[VIDEO REVIEW] Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

So I've taken the next step in my quest for video content creation and decided to try my hand at making a video review of a game.  While my intention with this blog when I first started it was to avoid reviews, I feel like making some in video format will help me to improve my writing and speaking abilities for any other content I decide to make down the line.  I bought an El Gato capture card so this time all the footage shown was recorded by myself and I also have a pop filter for my mic so there's no more of those nasty P-Pops that I had in my Atelier video.

[VIDEO] Atelier Sophie and the License to do as One Pleases

For my third video I made a short little thing about my time playing Atelier Sophie.  Even though the game has been out for a while it still struck me with how much freedom it affords the player and thought I'd make a video of it.

This was the first video that I used game footage captured by myself and also the first video I made with the new mic I bought.  I'm still trying to find the optimal conditions for using the mic so the voice quality can be improved still.  I also have a pop filter to attach now so that should help a lot with future recordings.

That said, hope you guys enjoy the video.  If you do then please do me a solid and give the video a "Like".

Feelings of Unease in the Elite Classroom

"Something isn't right."

"Something doesn't feel right."

Two highly similar statements that have drastically different implications.  One brings a level of certainty while the other brings a level of uncertainty.  Humans take comfort in certainty by nature.  Even when an outcome is bleak or unfavorable, if it is certain then measures can be taken to come to terms with it.  This in turn provides some semblance of relief.  Conversely, humans find a lack of certainty discomforting.  Uncertainty can turn even the most joyful occasions into trepidatious affairs.  That nagging feeling in the back of the mind prevents someone from fully enjoying themselves.

From a story-telling perspective, the latter statement provides for a more intriguing experience.  If the viewer knows something is off, even if they don't know what that "something" is, then it becomes a question of when that issue will be addressed.  In some instances this may even cause the viewer to become impatient and lose interest if the matter isn't acknowledged in a timely manner.  If the viewer only feels like something is off, however, then the question becomes if the matter will be addressed, or if the matter even exists in the first place.  This causes the viewer to constantly reevaluate their understanding of the situation and, as a result, keeps them engaged in the story.  This is the state that Classroom of the Elite maintains with its viewers.

Fine Dining in Another World

Two genres have been making waves in the anime industry for the past couple years.  The "summoned to another world" genre, otherwise known as isekai, has gained traction with the accomplishments of breakout hits like Konosuba and Re:Zero. The other genre of note is cooking, or food more generally. While not on the same level of exposure as the isekai genre the success of mega-hit Shokugeki no Soma brought the genre to new heights of popularity.  In its wake were shows such as Sweetness & Lightning was also met with praise while Shokugeki no Soma approaches its third season itself.  Restaurant to Another World, as the name implies, combines the two genres in an unexpected, yet positively delightful matrimony.

Gamers and the Element of Surprise

There are quite a few shows airing this season that I want to write about, Restaurant to Another World and Classroom of the Elite being a couple of examples.  I want to talk about GAMERS! first, though, because I think the show is flying under a lot of peoples' radars, and who can blame them?  Take one look at the promo art and plot description and the series just screams a generic "boy-meets-girl" story and truthfully, it kind of is.  I'm not here to try and convince you that GAMERS! is some sort revolutionary series that will take the anime world by storm.  What GAMERS! demonstrates, however, is how you don't need to have a novel plot idea or killer production values to have little surprises and delights that add up to something warm and comforting.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Impressions [Video]

It's been a while since my last blog post and part of that was getting the "Top 10 Anime" and "Favorite Games" pages up.  Obviously the major reason why, though, is because I've been hard at work creating this video on Xenoblade Chronicles 2.  This marks the first video that I made from the ground up seeing as my other video I already had the script written in the form of a blog post.  I wrote the script exclusively for this video and you will only find it in the video.  There are a lot of things I want to talk about in my experience making this video but just like last time if you don't care about any of that skip right to the bottom of this post for the main feature.

E3 2017 Roundup: Sony

With Nintendo out of the way it's time to look at Sony and what they brought to the table for E3 2017.  At last year's show, Sony redefined how E3 press conferences should be performed with a classy presentation that had little to no down time.  An opening live orchestral performance that led into the world premier of the new God of War game set the mood and the lack of company execs and developers giving idle pleasantries kept the audience energy at a constant high as game after game after game was shown off.  In addition to God of War other titles such as Resident Evil VII and Insomniac Games' new Spider Man were revealed.  A handful of brand new IP's even premiered in the forms of Days Gone, Detroit: Become Human, and Hideo Kojima's much anticipated project Death Stranding.  This all culminated in one of the most well received press conferences in E3 history and Sony aimed to replicate that success by using the same conference format for 2017.  The difference: not nearly as many new titles announced and not a single new IP beyond small VR games.  However, as we saw with Nintendo a lack of new announcements doesn't necessarily make for a bad conference but what we will see is that it certainly won't reach the same high as last year's did.

E3 2017 Roundup: Nintendo

Now that the biggest gaming trade-show of the year has wrapped up it's time to take a look back at what's been shown off and how much of a splash these announcements made.  To kick it all off I'm going to start with Nintendo's showcase.  This was the first E3 for Nintendo's new console and, as I mentioned in my pre-launch piece for the Switch, would prove to be a pivotal showing for it.  This was Nintendo's chance to really sell the Switch with solid first party support that will court relations with third-party developers in the future.  All in all, Nintendo has a solid performance at E3 but it also felt like they were treading water a bit, not really pushing the boundary of expectations.  Let's break down their showcase game-by-game and and see what each brings to the table.

Sympathy & Empathy [VIDEO!!]

So I follow a handful of game and anime journalist groups on the web and I've always admired the polish and professionalism these outlets put into their video content.  When Memorial Day weekend rolled around I thought, "Screw it.  I've got a three day weekend, let's try turning one of my blog posts into a video."  Now you can skip the rest of this post and go straight to the video if you want but I want to use this space to talk about the process and my experience while making my first video ever.

Truthfully I would have rather turned one of my video game articles into a video but that would have required me capturing game footage and I have no way to do that without going out and buying a peripheral.  So I decided to do one of my anime pieces instead since I could relatively easily acquire video clips for those.  From there it was a matter of deciding which anime article to use.  In the end I settled on my "Sympathy & Empathy" article because it is the one that I feel most proud about and is also one of my most received pieces.  I would later come to realize that I was biting of a little more than I could chew by choosing this piece.

Simple Lessons on Life

"A broken tool is of no use to its owner."

"A weapon doesn't need to think, just destroy."

"Stop pretending to be human and just do what you're told."

Chances are if you've watched your fair share of anime you've heard lines similar to these in one show or another.  They're typically spoken by villains or high ranking military officials to an individual with immense power that comes in a humanoid form of some sort.  Human weapon stories come in many shapes and forms such as the usual android tales or characters literally turning into weapons, to give a couple examples.  Often times these stories are used to explore the facets that make us human and posit concepts that make the viewer question those established concepts.  Along the way you have lines such as the ones above spoken and the protagonist clinging to the human weapon (who is normally in the form of a girl) as he desperately explains the importance of life with tears in his eyes.  If you want a example hot off the press look no further than this season's Alice and Zouroku.  While offering fresh new characters, such as an old man protagonist, Alice and Zouroku has still followed the tried and true formula of human weapon stories thus far.  Human weapon stories have stayed relevant over the years by focusing more on their mysteries of how the human weapons came to be in their respective universes, but the core formula for each has remained the same and it's hard not to say the genre has become stagnant and predictable as a result.  It is upon this stage that WorldEnd: What do you do at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us? (sic) has come into play and it aims, from what it has shown so far, to redefine just how a human weapon story is told.

Step-by-step, turn-by-turn

When you boot up any video game one of the first things you will most likely see is a loading screen of some sort.  They come in various shapes and forms such as screens that display helpful tips or having some quirky interactive element to kill time.  One of Persona 5's loading screens is a simple portrait of the protagonist with the words "Take Your Time" below.  It's the only loading screen I can think of that shows a central motif of a game.  The idea of "taking your time" permeates the entirety of Persona 5's experience from the way it methodically tells its story, to the way you slowly build relationships with characters, to the meticulous infiltration of Palaces.  Of course, the sentiment extends to the game's turn-based combat as well.

By definition a turn-based combat system in a well balanced game requires the player to carefully contemplate their decisions to achieve victory over their enemies.  Turn-based combat systems were prevalent on home consoles up through the end of the PS2 generation.  Big-name, AAA companies like Square Enix, Bandai Namco, Atlus, and many others put out game after game that utilized turn-based combat.  Upon entering the HD era of gaming, however, there was a paradigm shift in how games were presented.  Developers wanted to utilize the greatly enhanced graphics to provide players with more grandiose, cinematic experiences and the stop-go nature of turn-based combat limited that ability to do so.  As a result the game industry started to see less and less turn-based combat games on home consoles from AAA developers.  Instead, active time elements became more prevalent as developers sought systems to keep players more involved in battles and lessen the disconnect felt from definitive turns.  As a result, true turn based combat systems found a new home on handheld systems where there is less emphasis on creating dazzling set pieces (although the Switch may change this notion in the future).  Series such as Bravely Default found a solid foothold on the 3DS while the long-running Final Fantasy franchise turned full action RPG on home consoles with Final Fantasy XV.  The only console games to have come out in recent years from a AAA developer that features a true turn-based combat system are Tokyo Mirage Session #FE, Paper Mario: Color Splash and now Persona 5.  While TMS#FE and Paper Mario were fine games on their own rights the combat didn't have that console quality spark to it; the aspect that made them feel at home on a console rather than a handheld.  Persona 5, on the other hand, does.  It plants its foot firmly on the ground and declares loudly, "I am a turn-based RPG and I deserve to be on consoles."  Something about Persona 5's combat gives it that cinematic quality that console games seek and what that something is is what I want to discuss in this piece.

Kizumonogatari: Repainting a Picture

The Monogatari (the Japanese word for "story") series is a long running light novel series written by Nisioisin and has been made into multiple anime throughout the years, the first of which was Bakemonogatari (Ghostory) which aired back in 2009.  Animated by the creative minds of Shaft, all of the Monogatari anime sport the avante-garde animation style and story telling methods that have become synonymous with the studio.  The "story" of Monogatari follows high-schooler Koyomi Araragi, a human who has recently reverted back from being a vampire, although he still retains his vampiric regenerative powers.  Koyomi has encounters with various "apparitions" that have various effects on those around him such as robbing a girl of her weight, both literally and figuratively, or causing someone to remain forever lost and never reach their destination.

While each season told compelling stories with interesting characters, mind bending dialogue, and eye catching visuals, the origin story to it all, how Koyomi became a vampire in the first place and then reverted back, was never shown in animated form until recently.  Eight years after Bakemonogatari first premiered on Japanese television, that origin story, Kizumonogatari (Wound Story) finally saw its conclusion in theaters.  By this point a total of 86 episodes spanning across multiple seasons had aired of the Monogatari series.  Assuming an average episode length of 25 minutes, that's nearly 36 hours of story.  Kizumonogatari, by contrast, was split into a 3-part movie series with each part being 65-90mins in length.  While prequels and origin stories are meant to give the viewer new insight into the story and world they already know, it's hard to imagine how much a mere 3 1/2 hours could effect perception of a 36 hour long beast.  As it turns out, quite drastically.  Kizumonogatari stands tall as the most provocative prequel for a series I have ever seen and has changed how I view the Monogatari series as a whole in ways I never thought possible.

REVIEW: Ghost in the Shell

Normally I wouldn't write a review in the traditional sense for something but yesterday I had the privilege of seeing an advanced screening for the new Ghost in the Shell movie ahead of it's official premiere on the 31st.  Because of that I feel like I'm obligated to write a formal review for it.  To begin this comes from the perspective of someone who has not watched any of the original Ghost in the Shell anime, be that the TV series or movies, and as such means this movie was viewed with a clean slate in my eyes.

Ghost in the Shell takes place in the far future where mechanical enhancements to the human body have become common place around the world.  The story follows Major (played by Scarlett Johansson), who's brain was transplanted to a fully mechanized body after a terrorist attack left her original body in a near death state.  Major is then enlisted in a government anti-terrorism division where she hunts down a wanted cyber-terrorist by the name of Kuzé.  The first of her kind, Ghost in the Shell wastes no time in using Major to to push forward the usual themes of human vs. machine prominent in android driven media.  Major questioning her own humanity and existence is to be expected but it's the fact that Ghost in the Shell doesn't really push the envelope in any way beyond that expectation that hurts it.  The plot follows a fairly standard structure that can be anticipated from beginning to end and doesn't give anything for the viewer to really think on.

The predictable story is certainly not helped by the subpar acting of Johansson.  While trying to put forth a serious demeanor her expression came across as confused instead, almost as if she was in a daze the entire time.  This was compounded with the Johansson's stiff speech that sounded as if she was reading straight from a script rather than the flippant, non-nonchalant Major that seemed to have been the aim.  While it was clear that Major was supposed to be rather lacking in the emotion department there is a difference between acting without emotions and acting a character without emotions, and Johansson was the former.

Fortunately, Johansson's shortcomings were somewhat made up for by some solid performances from the supporting cast.  Pilou Asbaek as Batou was a particular standout.  Unlike Major, Batou's aloof personality shined through Asbaek's snappy delivery of lines and movements.  His actions outside of fighting were purposeful yet also carried a hint of lethargy that complemented his character well.   Takeshi Kitano made up for the rather uninteresting character of Aramaki by executing certain key scenes and lines with finesse that got the viewer riled up.

What failed to get the viewer appropriately riled up, however, were the action sequences.  While not necessarily bad they weren't particularly engaging either.  Each fight was rather one-sided and didn't carry a sense of risk or urgency.  Over-reliance on slow motion and over-exaggerated hit reactions resulted in each strike feeling like a dull thud rather than a resounding blow that one would expect from mechanically enhanced humans.  Nonetheless, the fights did serve their purpose of breaking up the story sequences and were enjoyable enough as to not be unwelcome when they did come.

Regardless of the characters' portrayals and combat prowess, one thing that can be said is that Paramount Pictures has crafted a rather fitting world for them to reside in.  The technopolis setting brims with hologram advertisements and is filled with pedestrians with variety of visually interesting mechanical enhancements.  Special effects involving said enhancements were particularly impressive with body parts coming on and off as easily as puzzle pieces or muscle sinew being overlaid on Major with a gel like substance.  Light filtering through mesh gratings and reflecting off of all manner of metallic surfaces dazzles the eyes and the hustle and bustle make the city come alive.  It all carries a dirty and greasy vibe which perfectly conveys the feeling of technology pervading all aspects of society.

Ghost in the Shell is the very definition of a safe movie.  It sticks to well established methods in order to appeal to a more general audience but lost any potential to be memorable in the process.  A lackluster story, flat protagonist, and merely serviceable action sequences won't be making any waves but very little about the feature can be legitimately labeled as "bad".  By the time the credits rolled I felt next to nothing.  I didn't feel disappointed.  I didn't feel like I had wasted my time.  It almost felt as if I had just sat in a seat and spaced out for two hours.  Ghost in the Shell is a forgettable experience that simply fails to leave any sort of lasting impression, good or bad.





Ghost in the Shell
6/10
OK   

What Makes it Great: White Album 2

White Album 2 is something special.  It's a 10/10 that exhibits a mastery of human emotions, story telling, and cinematography not seen in other anime .  Normally I would pick out a specific aspect of an anime or game to discuss but in White Album 2's case there is just so much that goes into making it memorable that it would be an injustice to focus on just one part of it.  That's why this piece is going to be more general in nature compared to my previous ones as it will be taking a look at the show in a more all-encompassing manner.  I'm also breaking my tradition of avoiding important spoilers this time around since it would be impossible for me to get across the weight the series carries without going into specific plot details.  If you care about spoilers, turn back now, take my word to watch White Album 2 (White Album 1 is an individual story and not relevant to White Album 2), then come back when you're done.

To start to understand what makes White Album 2 tick one first has to look at the tsundere character archetype.  Many anime fans can easily recognize a tsundere type character by their harsh outer demeanor that hides a caring and kindhearted nature underneath.  Kazusa Touma is a textbook example of a tsundere.  She was very curt with protagonist Haruki and constantly feigned disinterest in his affairs.  Yet Kazusa was always looking out for Haruki and gave him a helping hand be that indirectly by urging him to evaluate his remaining time better or directly by helping him with his guitar practices.  It's very easy to be lulled into the assumption that Kazusa also followed the other established trait for a tsundere, and that was the inability to be honest with themselves about their feelings for others.  This seemed to be apparent when Kazusa gave Setsuna her blessing after her confession to Haruki in the first half of the show.  Classic tsunderes, like Taiga from Toradora or Louise from Zero no Tsukaima, refused the feelings they felt towards their respective protagonists throughout the entirety of their series.  It would be logical to conclude that Kazusa would follow a similar pattern.  The viewer was made painfully aware that this was not the case in the closing act, however, and it's that previous misconception on the viewer's part that makes the gut punch hurt all the more.

It's All on You

It's now been just over a week since the Nintendo Switch launched with the much anticipated title, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.  It doesn't take much research to find just how ground-breaking this adventure is.  While Metacritic scores should never be used as the end-all-be-all metric, a critic score of 98% from 78 reviews is practically unheard of for a game in this day and age. BotW has also broken the record for most perfect scores from critics, dethroning the previous holders being Super Mario Galaxy and The Last of Us.  If you want a comprehensive review of the game you can refer to any one of those articles.  As usual, though, I want to zoom in on a particular aspect of the game.  The crux of what makes BotW tick and how it redefines the open-world genre as we know it, and that is true, realized freedom.

A common flaw of nearly all open world games is that they are checklists in disguise.  Take The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for instance. It's game structure can more or less be boiled down into a simple formula.  Arrive in a new town, find the bulletin board, take all the requests on the board, do a story quest maybe, then move onto the next town and repeat the process over again.  The quests themselves in The Witcher are detailed and involved enough to not feel too repetitive, but when the player opens the quest log and sees the veritable mountain of quests they feel they should do before moving on, it can get quite tedious.  Ubisoft games are especially guilty of checklist syndrome as their game maps are usually so cluttered with icons indicating quests, side activities, bases, and collectibles that they look like a middle schooler's stamp collection.

Phone Dilution

It's no big secret how prominent cell phones and communication have become in today's first-world societies.  They permeate every aspect of our lives and we rely on that ability to instantly get in contact with nearly anyone of our choosing to be a properly functioning member of that society.  This is all the more true for millennials like myself as by the time we were becoming self aware enough to want to communicate with others, cell phones and the internet were becoming cornerstones of life.  Even the most basic of basic flip phones only capable of calling and texting vastly opened the world of the young teenager who received it.  I don't know what life was like before everyone had a cell phones, before the internet became an integral part of everyone's lives.  I've imagined it from time to time and I've seen Hollywood depict those earlier periods of the 70's and 80's, but they've never emphasized this missing part of life quite like White Album has.

White Album takes place in 1986 and follows university student Touya Fuji who is dating the up-and-coming pop star Yuki Morikawa, or idol as they're more often referred to as in Japan.  Understandably, Yuki's schedule as a rising idol is packed to the brim with rehearsals, training, recordings and the like which leaves very little time to spend with Touya, or anyone outside the industry for that matter.  This places strain on their relationship and is exacerbated when Touya is essentially told to stay away from Yuki by her manager.  The only way for Touya to effectively communicate with Yuki is by good old fashioned land lines and White Album places these phone calls squarely in the spotlight.

It's Time to Save the World!... Or Not.

Originally I was going to write a piece about the "Tales of" series's current position in the gaming world and where I believe its future lies.  As I was playing through Tales of Berseria I was filled with all these thoughts about the series and excitement and hope for where it can go from here, and those thoughts may still make their way into this article.  However, after finishing Tales of Berseria my attention was drawn to another matter that I thought warranted discussion.  This is an issue that is rather prevalent in the JRPG genre, or just the RPG genre in general, but has always been especially bad in Tales games.  That is timing of side quests in respect to the main story.

Before I continue let me make this clear, I loved Tales of Berseria.  It has usurped Tales of the Abyss as my new favorite Tales game.  The combat was dynamic and fluid, the characters were some of the most colorful and interesting featured in any Tales game, and the natural connections made to its predecessor, Tales of Zestiria, were brilliant.  Most of all the story was the most gripping and engaging of any Tales game to date and the perfect pacing constantly drove me forward to progress.  It's because the story was so phenomenal and the pacing so on point that it was all the more important for side quests to not interfere with that.  And for the most part, Berseria accomplished that.  The side quests were minimal and and the ones that were there rarely detracted from the main story for more than a few minutes.  This was the case all the way until the the very end of the game, right when the final dungeon revealed itself and the final boss loomed ominously ahead.  The world was in imminent danger and instead of pushing me, the player, with urgency to save it, Berseria decided to instead reveal hours upon hours of side quests for me to complete.  Whatever urgency there was to save the world from impending danger was completely lost.

I Refuse to Make a Switch Pun (Part 2)

With the background of the Switch’s unique announcement period out of the way, this brings us to the present and the future.  Even after the January 12^th presentation there are still many question marks surrounding the Switch such as the nature of the eShop and Virtual Console and they’re odd but unique take on voice chat using a smartphone app.  These questions are causing hesitation in some potential buyers so one can find it strange that Nintendo has left them unanswered so close to release.  Yet here’s the thing, the Switch is still sold out of preorders across all major retailers around the world despite those unanswered questions. 

Die-hard Nintendo fans, of which there are many, were going to buy the Switch at launch regardless.  Nintendo has those initial sales on lockdown.  While this was also the case with the Wii U, the difference is that there is a palpable excitement in the air surrounding the Switch.  Buzz for the console on social media and news outlets has been more or less positive, although not overwhelmingly so.  Nintendo doesn’t have a reason to release more news that could potentially dour those expectations.  It goes back to the confidence they’ve been showing throughout the announcement period.  They believe that once the Switch is out in the wild and people discover for themselves that the core aspect of the console itself is solid and enduring, then consumers will be less bothered by the less favorable, smaller details.  This extends to the Switch’s launch line-up as well which, besides Zelda, is pitifully weak.  But because Zelda is there that alone gives the die-hards enough reason to pick up the Switch at launch and support the platform until later games release.

This is for the first few months of the Switch’s life but what about after that?  A console of course needs to live off of more than its dedicated fans.  Here’s where the make-or-break period begins for Nintendo.  The Wii and Wii U lost almost all third party support from major AAA developers and the consoles suffered for it.  While Nintendo’s own first party titles continued to provide mostly top notch experiences, they couldn’t make up for the month long gaps that came between them.  This will be alleviated somewhat by the fact that the Switch will be absorbing most of the Wii U, 3DS, and PS Vita markets but that still will not be enough.  It’s been said time and time again and now it’s all the more important that Nintendo recapture the interests of those third party developers to pad out those month long periods in between first part Nintendo games.  This will be, and always has been, an uphill battle for Nintendo as they consistently deal with weaker hardware than their competitors Sony and Microsoft.  Nintendo must show major third party developers that allowing their consumers to take their games anywhere they please is a feature worth investing in.  Nintendo does this, of course, through raw sales of the Switch console.  While the Wii U failed to accomplish this, the Switch stands apart in one key distinction: it advertises itself.

I Refuse to Make a Switch Pun (Part 1)

The Switch marks an important milestone for Nintendo.  While the original Wii met with massive market success by capturing the imaginations of the casual audience, it came at the price of losing much of the core gaming audience.  Nintendo attempted to recapture the core gaming market with the Wii U but largely failed in its endeavor and, furthermore, couldn’t even retain the casual audience it obtained in the previous generation.  The Switch now stands to recapitulate those losses and prove that Nintendo can still make a place for itself in the console gaming market through innovation rather than raw power.

From the very beginning the Switch has been somewhat of an anomaly in the video game industry.  First announced almost off-handedly as the codename NX back in March 2015 at a Nintendo investor’s meeting, virtually no official information about the console was given for over a year.  It wasn’t until Nintendo unceremoniously released a three-and-a-half-minute reveal trailer on October 20^th, 2016 that we finally got out first look at the console as well as its official name, the Nintendo Switch.

The trailer, short and sweet, forwent the standard approach of showcasing new games for a new console and instead placed the focus squarely on the Switch hardware itself.  This gave consumers a clear picture of exactly what the Switch console would be capable of and that it would be a distinct departure from Nintendo’s previous consoles, home and handheld alike.  This messaging was especially important considering the Wii U’s first stumble out of the gate was just that, with many people thinking that it was a simple extension to the original Wii rather than a brand new console.

The Switch then entered another period of radio silence.  

No new information was given from Nintendo besides the date, January 12^th, 2017, of a blowout presentation that would go over all the details of the console.  The Switch did make a brief appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, however, which showed the console “switching” between console and handheld mode in a live setting.  An unlikely place to find anything video game related, The Tonight Show cameo demonstrated that Nintendo was taking a different approach to advertising and exposure this time around as opposed to the Wii U’s almost nonexistent amount.

The Essence of a Good Plot Twist

(Disclaimer: There are no spoilers of any sort in the following text or images)

Take a moment to ask yourself what makes a good plot twist.  Think of a plot twist of any sort you've seen in a book, movie, TV show or whatever then ask yourself what specifically about it made it a good plot twist in your mind?  The first requirement is for it to, naturally, be unexpected.  That's arguably in the definition of a plot twist.  Beyond that there can be other aspects such as the accomplishment of it "being right in front of your face all along".  One of my favorites is misleading the viewer from a true plot twist by allowing them to decode a more obvious one to make them lower their guard.  Truly, there are many was to go about writing a plot twist and I'm here to talk about a particular one in the anime Flip Flappers.

Flip Flappers is an... abstract anime to say the least.  While each episode is fascinating in their theming and presentation there is very little of a cohesive plot for the greater portion of the series. Protagonists Cocona and Papika go on adventures in the Dr. Seuss-esque worlds of Pure Illusion to find Pure Fragments that can maybe grant their wishes if they find an unspecified amount of them. The plot is just as zany as it sounds and for the most part that's all the viewer is given to go off of. The appeal of Flip Flappers came from those individual, episodic adventures that Cocona and Papika had and the wide variety of animation styles and aesthetics they showed off.  The seemingly lack of a plot makes the plot twist that happens all the more impressive.

Obviously, I'm not going to spoil the plot twist here, I feel like that would defeat the purpose of this article.  What's important is how this plot twist was executed and how it made me feel.  The plot twist was a simple scene, maybe three or four seconds in length.  It was, for all intents and purposes, a still frame.  No movement, no speaking, no music.  Just a single camera shot.  And yet in those three or four short seconds my feelings and state of mind were immediately aligned with that of Cocona's. The disbelief that this is possible, the unease of the implications this has, and the utter terror of your reality being shattered before your eyes.  All these feelings and more came rushing to my head and sent my mind racing and as I watched I could tell Cocona was feeling the exact same way.

This ability to synchronize the viewer's emotions with that of the character so succinctly and with such pin point precision is something that I had never quite experienced before.  As I thought back on the scene I realized even more how impressive it was considering a large over arching theme of the show was Cocona and Papika understanding and connecting with each other through their emotions. It was as if the show had pulled me in to become a character as well.  Even more amazing was how consistent the plot twist's execution was with the series's "show, don't tell" story-telling style.

What's funny is that in the greater scheme of of the story as a whole (and yes, a cohesive plot did show itself eventually), that plot twist turned out to not be all that important.  You could probably have removed it entirely and the story turn out exactly the same way.  Yet the way it was executed was brilliant and the emotions it made me feel were very much real.  For that, I think it was a better plot twist than most everything I've seen out there and I cannot praise it enough.

Anime at Odds with Itself

An important aspect of anime, or any fictional entertainment medium for that matter, is to be able to allow the viewer to maintain their suspension of disbelief.  Suspension of disbelief is a viewer's ability look past otherwise unreasonable or unrealistic aspects of a story and accept them as part of the story's universe.  When suspension of disbelief is broken, the viewer finds themselves doubting the validity of that particular plot point or the story as a whole in severe cases. The amount a story can get away with depends, of course, on the tone and type of story being told.  In the abstract adventures of Flip Flappers  a meteor could slam into and destroy the earth at any given moment and it would be completely within the realm of what one could expect from the show.  If the same thing happened in the somber Kuzu no Honkai that delves into the the intricacies and complex nature of high school hook-up cultures then the viewer would be hard pressed to reconcile their feelings for the jarring event.  This would be an extreme breach of the suspension of disbelief but right now I want to talk about a show that does this to a lesser an extent.  That show is Yuri on Ice.

Yuri on Ice, as the name may suggest, is about professional men's figure skating.  Let me get this out of the way first, though.  The skating itself in Yuri on Ice is phenomenal.  Still frames do not do it justice.  Studio Mappa accomplished the seemingly impossible task fluidly animating these beautiful choreographies while relying on minimal to no CGI.  The attention to detail that is shown is downright astounding and while I am no expert on figure skating I would argue the skating featured in Yuri on Ice is comparable with that of real life professionals.  The skating is undeniably the greatest strength of Yuri on Ice, but strangely it also is its greatest weakness.

Because the skating is shown off in such an ultra-realistic manner I expect the show outside the skating to be presented in somewhat of a similar fashion, especially when it comes to the homosexual relationship between protagonist, Yuri Katsuki, and his Russian coach and figure skating idol, Victor Nikiforov.  The romance that buds between the two had moments of genuine warmth and sincerity but also had other moments, like the first encounter scene below, that seemed to have been included simply to appease the fantasies of high school girls who may be watching.  Quite frankly, such cliche scenes have no place in the series that takes its primary subject matter so seriously, the skating and the gay.

The inconsistencies extend to Yuri himself as well.  The story opens up with Yuri placing last in a competition called the Grand Prix Final after a series of unfortunate events caused him to lose focus during his performance.  Yuri then had what could only be described as a catastrophic meltdown and came to the verge of quitting figure skating all together.  He was depicted as someone who was very weak of heart.  As someone who knows nothing of figure skating competitions, as I'm sure the vast majority of this show's audience is, this led me to believe the Grand Prix Final to be a moderately important event that even someone lacking in confidence like Yuri could qualify for.  Yet after a few episodes you learn the Grand Prix Final is actually one of the biggest skating events in the world with rigorous qualifying conditions, being the top skater in one's respective country being first and foremost.  It is not a competition that a seemingly weak minded individual like Yuri could qualify for.  It would be one thing if the show gave glimpses of Yuri in the past showing the confidence and resolve necessary to make it to this exalted competition, but there was none of that.  Furthermore, Yuri does not demonstrate any such ability during his time with Victor that could prove to us that he could do the same thing without Victor's guidance.

(The Grand Prix Final is a real event in case you were curious.  This year's will take place in, ironically, Nagoya, Japan on December 7th.)

There are other things I want to nitpick as well such as Yuri's parents not knowing at all how figure skating competitions are scored or much about figure skating in general for that matter.  They are normal caring parents, so you'd think they would take an interest in their son's professional skating career.  There's also the fact that every single character from around the world is somehow fluent in Japanese.  It'd be more believable if it was English and I understand that getting voice actors that can speak in the languages of the 10+ countries represented is too much for a humble anime studio.  But again, when the skating is so painstakingly realistic these little flaws pile up and pull me out of the experience as a whole

Yuri on Ice is a good anime.  What it does right, it does extremely well and for the most part the plot moves along nicely and regular character interactions outside the primary pair are a joy to behold.  Those strengths simply emphasize its what would otherwise be small flaws, though.  In many other shows these flaws would not have bothered me nearly as much but in Yuri on Ice they served to consistently pull me out of my suspension of disbelief.  By the end I couldn't help but wanting more from anime's first serious foray into the field of competitive figure skating.

The Absense of Parents in Anime

Anime has a lot of patterns and tendencies that its known for.  May that be the magical shounen formula that can make anything and everything interesting or the fact that every single classroom in Japan apparently has a designated desk for protagonists in the back corner by the window.  There is one tendency, however, that usually flies underneath peoples' radars and that is the noticeable lack of prominent parents in shows.  For many individuals parents were some of the, if not the most influential figures in their adolescent lives.  So when 90% of anime focus around said adolescents, the notable absence of parental figures in somewhat startling.  Most anime feature protagonists that live away from home, or who live with a single parent while the other is away or deceased.  These situations usually allow creators to focus purely on their unique story idea, in the case of the former, or give an easy avenue for later character growth, in the case of the latter.  The few times both parents are around are usually in series where they are used for simple one off comedy scenes.  The number of anime that do not follow this trend can be counted in one sitting.  When you remove magical girl shows from the mix, that number can probably be counted on both hands.

So when I recently watched episode 6 of Demi-chan wa Kataritai (Interviews with Monster Girls) I found myself, honestly, rather mesmerized.  For those of you unfamiliar with the show, Demi-chan takes place in an alternate version of our world where demi-humans, such as vampires, dullahans, and succubi, are born by extremely rare genetic defects and are well known to society as a whole.  The story revolves around high school biology teacher Takahashi-sensei and the three demi-human students in his class.  It's a fun, lighthearted show that is just a joy to watch.

In episode 6 Takahashi makes a house-call to his vampire student's, Hikari, home to meet her parents, a rather common thing for Japanese teachers to do.  It stands to mention that Hikari's parents are not vampires and are just normal human beings.  There we learned of all the considerations Hikari's parents have gone through for their vampiric daughter such as the father dyeing his own hair blonde so that Hikari didn't feel like her own platinum blonde hair made her stand out in her own family.  We also learned of Hikari's own considerations to her family such as her own mini fridge in her room that she stores her government issued blood packs in so she doesn't have to store them in the family fridge with all their food.  And of course there were all the stories of the parents' worries and anxieties over raising such a unique child properly as well.

It's a fantastical situation that could never exist in real life and yet I felt that that segment alone demonstrated more meaningful parental influence than the vast majority of other anime out there that claim to have serious plots of adolescent life.  By the end of the episode I felt it's only natural Hikari be the hyper active goofball she is if she has the kind of parents we just met, and that's something I wish more anime would do.  There's nothing wrong with using the absence of one or both parents to create an easy pocket for drama and character development , but I think taking a more mundane situation and still being able to show a character have compelling growth is all the more impressive.

What Makes a Good Video Game World

I spent some time thinking about what my first post should be about.  Whether I should just write about the first thing that comes to mind or settle for something more meaningful.  In the end I decided to talk about a series that has grown very near and dear to my heart over the past two years.

The video game industry as it stands is experiencing an over saturation of open world games.  The open world genre has essentially become what was the FPS genre of the previous generation.  They are the de facto method for game developers to create a "living, breathing" world that players can truly "immerse" themselves in.  I use quotation marks because these are terms frequently used to describe open world games and I rarely agree with them.

This is not to say that I haven't enjoyed any open world games, though.  The Witcher 3 sported jaw dropping graphics and a compelling story that lent the adventure a sense of grandeur.  Xenoblade Chronicles X embraced the spirit of exploration by organically expanding what is already there and rewarding players for seeking out those unknowns.  Final Fantasy XV gave us probably the closest representation of what our own world would be like with fantastical elements, and I loved it for that.  All of these games and others were genuinely enjoyable for varying reasons, but going as far as to call them "living, breathing" worlds is something that I cannot do.  When I turn off these games I can't imagine how the world keeps on turning behind the screen.  I don't mean this in the sense of time related activities, such as growing crops, but on a more fundamental level.  These games give me little to no reason to believe that life goes on with no input from myself, the player. That is what it means to me for a game world to feel alive.

This brings me to the series I want to talk about today; The Legend of Heroes: Trails..., or just the Trails series for short.  The Trails franchise is a long running fantasy RPG series with its first installment, Trails in the Sky, debuting in 2004 for Windows PC in Japan.  Since then the Trails series has grown to be seven games strong, with an eighth game on the horizon, all of which take place on the same fantasy continent of Zemuria in the same relative time period.  That said, only four of those seven games have actually been released outside of Japan and thus playable for myself, last year's Trails of Cold Steel II being the most recent.  None of the Trails games are open worlds, some of them being quite the opposite and actually fairly linear.  Yet these four games alone have created a more compelling, charming, and enchanting world than any of these AAA open world games even came close to.