Category: 2024

The First Anime Films Released In America

Published June 17, 2024

Anime along with Japanese popular culture have become increasingly more and more prominent in the modern West. This was exemplified recently in the US where Godzilla Minus One and The Boy and the Heron outperformed expectations and swept the box office. However, this hasn’t always been the case and it certainly wasn’t for the first several anime films that were released in America. Given how fascinating this topic is, I thought it worth taking a look at these anime films and what their reception was like.

To begin, it’s important to note that the three films that I’m about to discuss were all produced by Toei Animation whose ambition was to become the Disney of the East. Understandably, their ambition included international success, thinking that animated movies were more likely to succeed than live-action, and they eventually managed to secure the release of several of their films in America.

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Sony’s Stupid Decisions With Their PC Strategy Is Enraging Me

Published June 10, 2024

I’ve been talking about Sony and their PC releases for over four years now. What was once optimism has slowly decayed over the years into despair, bafflement and anger as Sony continues to make mistake after mistake. I thought this had peaked last year with Sony’s terrible PC port of the The Last of Us Part 1, their poor marketing for Returnal and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and their steadfast refusal to port the game that PC gamers really want from them, that being Bloodborne. However, Sony have somehow managed to top themselves with the debacle that erupted over the past month and, as of the writing of this article, have not fully rectified. Therefore, I thought it time to explain how Sony’s continually stupid decisions when it comes to their PC strategy is enraging me.

When it came to PC this year, Sony actually started off surprisingly strong. Their first major title to be released on PS5 and PC simultaneously, Helldivers 2, was released near the beginning of February and turned out to be one of the megahits of the year with Sony stating that it has become their fastest selling PlayStation title ever! With PC sales making up a majority, it was perhaps the clearest sign that Sony should take the PC market seriously and make significant changes to their strategy in order to both satisfy PC gamers and to become more profitable. Additionally, people were quite happy to learn that Ghost of Tsushima was being ported and, while it was nowhere near the megahit that Helldivers 2 was, Sony’s release of Horizon Forbidden West on PC proved quite successful.

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An Overview Of The Mangaka Arina Tanemura

Published June 3, 2024

I remember, many years ago at this point, going into a bookstore and looking at the manga that they had available there. Among the myriad of covers, one stood out to me in particular, that being the first volume of a series called “Sakura Hime: The Legend of Princess Sakura”. The art style of the main character immediately caught my attention and I immediately became curious about the author, that being Arina Tanemura, and what other series she’d done. I thought then that it may be interesting to provide an overview of Arina Tanemura, the manga she’s written as well as touching on her work outside of being a mangaka.

Arina Tanemura began drawing at the age of 5 and attempted to model her art on the shojo manga she read. However, others pointed out that, despite her efforts, her art was unique and different, something that I’d argue is a good thing. At the age of 18, she managed to release a one-shot chapter in a shojo magazine which was warmly received, paving the way for her first series, I.O.N, which was serialised in 1997 and, interestingly, received a sequel chapter 13 years later!

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A Few Examples Of Japanese Style Sitting

Published May 27, 2024

I was doing some research regarding the formal way of Japanese sitting but, much to my surprise, I found a few lists detailing different ways of sitting as well as the context and methods behind them. As you may imagine, I didn’t expect to find so much detail about something that I would consider to be as basic as the act of sitting down. Given how fascinating I found the topic, I thought I’d share a few examples of Japanese style sitting as well as some facts about them.

Let’s start off with what may be the most recognisable style and the reason why I was searching for information in the first place. Seiza, written with the kanji 正座 which means proper sitting, is used for formal situations and consists of kneeling down so that your knees and shins are on the floor while you rest your upper body weight on your heels. While this is expected in many situations, this method can inhibit blood flow and cause paresthesia. However, there have been arguments that seiza can improve your posture and strengthen your muscles. The fact that many Japanese households and buildings have tatami flooring also helps to limit potential damage and make sitting seiza easier.

An example of an anime character sitting seiza style.

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When Games Make Me Rethink Game Design

Published May 20, 2024

I would like to think that I’ve played more games than the average person. Therefore, it would make sense that I would gradually grow used to the way games within specific genres are designed so that I can easily expect what type of game I’m about to play. However, there are times when I come across a game whose game design catches me off-guard. Depending on the game, this can either be a good thing or a bad thing but, in the situations where it’s good, they can cause me to look at the individual elements within a game in a brand new way. Given that, I thought I might share some of the times where games have made me rethink game design and what those elements were.

I’m going to skip the early years when I was discovering video games for the first time as the key word in this article is “rethink”, something which requires a basic understanding before it can happen. I spent many years playing games with some of my fondest memories being when I first discovered JRPGs, a Christmas morning with a new console and game and meeting my best friend because I overheard her talking about a game I had played. However, I think the first time I ever had to reexamine how games were designed was when I played a game called Dark Souls.

A promo image for Dark Souls Remastered.

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A Quick Look At The Harvey Awards

Published May 13, 2024

The Harvey Awards are something that I can distinctly remember hearing about from time to time whenever a manga won an award there. I knew it was prestigious but I never thought about what the awards actually were. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a quick look at the Harvey Awards, a little bit about their history, the current categories and manga’s place at the awards.

The Harvey Awards were established in 1988 and are named after Harvey Kurtzman, one of the founders and editors of the magazine MAD along with a variety of other work. They were first held at Chicago Comicon and have gone through a variety of locations with their current being New York Comic Con. The Harvey Awards are presented for achievements in comic books and have covered a wide variety of categories such as Best New Series, Best Anthology and, what I would’ve known them for, Best American Edition of Foreign Material. However, these have since been reduced to six categories.

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Insanity Difficulty Made Me Appreciate The Gameplay Of The Mass Effect Trilogy

Published May 6, 2024

I recently picked up Mass Effect Legendary Edition, a rerelease of the Mass Effect trilogy, and decided to play through the three games, something I was excited to do since I’d never played the third game before. Upon glancing at the achievements, I noticed that there were achievements for completing the three games on its highest difficulty setting, Insanity. Since I’d have the option to switch difficulty midgame if I found it to be too challenging or unpleasant, I decided to give it a try and I’m glad I did as insanity difficulty made me appreciate the gameplay of the Mass Effect trilogy in a way that I didn’t before.

I should start by saying that I had played both Mass Effect 1 and 2 at their lowest difficulty in my youth, a practice that I wouldn’t shed until years later as well as playing the Soldier class which basically just meant that they’re a weapons expert. I was looking to change things up for this playthrough so, after some brief research, I settled on the Infiltrator class as they specialised in using a sniper rifle as well as some tech abilities. This decision was probably the right one for insanity difficulty as I’ll get onto in a bit.

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Anime That Saw Their First Release Outside Of Japan

Published April 29, 2024

When we think of anime releases, we typically refer to when it was first released in Japan. However, anime has become very popular internationally and it seems inevitable that some anime would end up having their first release outside of Japan. However, I want to make some clarifications before I dive into this topic. First, I’m not going to include premieres at film festivals as I want to focus on general releases instead and I’m not going to focus on anime that are based on Western properties and are made specifically for Western audiences. Having said all of that, let’s take a look at some examples of anime that saw their first release outside of Japan.

The first example comes from a franchise that I really enjoy, that being Lupin the Third, in the form of Lupin the Third: Part IV: The Italian Adventure. A coproduction between Italy and Japan, Lupin the Third Part IV began airing in Italy just over a month before its release in Japan. Interestingly, there were also two episodes which were released as OVAs in Japan but were aired on Italian television. As far as I can tell, this was the only Lupin TV series to air internationally before its release in Japan, understandably due to the copyright issues that were only solved a few years prior, but it’s fascinating nonetheless.

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My Thoughts On Rob Zombie’s Firefly Trilogy

Published April 22, 2024

It’s been a while since I wrote about horror on this blog and, so, I thought I’d come back to the topic by discussing a very interesting series of films by musician turned film director Rob Zombie. The Firefly trilogy, not to be confused with a popular one season TV series with the same name, is absolutely fascinating to me not just because of the films themselves but also the transitions in style from film to film. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to share some of my thoughts on Rob Zombie’s Firefly trilogy, what I think of each film and the trilogy as a whole.

Of course, we’re going to start by taking a look at the first film in the trilogy, House of 1000 Corpses. Originally filmed in 2000 but whose release was delayed until 2003 due to behind the scenes issues with the content, House of 1000 Corpses introduces us to the Firefly family who capture unsuspecting travelers and subject them to all sorts of torture, sadism and mutilation. House of 1000 Corpses was Rob Zombie’s directorial debut and it feels, from a technical perspective, easily the roughest out of the whole trilogy. It is also very tonally different from the other films with a much more over the top and goofy feel. That’s not to say that there isn’t good stuff in this film, the soundtrack is great, there’s some very interesting cinematography and the mixture of comedy and violence can be quite satisfying but it’s still what I’d call a mediocre experience.

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My Current Plans For Streaming Video Games

Published April 15, 2024

About a year ago, I released a blog post called “A Harmless Bit Of Self-Promotion” which covered much of the content that I’ve been producing as of late. However, besides a few things that I can’t talk about yet, something new that I’ve been trying lately is to stream myself playing games. Now that it’s been a couple of months, I thought now was as good a time as any to take a look at my current plans for streaming video games, how you can access the content I’ve already made and what you should expect in the future.

Let’s start, of course, with where and when you can find me streaming. I’m currently streaming games on Twitch every Sunday (or, if circumstances prevent me from doing so, Saturday) at around 2pm IST. I’m a variety streamer with the games I’m choosing to play being titles from my video game backlog with one caveat, I’m currently staying away from games with an excessively long playtime, as determined by HLTB, as I don’t want to spend too long playing a single game this early on as I think I can catch more people’s attention with a wider range of titles.

The three games I’ve streamed so far as of this article.

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