Category: 2022

Why I Hate The Disney Death Trope In Media

Published April 28, 2022

I recently wrote several articles where I ranked the 58 Disney Animated Canon films that I had seen. However, as much as I enjoy Disney animated films, I’ve always been frustrated by a particular trope that developed over the course of their films, Disney Death. Considering how I feel about this particular trope, as well as how I see it in other media as well, I thought it would be interesting to discuss my reasons for why I hate Disney Death.

I should start by defining what the Disney Death trope is. Disney Death refers to any situation where a character seemingly dies near the end of the media, only to reveal at the end that they are, in fact, alive. The original purpose of this trope seems pretty obvious, to shock the audience and raise the stakes for the climax without actually killing the character and upsetting the audience. I could understand how, with sharp writing and infrequent use, this trope could prove to be effective but, all too often, it’s predictable and poorly executed.

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The Fascinating Video Game Genre Of Tower Defense

Published April 25, 2022

I recently supported the Stand with Ukraine bundle over on Humble Bundle and perused the list of games to see which ones I should download and play. As I looked, I came across a game called Go Home Dinosaurs! which was listed as a tower defense. It had been a while since I last dabbled in this genre so I decided to give it a go and, despite some rough edges, I found myself quite enjoying it. Since I’ve been reminded of this fascinating video game genre, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what tower defense games are, their history and a few that I would recommend.

First off, a tower defense game is where hordes of enemies travel along a path, either predetermined or developed by the player over the course of the match, by placing defenses on or beside the path. The player has a variety of defenses with some typical examples being high damage to a single target, dealing lower damage but to a group of enemies, doing tiny damage but slowing the enemy down etc. The other aspect you’ll have to keep track of is your resources which limit the towers you can place. There’s usually a way to build up resources but it tends to be slow and you must make some tough decisions on whether to build cheap defenses to hold off the early waves or try to build the more expensive ones later in the match at the cost of a weaker early defense.

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Some Of The First Manga That I Ever Read

Published April 21, 2022

I recently wrote an article called “Some Of The First Anime That I Ever Watched” and I thought it would also be quite interesting to take a look at some of the first manga that I ever read, some of which may be quite obvious and some of which may be quite unusual.

Interestingly, the first manga that I ever read was an OEL manga. Around the time, I was really into World of Warcraft and was eager to consume anything Warcraft related. I was in Waterstones and I remember coming across a book called “Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy – Shadows of Ice”. The book was an OEL manga produced by Tokyopop and I didn’t realise that Shadows of Ice was the second volume in the trilogy. Still, I remember enjoying it and it would only be later on, when I learned what manga was, that I would realise that I had an OEL manga already.

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Some Of The First Anime That I Ever Watched

Published April 18, 2022

I feel like when you ask someone of my generation “what’s the first anime series you ended up watching?”, you’re basically asking two different questions, “What was the first anime that you watched” and “What was the first anime that you saw when you knew it was anime”. Taking those two questions into account, I thought it might be quite interesting to answer them to the best of my ability.

First, I will answer “What was the first anime that you watched” and, if I had to guess since my memory at the time was quite nebulous, I would guess that it was Pokémon. Just like so many my age, I was part of the Pokémania that swept the world in the late 90s/early 00s and, while I’m not 100% certain since I was quite young at the time, I’m fairly sure that I first saw the anime and later picked up a Game Boy with Pokémon Red.

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My Ranking Of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Franchise

Published April 14, 2022

Having recently covered the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise in my “An Overview Of The Weird Texas Chainsaw Massacre Franchise“, I’ve since managed to watch each and every film in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series. Considering how integral the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was for my love of horror films, I thought it would be interesting to do a ranking of all of the films in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise and to explain my thoughts and opinions on each entry.

9. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

The poster for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.

I’m sure it’ll be pretty controversial to say that the 2006 film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, the prequel to the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, is the worst Texas Chainsaw Massacre film but I think it commits the gravest sin that any piece of entertainment can commit, it’s boring. If you think about it hard enough with relation to the 2003 movie, you will quickly realise how the film is going to end, taking away any tension that The Beginning might’ve been able to muster in the first place. Besides that, the movie provides us little in the way of meaningful answers to questions we might’ve had after watching the remake, instead ticking off a list of pointless small details from the 2003 film. Additionally, having heard that this film was the goriest Texas Chainsaw film, I was very disappointed to find no where near the level of gore that I was hoping to see (I watched the uncut version BTW).

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Why I’m Excited About The Rise Of Linux Gaming

Published April 11, 2022

It’s no secret that I’m an avid PC gamer. I personally consider the PC platform to be the best when it comes to gaming but I’ve always been a little concerned when it comes to how much power Microsoft has over the PC gaming market. As of the writing of this article, the Windows operating system continues to dominate PC gaming with the Steam Hardware & Software Survey for February 2022 stating that over 96% of PCs running Steam use Windows OS. This is unbelievably dominant and puts a scary amount of power in Microsoft’s hands. However, there are signs that Linux could become a more viable gaming operating system in the future and I thought I’d share some of the reasons why I’m excited about the rise of Linux gaming.

Linux has always struggled as a gaming OS for one very simple reason, there aren’t that many Linux gamers in the first place. There are costs associated with porting a game to Linux and the small market share of Linux gamers typically results in most games choosing to port to Windows only. This has created a problematic chicken and egg dilemma where Linux ports are not created due to the small market and people choose Windows over Linux because of the much wider variety of games. However, it seems this limitation may soon be a thing of the past.

The OS market share according to the February 2022 Steam Hardware & Software Survey.

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The Interesting Difference Between A Mangaka And A Gensakusha

Published April 7, 2022

If you’re familiar with the manga industry, you’ve probably come across the term “Mangaka” plenty of times. However, it’s quite possible that you may have missed the term “Gensakusha” which is also worth knowing. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the difference between a mangaka and a gensakusha and why you should know the difference.

First, let’s define each role. A mangaka, the term people are more likely to be familiar with, is written 漫画家 in Japanese with 漫画 referring to manga while one of the many definitions of 家 refers to specialist. The role of the mangaka is to primarily draw the artwork of the manga itself. On the other hand, a gensakusha is written 原作者 in Japanese with the characters meaning original, create and person respectively. The role of the gensakusha is to write and compose the story, characters and dialogue of the manga. It’s also worth noting that the gensakusha provides a basic, often crudely drawn, storyboard to act as a guide for the mangaka.

The cover of the Dark Horse Omnibus edition of Lone Wolf and Cub. — Observe how two names appear on the cover of Lone Wolf & Cub, Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima.

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The Strange Practise Of Fifteening In Anime Releases And More

Published April 4, 2022

I was recently watching the original 1988 Appleseed film with some people and even though we were watching it in Japanese, since it had dubtitles, we noticed an ungodly amount of swearing with it culminating in the villain screaming “fucking cocksuckers” as his vehicle was destroyed. This quite shocked the people I was with so I had to explain to them both the concept of dubtitles and fifteening. This made me realise that many people these days may be unfamiliar with the concept of fifteening and, given how it isn’t exclusive to anime, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the strange practise of fifteening in anime releases and more.

I should first define what fifteening is. Fifteening is a term that was developed to refer to Manga Entertainment’s practise of producing English dubs with added swear words in order to artificially increase the BBFC age rating of the product they were selling, usually to a 15. This was because they decided that higher age ratings would be more appealing to their audience and they needed to make adjustments to achieve this.

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Is The Epic Games Store A Viable Competitor To Steam In 2022?

Published March 31, 2022

It’s been well over a year since I last took a look at the performance of the Epic Games Store and a surprising amount of information has come out since then. Literally, mere months after I wrote that piece, the Epic Games v. Apple trial began and a surprising amount of incredible information regarding both the Epic Games Store and the games industry itself was leaked within days. I was tempted to write a new piece almost as soon as all this information came to the forefront but decided to hold off since I believed that it was too soon since I last spoke of the Epic Games Store. Now, in 2022, we’ve received our annual year in review from the Epic Games Store and I thought it might be interesting to take a look at all of this information and try to answer the question on whether the Epic Games Store is a viable competitor to Steam.

Before we get to the really juicy information that was released by the Epic Games v. Apple trial, I want to take a look at the stats that Epic Games provided themselves in their “2021 Year in Review“. As you can see in the charts below, the Epic Games Store has seen growth overall from 2020 to 2021. They’ve managed to acquire another 34 million customers, increase their MAU by 6 million, raise the amount spent on the store by $140 million with third-party games contributing $35 million of that increase. That’s not to mention the continued growth of their social media which, while not anywhere near as dramatic as in 2020, has continued to attract new followers.

The three info charts provided by Epic Games for their Epic Games Store from 2019 to 2021

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The Underappreciated Manga Technique Of Mihiraki

Published March 28, 2022

I think it’s easy for a lot of people to look at manga and to not realise how complicated and difficult it is to produce. From the black and white artwork to the way the panels are structured, there is so much to appreciate when it comes to manga and I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what I consider to be quite an underappreciated manga technique, mihiraki.

If you’ve read even a cursory amount of manga, it’s quite likely that you’ve come across mihiraki without even realising it. The most basic definition of mihiraki, 見開き in Japanese, is literally “two pages opposite each other“. That by itself can be a little confusing but, with regards to manga, it refers to manga artwork that is spread across two pages. This can result in two pages depicting a single panel or it can simply display a panel across two pages with other panels around it.

An example of a double page mihiraki from Akira.

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