I’ve spoken before about ways that you can watch anime legally through streaming services with Netflix being one of those options. However, I think it’s also worth having a discussion about the impact that Netflix is having on the anime industry as well as some fascinating ways that their relationship has played out.
Try as I might, I can’t remember the first time that I heard the name “Clive Barker”. If I had to guess it was probably through Hellraiser but I can’t say this with any certainty. Nonetheless, his works have been truly spectacular and Clive Barker deserves to be more well-known as a horror legend. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting, as a horror fan, to take a look at the man himself, the media that he’s worked on and why I admire him so much.
Born in Liverpool in 1952, he notably witnessed the death of Léo Valentin, a famous Frenchman who died in 1956 in Liverpool after a skydiving stunt went wrong. As he grew up, he became involved in the theatre at Quarry Bank High School and, after studying English and Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, he co-founded a theatrical group called “The Dog Company” which would go on to produce several plays as well as bring in future collaborators such as Doug Bradley and Peter Atkins.
The new DLC for Cuphead, amusingly called “The Delicious Last Course“, is coming out and, considering how much I enjoyed the original game, I’m very excited. However, Cuphead has become a surprisingly large series with many aspects that I wasn’t even aware of prior to writing this article and, given my excitement for the DLC, I thought it would be interesting to provide an overview of this unusual franchise.
Of course, we have to start where it all began, the original game. Released on the 29th of September, 2017, and developed by Studio MDHR which is a company set up by brothers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, the game proved to be an instant critical and commercial success and has sold 6 million copies as of 2020. Cuphead is a run and gun game about Cuphead and Mugman who end up having to work for the Devil in order to pay back their debts. This consists of fighting various debtors to the Devil and getting their soul contracts while also doing some platforming levels as well. The game’s graphics resemble a 1930s cartoon and makes use of Jazz and Big Band music as well. I really enjoyed Cuphead when it came out originally in 2017 and enjoyed the challenge that it offered as well.
As someone who loves to collect physical media, as well as the fact that I live in Ireland and get most of my DVDs and Blu-rays from Britain, it’s a fact that I’m going to encounter the ratings given by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification). However, I’ve come across my share of frustration with regards to the BBFC and so I thought it worth sharing these frustrations by writing an article.
Considering that you’re only likely to encounter the BBFC in any major way by living in either the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland, I think I should begin by explaining who they are. As you can imagine from the name, they are the organisation that is responsible for watching and classifying all film and TV media in Britain. However, one of the more notable things about the BBFC in contrast to similar organisations in other countries is that the ratings provided by the BBFC are mandatory to be distributed. This, of course, has led to several aspects of the BBFC becoming frustrating to me.
It was recently announced that the upcoming Dragon Age game would be titled Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, a title that will be particularly interesting to fans familiar with Dragon Age lore. This news reminded me that, while I’ve touched on Dragon Age here and there, I haven’t shared my thoughts on the franchise and what I think about each individual entry. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to share my experience with the Dragon Age series as well as what I think about each of the main three games.
When Dragon Age: Origins was originally announced, I was incredibly excited. I had absolutely loved Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and I was eager to see how Bioware tackled a fantasy setting. It’s worth noting that I had little to no experience with Baldur’s Gate, the game series that Dragon Age: Origins acted as a spiritual successor to, but as soon as I got the chance to play it in November, 2009, I was instantly drawn into the world of Thedas, the world of the Dragon Age games.
As a fan of Osamu Tezuka, you can imagine that I was quite interested to hear that a comic remake of Dororo is being done as a South Korea-Japan coproduction. However, there was a term that I found surprising given that I had never heard of it before, “Vertical Comic”. As you might imagine, I was immediately intrigued and began to search for information relating to these vertical comics. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to share what I learned about the format of vertical scrolling comics and, amusingly, why I was unaware of it before.
When I was writing a recent article called “A Look At Early Japanese Animation“, I briefly mentioned animation cels and it occurred to me that there may be people who might be unfamiliar with what animation cels are since I’ve yet to write an article covering the topic. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what animation cels are, how they were used in the animation process and their surprising value to collectors.
First, it’s important to note that the term “Cel” is shorthand for celluloid and refers to the material that animation was drawn onto before the advent of digital animation. This material is made from cellulose, nitrogen-based chemical compounds and other additives to form a sheet of thin and flexible plastic. Drawings would be drawn on various cels and then these would be laid atop each other over a background to create the complete image. A light is placed behind these cels and a picture is then taken. By running these images together at a framerate, for instance 24 frames per second, you create the illusion of movement.
The more media that you consume from a particular country, the more and more likely that you will begin to spot references to more obscure aspects of their culture. I’ve seen this with Henshin Heroes and I’ve seen this with admiration for Western literature. Seeing that an Osamu Tezuka manga is being adapted into Kabuki, I thought it would be worth taking a look at Kabuki and why you should know about it.
Let’s start by explaining what Kabuki is. Kabuki is written as 歌舞伎 in Japanese with the characters meaning sing, dance and skill respectively. A form of Japanese theatre, actors sing and dance in stylised performances while wearing elaborate costumes and wearing heavy makeup.
I’ve spoken before about how I was excited about Sony games coming to PC but that was over two years ago! Since then, we have seen Sony begin to release their first-party games on PC such as Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone, God of War (2018) etc. and I’ve been eager to see how successful these have been and to try to figure out what sort of plans Sony has for PC. Recently, we got an incredible source of information regarding both how these previous releases have done and Sony’s plans for the future. Taking that into account, I thought I’d talk about the exciting potential of Sony’s PC push and what I’d like to see happen.
Let’s start with the new information that we’ve received. Sony recently held an investor meeting and one of the more notable aspects of this meeting were several slides they shared regarding the PC. If you take a look at the slide below, you’ll see that Sony has actually shared how much each game has sold on PC over the course of their lifetime. Horizon Zero Dawn, which was released on PC on the 7th of August, 2020, has sold almost 2.4 million copies on PC and has grossed $60 million. Days Gone was released on the 18th of May, 2021, and has sold about 850,000 units, grossing $22.7 million. Finally, God of War, only just released this year on the 14th of January, has already managed to outsell Days Gone by nearly reaching 1 million sales and grossing $26.2 million. While the sales figures are very much what I expected, I do confess to being quite surprised by these revenue figures, which I want to emphasise are still very successful, which seem lower than I expected, probably due to regional pricing.
The history of any medium is always fascinating and anime certainly isn’t any different. Whenever I’ve become passionate about a subject such as anime, manga, video games etc., I always want to take a look at some of the earlier works in order to see how the medium has developed. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at early Japanese animation and the impact that it had.
The very first piece of Japanese animation is generally considered to be Katsudo Shashin. Estimated to have been developed around 1907, the short depicts a school boy writing out Katsudo Shashin. The short is a mere 50 frames and, since it’s running at 18 frames per second, lasts for about three seconds. There is some contention as to whether Katsudo Shashin is truly the first piece of Japanese animation but it is certainly the oldest that we’re aware of.
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