There will be no revolution

In September of 2011 I was at the official afterparty for the International Festival of Comics and Games in Łódź. It was the part of event during which all the official speeches were held and awards were handed out. And at the end, a musical act would play. That year the audience got a real treat - a joint performance by two esteemed artists. The first one was a well known local act called Cool Kids of Death, a somewhat controversial alternative rock outfit. The second was a famous Japanese video game music composer Akira Yamaoka, best known for the Silent Hill soundtrack. People who came to the show were probably expecting that the famous international guest would take the center stage and the local band would be the backup.

That didn't happen. The first half of the show was just CKOD playing their original songs. Public was lukewarm and mostly waiting for Akira to take the stage. That happened about half-way through the show - but public was suprised to learn that for this part, the ensemble is gonna keep playing local band's songs, just with addition of Yamaoka on guitar. The band already has two guitarists so quite frankly, an additional one didn't make much of a difference in the sound. Public groaned. Finally, the vocalist announced that it's time for songs from Silent Hill. And they played them, but for just 10 minutes - after 3 tracks, the show was over.

It was the first time I saw CKOD and I became a fan right away. I immediately connected with the sound and lyrics, the attitudes and the underlying message. They were my favorite band for a very long time and will probably always remain somewhere in my top 10. But as far as I know, a lot of people had the opposite reaction - they came there to see Akira and they hated the fact that he was a very small part of the show, and hated Cool Kids for "hogging the spotlight". The band gained one loyal fan, but put off the wide audience. Years later, I realize that this was the most CKOD outcome possible.

The many themes of Gatchaman Crowds

I love Gatchaman Crowds. I’ve been thinking about it a lot ever since having watched both seasons late last year, because there’s a lot to think about. It does so, so much cool stuff on all fronts - themes, iconography, storytelling, audiovisual artistry, I just can’t help but gush all over any and all of its facets pretty much all the time. From clever directing tricks to unusual topics touched upon, the show is truly exceptional and worth everyone’s attention.

So, what is it about? Well, it’s a difficult question to give a straightforward answer to, and it almost begs the cliched answer of “what is it NOT about?” Truthfully, I do think that you could make a convincing argument or at least five different things to be the one “it’s really about”. GC is so dense with plot points and theming that it’s hard to discuss it with an orthodox breakdown.

This is your usual spoiler warning. I won’t give a play-by-play of what happens in a given episode and I try to not give away too much in general, but I spoil the stuff I wouldn’t mind if someone spoiled me on, and I think I’m a bit more tolerant than average in that regard.

Panchi Line

My small obsession with Kotaro Uchikoshi continues as I delve into one of his latest works - Punch Line, an anime he worked on as the writer. I was interested in seeing how a story made by him in a completely different genre than Zero Escape would look, and what I didn’t expect was just how many conventions would return, even though some of them felt completely tied to his most famous VN series’ premise. With that said, let me start by describing what this show’s about. I’m gonna spoil the kind of stuff that I wouldn’t mind if someone else spoiled me on, but I’m probably above average in terms of spoiler tolerance, so this is your fair warning.

Granbloobloo versus

To say I came into the Granblue Fantasy Versus beta with a lot of scepticism would be an understatement. I dislike majority of ArcSys games and this one seemed to lean closer to the end of their spectrum that is least appealing to me, with Guilty Gear-style graphics and tempo. At the same time it promised to be significantly less complex and less demanding of knowledge and controller proficiency than their staple franchise, but that doesn’t really make the pitch any better. Moreover, a lot of the messaging from producers was further discouraging - talk of making the game simpler so that it can be “less about combos and more about strategic” and  “more accessible” and constantly prattling about esports set off all my red flags. And the nail the in the coffin - the cooldown system restricting the use of specials in a variety of ways is something that fighting games have experimented with before (Rising Thunder, League of Fighters), but in general it just doesn’t seem like a good idea. So with that entire premise, how’s GBFV?

It’s ok.

The End of Star

Last week marked the end of Star vs The Forces of Evil, already one of my favorite shows of this decade. I’ve explained what I like about it once before, but let this serve as a short addendum now that we know where the story went and how it all ended. Slightly muddled spoilers ahead (but spoilers nevertheless, including the final episode).

Boback Horseperson: 5th strike

As I was watching the final scene of Bojack Horseman season 5, with Diane riding into the sunset, I was pretty underwhelmed. While the season had some great comedy and observations, it seemingly lacked an emotional narrative hook and as a result left me with no particular lasting impression. For a few days after having finished watching my feelings about the show didn’t change much.

And then I started thinking about it.

Kaguya wants to be confessed to

It feels inevitable to bring up “Death Note” when describing “Kaguya-Sama: Love is War”, so let me just do it right away - this is a parody of romantic comedies where neither of the two main characters wants to admit they’re into each other, so instead they get into a ridiculous battle of minds trying to get the other to fess up, indeed resembling those L and Kira had.

Nozomi and the blue girl

As someone familiar with the Hibike Euphonium TV show and roughly aware of what happens in the original books it’s based on, I wasn’t sure why the first standalone movie in the franchise would focus on Nozomi Kasaki and Mizore Yoroizuka. For starters, I thought their story was already told - first introduced in the beginning of season two, they seemingly had an issue with one another concerning something that happened a year earlier, but less than halfway through it turned out to be a misunderstanding, they start talking again and we get the good ending. Chapter closed, lived happily ever after, move on?

Top 10 Albums of 2018

HELLOHI ohmygosh, I’ve never commited to anything as much as to my album-of-the-year lists. Wow. Three years in a row. That’s CRAZY.

Looking back on 2017 list I realize it may have been one of my favorite years in music ever. Not only do I absolutely adore and constantly revisit the top10 I’ve made, but there’s also a couple of fantastic albums I either completely missed (Manchester Orchestra’s “A black mile to the surface”, Ola Kvernberg’s “Steamdome”) or way undervalued (Roger Waters’ “Deja Vu”, Polkadot Stingray’s “Zenchizennō”). If I were to make a top10 list of 2017+2018, let’s just say it wouldn’t be very different from last year’s. Anyway I’m just thinking of what to put in the intro when I should be just getting straight into albums. So without further ado, I present my 2018 top10 albums of the year.

Persona 5

I decided to play Persona 5 on hard difficulty, because of my conviction that by and large, this is the mode that provides the adequate amount of challenge in vast majority of modern titles, and for the most part I've enjoyed my journey. Tough opponents not only forced me to optimize my tactics in boss battles, which became like puzzles with precise and detailed solutions, but I've also had to consider HP and SP as resources that determined how far into the dungeon I can go, while simultaneously I needed to gain experience and farm money for better equipment, and do it fast enough to be able to finish my mission before the deadline. This sort of nagging feeling that I'm running out of time and have to be smart about how I use it was probably the main attraction of the game for me. But heading towards the 150 hour mark, it started to get ridiculous. The enemies were only getting stronger and stronger and I didn't even have the option to grind because I would simply deplete my life and energy and be forced to return to the real world, wasting a day of Mr Protag's life without making progress. It got to the point where I've had to carefully plan every single encounter on my way - which team members I run, which Persona I use, and the exact order of actions I will take to preserve enough resources to last me until the next save point. I've had to defeat the "final boss" by using a ludicrous cheese strategy - using a Persona that repelled physical damage, planning how I use each healing and resurrecting item as well as buffing and debuffing spells, remembering the common order of my opponent’s spell usage so that I can select right Persona each turn, and hoping that RNG goes a little my way and makes the Boss choose his Physical attack as often as possible. And finally, I did it. But of course this was only the "final boss", and there was actually another 20-30 hour section of the game awaiting me. And of course that had its own difficulty bump, which meant that I would have to continue my dance of remembering the order of opponents and strategizing against each one of them for something like 100 more fights. Or just grind, because at that point I got access to free replenishing of HP/SP and there was no deadline. After 5 hours of banging my head against the wall I desperately checked the settings to find out that, luckily, the title does have an option to change the difficulty mid-game. I immediately lowered it to easy and breezed through the rest of the game feeling like I was on some debug cheats, with no satisfaction to speak of.