessica and Edward are being held prisoner by Loki's forces, as is a captive Spider-Man.

The Hulk, meanwhile, is tearing up a military base of some kind, under the influence of Diablo's "alchemy" which I call "easy way of explaining something hard to explain."  Hulk has already defeated Iron Man and Thor in combat and is about to move into a residential area when Chris finally steps up (literally, standing in Hulk's path) and summoning D-Smashing Captain America into freedom to face off against something that's taken down an actual god.

I already know what happens, but I'm still excited!

Let's get into the episode!

Marvel Disk Wars The Avengers - Episode 6: Hulk's Great Rampage!

A lot of the cartoons that Marvel put out over the years can be linked to very specific times in the history of the series.  The 1990s X-Men cartoon, for example, was so deeply entrenched in what was "cool" in the 90's that it looks almost quaint now.  Instead of making big heroes out of characters like Cyclops, Storm, and Jean, most of the stories revolved around time travelers who carried a lot of guns.  It's...really kind of sad, if you actually sit and think about it.

I suppose it's only natural that a show that comes out now about the Avengers would have most of the major characters from the movie in starring roles, but I wonder about the fact that they went with Janet Van Dyne (aka "The Wasp") over Black Widow.  Granted, the Wasp makes for a better visual in animation thanks to energy blasts, size powers, and flight, but considering we've only just recently had a Hawkeye cameo, I can't help but wonder if Japan just doesn't like Scarlett Johansson's character.

But enough thought, it's time to get back into the action!

Marvel Disk Wars The Avengers - Episode 5: The Mighty Thor Descends!

Something I think I've come to realize as time goes on is that while many "executive" decisions might be made for completely cynical reasons, the people who actually have to work on the projects aren't always simply trying to cut so many corners that they wind up with a perfect circle.  Sure, Hollywood might simply be attempting to cash in on a brief craze or something silly that's "in" with a particular crowd, but that doesn't mean that everybody who works on the project is just phoning it in waiting for a paycheck to show up.

That's right, someone likely cared about trying to make this "good."

So when you have a cartoon designed to push toys, it might be surprising that there are people who actually want to put out a good product.  The voice actors, animators, designers, editors, they're all looking at each thing they do as more than just "a way to make a paycheck."

For one thing, they know it'll be the most recent thing on their resume if someone looks them up on imdb.  But also, if you know people might watch it, why wouldn't you try your best to make sure they enjoy it?

Unless you're Uwe Boll, but that's a different topic.

So where were we in the show?  Oh, right, Spider-Man and Akira (and, thus, Iron Man) were being attacked by Diamondback while Hawkeye tried to recruit Hikaru into helping.

Let's not dilly-dally and get down to the action!

Marvel Disk Wars The Avengers - Episode Three: Iron Man, Reborn!

Marvel Comics always had mixed luck when it comes to animation.  While they've never had anything that compares to the glory days of DC (Batman: The Animated Series is still pretty much the bar all other animated superhero shows are held to), but they've had a few successes on their hands.  The X-Men and Spider-Man both had (somewhat) successful runs in the 90's, and the characters from the Avengers are having a surge in popularity now from their cinematic success.

Hopefully this will have the effect of erasing the memory of Avengers: United They Stand.

But enough of that garbage, let's get back to Japan's interpretation of the Avengers, and all the madness that will surely come with it.

Marvel Disk Wars The Avengers - Episode Two: All Heroes Exterminated?!

When I heard that Japan was doing a show about the Avengers, all I could really picture was their classic show about Spider-Man.

For those not in the know, the Japanese Spider-Man show differed in a few subtle ways from the comic book character we all know.  In the comics, teenager Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider, gains the proportionate strength, speed, and agility of a spider, and initially tries to get a career wrestling The Macho Man before his Uncle Ben dies and yadda yadda great power, great responsibility.

In the Japanese show (I'm not making any of this up), motorcycle racer Takuya Yamashiro witnesses a warship named the "Marveller" from the planet "Spider" crashing to Earth.  Takuya's father, a space archaeologist (because why wouldn't Japan have people with that job?) is killed upon discovering it.  His girlfriend, a kind-of nerdy reporter for a newspaper headed by a woman who is secretly one of the primary villainesses ("The Amazoness") working for the primary villain, whose name is "Professor Monster."  Takuya, after getting his throat slashed by a minion of the bad guys, winds up meeting Garia ("from the planet Spider") who gives him a bracelet that fills Takuya with "Spider-Essence" and heals him.  Oh, and he gets to use the Marveller in his fight against giant monsters by having it transform into a giant robot.

What I'm trying to say is that if Sony really, really wanted to reboot the Spider-Man movies after the Tobey Maguire ones, they went with the wrong Spider-Man.

Where was I?  Oh, right.  Needless to say, the Japanese Avengers program is nothing like that at all.  Yet.  I'm not ruling out each one summoning a portion of a giant robot that wields a gamma-powered hammer, but let's get back to the action.

Marvel Disk Wars The Avengers - Episode One: The Mightiest Heroes!

If I told you that toilet-centered video games were going to be the second most bizarre thing I'd be describing that came out of Japan this week, you might find it hard to believe.

That is, unless you know just how twisted and demented things out of Japan really are.

This, though, isn't quite as mind-boggling in the sense of "what makes this socially acceptable."  Rather, it's simply leaving me wondering "why was there a need for this?"

While there is a Disk Wars game out there, it's made by Fantasy Flight Games, has nothing to do with the Avengers, and isn't from Japan.  I know a video game based on the animated series came out in Japan (which, I'll admit, I want purely for research reasons), but I can't really figure out what the original "core" idea was besides "The Avengers are popular, Pokemon is still popular, let's have people summon superheroes with weird gadgets."

But my place is not to criticize the reason why things exist, it's to- actually, okay, it is my place to comment on why things exist, because this is my blog.  But still, let's focus on the show itself and see if we can't figure out just why it felt the need to be.