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Sandra — eight years on

Published on November 7, 20191 Comment

So I was noticing all this week I wasn’t being my usual cheerful self and was feeling a bit depressed. I also noticed that the eight anniversary of Sandra’s death was coming up this Thursday. Putting two and two together however? That took until yesterday. Sometimes the hurting’s so deep inside you only notice it when you actually stop and think about it.

Grief is a funny thing. At some point your brain just gives up on it, evolution only tolerating so much moping before it wants you to move on with things. That first year I felt it every day; eight years on there can be days, sometimes weeks without me thinking about it. On a day like this it’s out in force again.

Highway of Death revisited

Published on October 28, 20191 Comment

The latest Call of Duty has taken the infamous massacre of fleeing Iraqi soldiers and civilians from Kuwait back in 1991 and made it into a war crime perpetrated by the Russians.

Call of Duty screenshot:

Only a few weeks ago I watched Rambo for the first time. I’d watched First Blood years ago and that turned out to be a decent if rightwing revenge fantasy that made sure to show how hollow revenge was and had Rambo lose at the end. I’d never watched Rambo because, well, it looked like it was a dumb power fantasy about going back to ‘Nam and finally get to kick commie butt without any of the complexities that made the first movie so interesting. And indeed Rambo turned out to be just what I expected, except much dumber. The enemy is cartoonishly evil, a beautiful Vietnamese ally dies to underscore Rambo’s greatness and lines like “Do we get to win this time” are uttered with a hilarious sincerity by Stallone. the only thing funnier in all of this was knowing Rambo III was dedicated to the people who’d blow up the WTC two decades later.

Obviously silly as Rambo was, it’s Nobel Prize material compared to what Call of Duty did. To just boldly take one of the most notorious war crimes of the first Gulf War, fictionalise it and flip it so that it was the old Cold War enemy did it is dumber than anything the Rambo series ever got up to. Even for a brogamer first person shooter like Call of Duty it’s beyond the pale. Bad enough to have the developers recycle other people’s suffering as background material for your game. But blatantly rewriting your own war crimes so you can still be the good guys? That’s disgusting on a whole other level.

1 in 3 ain’t bad — First Impressions

Published on October 12, 20192 Comments

We got three new anime police procedurals this season and one of them is even watchable. Hey, one out of three isn’t bad, though as Terry Pratchett would point out, that’s only 331/3 percent. Of the two not worth bothering with, Stand My Heroes: Piece of Truth is just another pretty boys game adaptation only this time they’re cops instead of cake bakers or whatever. It lost my interest about five minutes in, when we only had distinguishable only by hair colour talking heads and nothing interesting happening. The other, Keishichou Tokumubu Tokushu Kyouakuhan Taisakushitsu Dainanaka – Tokunana is some “fantasy races are still around in modern times” urban fantasy nonsense, with no impact whatsoever on the plot of the first episode. Instead we get a gung ho rookie cop getting involved with a bank robbery and taken hostage and again I lost interest about 2/3rds through the show. Too dull to continue.

Babylon: a pharmaceutical police raid

Which leaves the third series, Babylon which released not just one, but three episodes already and which managed to keep my attention throughout. It does share some of the flaws of the other two, in that the animation quality, character designs and backgrounds are servicable at best. It makes up for it with an actually interesting plot, characters I want to follow and a judicious use of music, especially towards the end of the first episode. What’s more, the second episode went for some neat visual trickery in how it told its story, making what was otherwise a lot of people talking to each other again a lot less boring. As any Shaft series can show you, even the most mundane conversations can be livened up by making the animation more interesting. So while most of the episode consisted of Zen interviewing a witness intercut with him talking with co-workers about the case, stylised flashbacks as well as shots like the above helped keep the viewer’s interest up.

Babylon: interesting stylistic shots

Babylon starts with public prosecutor Seizaki Zen leading a bust of a pharmaceutical company suspected of having bribed some universities to provide overinflated claims for its medicines. This mostly entails sitting around reading dreary company documents for the first part of the episode. As often in this sort of story, an accidental discovery by his assistant alerts him to a bigger case, a more political case, involving an upcoming election. Things escalate quickly from there as Zen and his assistant use old fashioned police work to get to the bottom of the case, which unfortunately leads to tragedy. You can’t say Bsbylon doesn’t move quickly: by the end of episode three the villains are revealed, the stakes are made clear and Zen is well in over his head. All in all, it’s eminently bingeable.

Hoshiai no Sora — First Impressions

Published on October 11, 20191 Comment

After a season start full of the usual series with bad to adequate animation, ditto characters and stories, it was a relief to finally watch something actually good.

Hoshiai no Sora: Maki does his chores

Good fluid animation is important in any anime series, but especially in a sports anime as this is. Hoshiai no Sora (Stars Align) is about Maki, a transfer student coming back to his old home town and old friend Shinjo Toma, the current captain of the boys’ soft tennis club. With the club not doing well, lacking members and those remaining not all that motivated, Shinjo jumps at the chance to recruit him for it. Though Maki is at first reluctant, eventually he is convinced, which is more or less where the episode ends. Not perhaps a very original plot, but it’s all in the execution. The episode takes its time to reach its inevitable conclusion and gives the characters room to breathe. There are lots of things happening that do not directly contribute to the plot and care and attention is taken to set up just why the soft tennis club needs Maki so badly. What’s more, it’s clear from the start that Toma’s desire to save his club is not entirely healthy. There’s an anger to Toma that is visible from the first scene we see him in.

Hoishiai no Sora: that guy is looking at her arse

I really like the attention to detail and the strong characterisation shown in this episode. It’s so nice to see proper background characters rather than bland, anonymous CGI mobs. Look at the people watching that scene between Maki, Toma and Mitsue Kanako, Maki’s downstairs neighbour & classmate. They’re all looking at it but none of them are quite looking at the same thing, with the fuzzy haired guy blatantly staring at Mitsue’s ass. Mitsue herself is fun as well. She has nothing to do with the main plot, but she’s a slightly sarcasting observer to what’s going on, quickly befriending Maki on his first day at school. Like the rest of the cast, she doesn’t fall neatly in any of anime’s usual high school character types. She could be a love interest, but she doesn’t have to be.

There’s a realism to Hoshiai no Sora that reminds me of Tsuki ga Kirei and Just Because of a few years back. There’s a depth to its world you don’t see often in high school anime series. It’s all a bit more grounded in the real world. There’s more to Maki or Toma or even Mitsue’s lives than we are shown. This is not a typical sports anime even if the plot superficially looks like one. It’s been a while since a new series surprised me as much at this one did.

Houkago Saikoro Club — First Impressions

Published on October 9, 2019Leave a comment

High school girls get very excited at winning a not very exciting board game:

Houkago Saikoro Club: winning is fun

This first episode spent a fair bit faffing about before it finally got around to any actual board gaming. We only get to see the actual game store halfway through the episode. First we have to deal with blue haired girl (shy, bit of a loner) bonding with the twin tailed transfer student new to Kyoto (energetic, dumb but enthusiastic) for the first half as they have adventures in and around the town. When they spy the glasses wearing class rep out after curfew (six PM and is this really a thing in Japan?) they get suspicious and follow her. All of which ends with the three of them playing a game of Marrakech with the store’s owner.

Houkago Saikoro Club: real board games

And yes, that is a real board game, as are the other games shown in the store. Which is unusual, as normally manga and anime series are very very scared of anything that could be seen as a trademark infringement. It helps ground the series to have real games being played. Just as long as we don’t get any Catan. Or worse, Monopoly. This was a fun first episode. The girls are all a bit cliched but let’s see how’ll they develop over the series.