Category: 2021

Compilation Of Final Fantasy VII: An Unusual And Weird Subseries

Published September 16, 2021

When it comes to the Final Fantasy franchise, there can be no doubt the success and impact that Final Fantasy VII has had. Credited with popularising role-playing video games on consoles in the Western market, the game has also proven to be the bestselling in the series with an estimated 12.8 million copies sold as of 2020. While I’m not quite as fanatical about Final Fantasy VII as some people, I still acknowledge how important it was and have ranked it as my fourth favourite main Final Fantasy game. Despite the Final Fantasy franchise being an anthology series with each entry featuring a new world, characters and story bound together by similar themes and gameplay, Square Enix couldn’t let the success of Final Fantasy VII go and decided to create a subseries called “Compilation of Final Fantasy VII” which has included a variety of unusual and weird spin-offs.

Despite the original Final Fantasy VII being released in 1997, it took 7 years for the first entry in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII to be produced with the release of Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII in 2004. Produced for mobile devices, specifically FOMA (Freedom of Mobile Multimedia Access), Before Crisis takes place before the events of Final Fantasy VII and follows the Turks, a group that works as intel and investigative operatives for Shinra, and follows their conflicts with Avalanche. The game proved to be highly successful in Japan but was never released in the West, making it the only major entry in Compilation of Final Fantasy VII to not be released outside of Japan.

The logo for Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII.

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The Interesting History Of The Gekiga Movement

Published September 13, 2021

I recently wrote an article titled “The Amazing History Of The Medium Of Manga” and during that article, I decided to devote a paragraph to the gekiga movement. However, when I was perusing my older articles, I realised that, despite mentioning them several times, I’d never written an entire article devoted to gekiga. Therefore, I decided that it was important that I quickly rectify this and write about the interesting history of the gekiga movement.

In order to explain the gekiga movement, I first need to explain the reason why they came about in the first place. Prior to the rise of gekiga, manga was predominantly aimed at children and avoided topics and themes that would be considered too adult. One of the first mangaka to express his disapproval of this was the legendary Yoshihiro Tatsumi who would go on to coin the term “Gekiga” in 1957 which replaced the character 漫 in the word 漫画 (manga which literally translates as whimsical pictures) with the character 劇 to create 劇画 (gekiga which literally translates as dramatic pictures).

Yoshihiro Tatsumi, the man most credited with founding the gekiga movement.

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The Fascinating Career Of The Legendary Hideaki Anno

Published September 9, 2021

I recently wrote about Hideaki Anno and his passion for Japanese popular culture and I mentioned the possibility of discussing his filmography someday. Considering how positively that article has been received, I’ve decided to take a look at the legendary Hideaki Anno, his fascinating career and his impact on the anime industry.

While I’m going to be focusing predominantly on series and films that Hideaki Anno directed, I’d be remiss if I didn’t discuss his career prior to directing. Ever since Hideaki Anno was a child, he’d always been interested in art and film, to the point of being considered a “problem child“. He later attended the Osaka University of Arts and ended up working as an animator on Super Dimension Fortress Macross. He was eventually kicked out of the Osaka University of Arts for not paying his tuition but not before he teamed up with a number of other students to create “Daicon III and IV Opening Animations”, short anime films that were made on a shoestring budget in a friend’s house. He eventually went to work on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind under Hayao Miyazaki where he was assigned the task of working on the God Warrior, a very complicated scene that ended up becoming an impressive set piece in the movie. He, along with the other students who had worked on Daicon III and IV, founded Daicon Film in 1984 which was later renamed as Gainax.

The cover for the Daicon IV Opening Animation.

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Some Of The Most Important Kaiju Films And Franchises

Published September 6, 2021

If you’ve been reading this blog recently, you’ll probably know that I’ve been on something of a kaiju kick, recently watching the 15 Showa Godzilla movies and Shin Godzilla and recently starting the Gamera franchise. While I’ve talked about the Godzilla franchise before as well as touching on tokusatsu, the genre of which kaiju is a subgenre of, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some of the most important kaiju films and franchises within the genre. However, I should clarify that I’ll only be specifically talking about Japanese kaiju films and franchises. The term is sometimes used to describe non-Japanese giant monster movies such as King Kong and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms so I believe that the clarification is necessary.

Understandably, one of the most noteworthy franchises when it comes to kaiju has to be the Godzilla franchise. However, having already discussed the franchise in its own article, I thought I might use the Godzilla franchise as a jumping off point to discuss various kaiju that initially started out in their own movies before becoming incorporated into the franchise. The earliest example of this would be the 1964 film “Mothra Vs. Godzilla”, a film that pitted Mothra, the star of her own film “Mothra” which was released in 1961, against Godzilla. Within the same year, the film “Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster” not only introduced the brand new King Ghidorah to the franchise but also introduced Rodan who had previously starred in his own film “Rodan” in 1956. Despite both Mothra and Rodan becoming incredibly popular monsters within the Godzilla franchise, Mothra would only get three more of her own films, the “Rebirth of Mothra” trilogy that were released between 1996 and 1998, while Rodan has yet to get another solo film, appearing pretty much exclusively in the Godzilla franchise.

A picture of various kaiju in the 1968 film “Destroy All Monsters”.

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Genres of Video Games Best Played On PC

Published September 2, 2021

I was recently perusing some video game news sites when I heard that Crusader Kings III is being ported to both PS5 and Xbox Series. While I’m not opposed to such a move, allowing video game developers to make more money by releasing their games on other platforms can only be good, I confess that I’m rather confused by how they’ll have the player interact with the game using only a controller. Based on my personal experiences with Paradox games, it’s extremely difficult for me to see how this can be accomplished in a way comparable to the PC version which uses a keyboard and mouse to interact. Taking this into account, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at a few genres of video games that I believe are best played on a PC.

Of course, as usual with these articles, I feel that it’s important that I give a disclaimer that the genres of video games that I believe are best played on PC are my own personal opinions. I play all of my games exclusively on PC and I personally consider PC to be the best gaming platform. However, I understand that many people prefer to play on consoles, mobile, etc. and I am not trying to discredit those platforms if those are what you like to use to play video games. However, I do genuinely believe that there are certain video game genres that are a better experience on PC due to the control scheme and I simply wish to share that information.

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The Amazing History Of The Medium Of Manga

Published August 30, 2021

I think it’s fair to say that manga has seen explosive growth worldwide within the past 30 years and this has led to several misconceptions about the age of the medium of manga and the amazing history behind it. I quite often hear people describing manga as a new medium and I can’t help but feel that saying this is belittling to the many people who’ve worked hard to make the medium of manga what it is today and the many cultural influences behind it. Taking all of that into account, let’s take a look at the amazing history of the medium of manga.

It’s interesting to note that the word “Manga” is much older than many people believe it to be. This word, which is made up of the characters “漫画” which translates as whimsical pictures, was originally coined by Santō Kyōden in 1798 to describe one of his picture books. Later on, the legendary Japanese artist Hokusai drew a collection of sketches covering a wide variety of topics that would later be referred to as “Hokusai Manga”. While these uses of the term manga are quite different to the modern incarnation of the word, they’re nonetheless an essential part of manga history.

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My Complete And Total Opposition To Piracy

Published August 26, 2021

When it comes to the general anime and manga fandom in the West, I’ve noticed that there are many who not only embrace piracy but hold it up on a pedestal, criticising those who point out the problems with their practises by claiming that true anime and manga fans pirate, that they can’t afford it, that anime and manga take too long to be translated officially etc. Today, I thought I might take a look at the history of anime and manga piracy, the flaws in the arguments in favour of piracy and why I have both a complete and total opposition to the practise.

First, we should take a look at the history of anime and manga piracy and why the modern implementation of it is completely different to the historical. Around the 1980s, anime clubs began to be established in numerous cities within the United States. These clubs access to anime was restricted as anime was rarely licensed in America and, when it was, tended to be butchered from its original form. In order to show anime at these clubs, VHS copies of anime in their original format with fan made subtitles known as “Fansubs” began to be produced so that fans could watch these shows. However, while technically illegal in that a copyrighted work was being distributed without the express permission of the copyright holder, the scale was so limited and controlled, due to the fact you needed to have a physical VHS in hand, that they were often ignored. In contrast, modern fansubs are produced for and distributed via the internet, a platform that is notoriously difficult to control content on and the scale is no longer a few thousand people but millions upon millions.

海賊版、無くしていきたいです。
海賊版が次から次へ湧いて出てきても、読者の方々が海賊版を読まないでいてくれさえすればいいのです。
お金を払ってまで読みたくないな、と思われたならそれは私と作品の実力不足なのでそれはそれでいいのです。海賊版で読むくらいなら読まないで欲しいです。
— Gino0808@❄️🦀ドラマ化！ (@0808gino) January 4, 2021

The manga artist Gino0808 stated that they didn’t want you to read their manga at all if you were going to pirate it.

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Hideaki Anno, The Ultimate Otaku

Published August 23, 2021

With the release of Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time and the announcement that the OVA series Gunbuster is getting a Blu-ray release in America with a brand new English dub, the name “Hideaki Anno” seems to be on everyone’s tongues recently. However, while I could certainly write an article on the filmography of Hideaki Anno (which I should probably do someday), I’ve become more interested in him lately due to his lifestyle, his passions and being, in my own words, the ultimate otaku.

I should probably first define what an otaku is. The term “Otaku” is basically the Japanese equivalent of the word “Nerd” and while the word can refer to a variety of interests in Japan, in the West the word is typically associated with enthusiasts of Japanese popular culture, specifically anime and manga. While the word is considered to be offensive in Japan, typically because it implies a lack of social skills, the word has been embraced by the Western fandom to identify themselves. However, even the most seemingly passionate of Western otaku pale in comparison to Hideaki Anno, the ultimate otaku.

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My Thoughts On The New Handheld Steam Deck

Published August 19, 2021

On the 15th of July, 2021, the Valve Corporation, the creator of Steam and many revered gaming franchises, announced that they were developing a handheld gaming device called the Steam Deck. Given the lacklustre announcement of the new Switch OLED, the internet grew excited at a new handheld gaming device that could compete with Nintendo as they’re the only major gaming company with handheld devices on offer. Given how exciting the Steam Deck might be for both PC gaming, of which I’m quite the fan, and handheld gaming, I thought it might be interesting to share my thoughts on the device.

I should probably first start by giving my thoughts on handheld gaming in general. As a child, I was quite the enthusiast of handheld gaming devices. One of my first gaming devices was a Game Boy Colour on which I enthusiastically played the first and second generation Pokémon games. The Game Boy Advance was probably the peak of my excitement for handheld gaming devices. Generation three of Pokémon was the generation that I spent the most time playing and I became enthusiastic about many other franchises such as Fire Emblem, handheld versions of the Final Fantasy games, Advance Wars etc. While I did pick up a Nintendo DS as well as a Sony PSP, I spent less time playing them than I did previous handhelds as my enthusiasm for PC gaming was on the rise. Once the Nintendo 3DS, Sony PS Vita and Nintendo Switch had been released, I had lost almost all interest in portable gaming and didn’t bother picking up any of these new consoles. I confess that when I first heard that the Nintendo Switch was going to be a hybrid system that involved both portable and home gaming, I assumed that it was just a gimmick and that the system would do poorly just like the Wii U did. Turns out that I was completely wrong on that account since the Nintendo Switch is now estimated to have sold around 89 million units and has proven that there is still a demand for portable gaming.

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An Overview of Tankobon And Other Interesting Manga Formats

Published August 16, 2021

I’ve spoken before about how manga is typically released within manga magazines in Japan. However, I have not spoken about (or if I have, only touched upon) how manga is released when a number of chapters are collected together and released in a single book. Considering how important these releases are for the medium of manga, both within Japan and without, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at an overview of tankobon and other formats.

Having already mentioned it, let’s take a look at tankobon and what they are. The most typical way for manga chapters to be collected into, tankobon are volumes of manga that typically collect 180-200 pages of a manga (although exceptions do exist) into a single book. These books are typically 11 cm by 17.5 cm and higher quality paper than what would be seen in a manga magazine. Most Western releases of manga are released in this format as well although it’s worth pointing out that the majority of Western tankobon are slightly bigger with dimensions of 13 cm by 19 cm.

A size comparison between volume 15 of the Japanese edition of Bakuman (left) and the volume 15 release of the Western edition of Bakuman (right).

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