Blog: Various Goings-on and Reviews #2

Hey folks.

I hope you all had a good fool's month, it's time for another of my ramblings/reviews!

Curious thoughts...

I was very lucky to be able to watch the Artemis II landing live with an audience at a local college who was allowing people to come see it in a big room with a projector, and there was a scientist up front explaining things about what was going on during it as well. It really made my mind drift away from my earthly worries for a while and consider our place in the universe. At least for a bit...

What media I been watching lately?

Dragon Quest Saga: The Quest of Roto. Great music, great animation and environments and sound design, an interesting main character who's too young and cowardly to be a hero but he's put into a situation where he has no choice but to step up and do it. He's too little to even lift a sword so he has to drag the one he steals around with all his might. Theres a lot of nicely animated character moments and very emotive and emotional main character. The monster at the end is surprisingly fearsome and scary looking, which was so cool. The animation aoften plays around with sunlight shining through the leaves of trees, since its set in a village surrounded by forest, so you get to see that effect plenty of times. really fantastically animated and heart-pounding finale with an awesome finishing attack at the end! From the title, i assume this was part of a series of films, maybe? That's how it comes off to me at least, or perhaps it was a tie-in film to set up a game or character.

I also took the plunge and finally watched the 2004 live action adaptation of Cutie Honey, directed by Hideaki Anno! I cannot believe I slept on this movie for so long, it was an actual masterpiece! The direction is so funny and emotional, and the intercut anime scenes and hybrid anime-live-action scenes are so crazy and Ive never seen anything like it before. Honey's such a loveable character, and all the musical numbers and character interaction and dialogue are all so charming! Every single character gets time to shine, andtheyre all so over the top. Anno's directing shines through as it always does, and the film gets surprisingly emotional at points, especially the tearful ending. If Go Nagai's fanservice isnt your cup of tea, its downplayed in this film, only going as far as showing the main character in her underwear at a couple points, but Cutie Honey is famously fanservicey so be aware of that. All that said, what a 10/10 movie wow.

Videogames:

I've been replaying a childhood favorite game of mine, Arcana (SNES, Hal, 1992). Thanks to its turn-based nature, I can play it with my usable hand without much pain, so thats good! Arcana is what I would describe as a pocket-sized first-person dungeon crawler RPG. If a player really stuck to it and didnt get lost in the ice dungeon maze, one could reasonably beat it in a day I think. It's an extremely simple and short rpg with a very simple story, and that's what I find so charming about it. It's very barebones, but there's soul to it and effort put into the presentation. There are hardly any status effects for that matter, just sleep, paralysis, and petrification, which all function identically, so really its just a flavor thing. There is an element weakness system that you do have to pay attention to if you dont want to get rocked in later dungeons though.

I appreciate the cool stylish character designs, and the names always stood out to me. Axs is a very fasonating name for a dwarf, and this game even beat FF7 to the punch by five years with a main love interest player 2 named "Teefa" lol. The story is quite dire, and the characters experience a lot of strife over the short story duration.

The main character Rooks is like if Yugi Moto was an rpg protagonist. Admittedly however, the "cards" aspect is simply a surface level gimmick for the sake of a visual aesthetic and cards really dont have anything to do with gameplay aside from the purchaseable card spells that function as ammo for the main character's AOE spells, but I've never seen this cardgame aesthetic done before or since. The gameplay is extremely simple and battles are very fast paced and over with very quickly. The gameplay is also extremely linear and straightforward (which I enjoy, personally.) There is no worldmap to explore, and you cant return to any dungeon after you beat them, so it really points you in a straight direction to go in. The dungeons are all big mazes to explore of course.

Being an old game of course it has its downsides that I'm sure any player agrees with: the encounter rate seems to be truly RNG so you can end up entering battles one after the other when taking a single step, characters in the story sometimes abruptly leave your party and take their stuff with them, bosses pop up truly with no warning in the middle of a hallway most times. But I can easily overlook these flaws, because the gameplay is so low-stakes that it really doesnt bother me. The original english localization is also quite botched, but that's to be expected from an RPG of that time. But you can understand the plot and dialogue well enough. There is a really fantastic english retranslation patch that was made a few years ago called Seal of Rimsala that fixes the translation and adds a lot of quality-of-life fixes that make the game a lot more tolerable to a modern audience, so if you feel like it, I highly recommend that.

I will say it's also sad that the ending feels very rushed. You dont get any closure, but it still feels good to finish the game. The final boss is actually really impressive, and has a really cool vibe in the room, it really shifts the mood to become very unnerving and strange like a creepypasta, lol. Very impressive sprite as well!

The soundtrack was partially composed by my favorite composer, Jun Ishikawa, with help from Hirokazu Ando who often worked alongside him in early Hal games in the 90s, in what i consider to be his golden years of composing. The ost on the whole is maybe a 7/10 however, I dont give it a perfect score only because there are a couple of tracks that are a little boring and only meant to evoke a feeling for the area or person onscreen but not great to listen to isolated. The final dungeon theme (Dark Bintel Castle) and the final boss theme (Second Armageddon) are truly masterpieces of early SNES music compositions, and I highly recommend giving those a listen.

All in all, its an infamously incomplete game, so its not for everybody, but I appreciate it for what it is.

As for Youtube content:

3d Mainichi Modern episode 2 came out and I loved it. I'm so happy that indie animation is going so strong now! Something about 3d Mainichi Modern really impacts me in a way i cant really describe. I am the target audience, that's for sure. FLCL if it was made in 3d movie maker, what more could I want? Making Kevin MacLeod's incomptech music be plot relevant was hilarious, A+ exactly my type of humor.

Same with The Bloody Mary pilot by Studio Wrong, which was a real fun blast, and I cant wait to see where that show goes.

Episode 8 of TADC came out as well and boy oh boy we sure are going places! I don't really know what I could add to the conversation that hasnt been said already by now haha. I'm heavily looking forward to the theatrical release, and I did call my theater and asked the owner if he'd consider airing it here, but it's not looking likely unfortunately, oof.

Music:

I've been obsessed with that "Moon Child" amiga theme song this whole month lol, you know the one

Hand Injury Update:

My dominant hand still hurts almost every day and I still cant hold or use a pen or pencil, and I'm still too poor to afford medication for it. i dont know what else to say this time haha.

Anyway I think thats all I got for this month.
Thanks for reading!