Tag: cyberpunk

TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children is a Masterpiece I May Never Finish

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Gaming

I have pretty much narrowed down the games I prefer to play (read as: the only games I am even remotely good at). However, sometimes, my dumb brain decides to goof. For whatever reason, when I stumbled upon TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children on Steam, I was captivated. Being a strategy RPG, it was completely unexplored territory for me. However, with a high difficulty, insane depth, EIGHT HUNDRED ABILITIES TO LEARN, and a sprawling story that’s on par with Fire Emblem: Three Houses in scope, jumping into this was like driving a racecar without a driver’s license. This is gonna get… uuuuuugly… 

TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children is set in Valhalla, a place where crime is rampant. Fortunately, there are titular Troubleshooters to help out. This story stars an upstart named Albus Bernstein… among MANY others.

The plot of TROUBLESHOOTER is a lot, but it’s a good lot. It’s a traditional episodic cyberpunk, but with classic anime tropes. As you do missions, you learn more about the world and its denizens. They put a LOT of thought into the game, with detailed descriptions of pretty much everything, and loads of environmental details that really make Valhalla appear to be a real city. Being well over a hundred hours long, expect it to really ease you in before sh** hits the fan. Unfortunately… I didn’t exactly enjoy the story. For how much worldbuilding there is, what happens is pretty simple. You basically fight any gang that forms in Valhalla, along with the mainstay antagonists: the Spoonist Cult, and some guy named Carter. All this serves as stepping stones, so Albus’ group can reach Mythril Rank, and he can view classified documents about the classic “incident from ten years ago that everyone talks about all the time but never gives you any actual context until a hundred hours later” trope. It doesn’t help that, with my schedule, I didn’t exactly get to marathon it; that means forgetting what was going on in the first place.

Of course, the biggest caveat with something like this is the fact that the devs are a Korean indie team. Any small outfit that has to translate any foreign dialogue is destined to mess up… a lot. Many Steam reviews, naturally, criticized the writing, but to be honest, it’s not the worst. Some descriptions can sound vague, but a lot of the writing itself is perfectly understandable, even if it lacks poeticness. The game has some pretty good voice acting for what it is, although it only comes up during pure gameplay. It’s actually my first time ever hearing Korean (since I don’t listen to K-Pop), and boy, it really sounds similar to Japanese to the untrained ear. I can just barely tell it’s a different language. 

The characters, however, ended up being WAY better than I expected. Albus is a generic, reckless dingus, and is the weakest link in the game. Everyone else is actually pretty damn awesome, especially considering the translation. They’re pretty basic and trope-y, but I still liked them a lot. 

Where do I even start with this gameplay? It’s so deep it’s not even funny. Actually, I should start with an appreciation of the game’s U.I. It’s complex, sure, but it’s actually really well put together. There are shortcuts to other menus in just the right places when you’re trying to create builds or look up info on enemies and materials. Hovering over a character’s stats will show you the factors influencing their amount (i.e. equipment, skills, etc.). In battle, hovering over a move will show you the exact calculations, and of course, it shows you a preview of non-crit and non-block damage to the enemy’s health bar when targeting. Also, hovering over the different probabilities associated with your attack while targeting (i.e. hit chance, crit chance, damage, etc.) will also show the calculations for that as well; it shows the exact parameters that enemy armor, skills, status, and environment influence over the attack’s result. It also gives relevant descriptions of status effects as needed; you don’t have to look up a giant glossary of effects if you don’t remember what does what. 

As is tradition with strategy RPGs, you have your party, equipment, all that jazz. TROUBLESHOOTER, however, has Masteries. These are the aforementioned eight hundred abilities that can be learned. Most of these are dropped at random by enemies, and can be stockpiled like items. Masteries can be equipped to available slots for their desired effect, and consumed in research to acquire new ones. Mastery Sets come into play when the right Masteries are equipped. The game is kind enough to show you an indicator when you’re on the right track with obtaining a Set. Unfortunately, there is an annoying mechanic where each category of Mastery slots (Basic, Attack, etc.) have their own capacities that limit the value of which Masteries can be equipped AS WELL as there being a limited number of slots for Masteries to be equipped to. It doesn’t matter how many Training Points you actually have in order to equip Masteries with higher costs; if the total value of the Masteries exceeds that property limit in the category, you can’t do it. There are Masteries to increase those capacities, but they’re very rare and specific, and of course, need to sacrifice a slot in another category to be equipped. I think that system is really arbitrary and really hinders your ability to min-max your party.

Equipment is also VERY involved. You can obtain equipment in battle, and they come in various color-coded rarities, as well as an Unidentified or Identified status. Identified weapons will have one-to-four stars on their thumbnail, and have a title of some sort after their name; they are objectively better than Unidentified equipment. These have lower stats and no special effects, but you can pay someone to Identify them. The results are random, which makes for big dopamine when you get good results. 

Materials can be earned from battle, and used as ingredients for various items at the workbench. Even if you don’t get what you need, large amounts of materials can be crafted into the next tier of that same type of item. Conversely, rarer items can be dismantled into common ones. You can also outright buy materials and weapons, but doing this is quite expensive.

However, money ends up being VERY easy to accumulate and manage. Ordering food to maintain motivation, paying your landlord as well as your party members is pretty cheap. As long as you don’t splurge on the rare materials and weapons sold at the shops, you’re good. The only thing I buy a lot of are consumables. When equipping them, it—at a glance—looks like an equippable that comes with X number of charges per battle. In fact, it’s not. It pulls from your stock of that item, so you’ll need a lot of them if you plan to use them a lot. Many of them, such as grenades, are extremely helpful when used in the right spot, and of course, you’ll need potions, especially when you haven’t recruited the dedicated healer. Also, you really don’t need to buy equipment at all. You get SO MANY equipment drops naturally in battle, to the point where selling them is your main source of dough. You also don’t need to worry about identifying any of them, except for maybe a red-rarity item dropped by bosses, which can be identified into something even better. Furthermore, the powerful purple-rarity equipment you can get from sidequests and crafting can ALSO be identified for relatively cheap, and these—with their true potential unlocked—will be your best equipment in the long term. 

Combat is also as convoluted as you can expect. You have your movement, attacks, Vigor gauge, SP gauge, the environment, weather, time of day, enemy units, people to rescue, buffs, debuffs… yeah it’s a lot. Too much for me to describe in this post. Fortunately, while some reviewers criticize the slow start of the game, it does do a good job to ease you in if you’re a virgin of the genre. Scratch that, it does an exceptional job. Missions get more complex in the right way to get you in the game’s groove without throwing you at the wolves. A pro-tip from me is to not undervalue any back-up soldiers you get. They’re pretty basic, but rely on strength in numbers. Their items are really handy (especially when later ones have the Mastery that makes using items not consume their turn), and you can afford to lose them if absolutely necessary.

Oh, by the way, TROUBLESHOOTER is absurdly hard. Even with powerful builds consisting of three-plus Mastery sets across the entire team, really good equipment, and being at least eight levels over the recommendation for a given mission, I’ve gotten uncomfortably close to the jaws of death numerous times. On NORMAL difficulty. I don’t feel like I’m playing the game wrong, it’s just… hard. In fact, I saw one forum post say that they’ve had their characters die over two hundred times in total. I even read that the postgame DLC is borderline impossible. Cover is INSANELY valuable, because anyone not in it basically dies. Even with good equipment, an unlucky crit can one-shot one of our intrepid heroes from full health, especially if it’s from a boss, or a sniper unit. Bosses are generally a good chunk of your grievances, but there are some specific enemy units who are so bad, they are worse than a lot of the bosses. 

One aspect that I feel like should be divisive to strategy-RPG veterans is the Sight mechanic. In any other game of this kind I’ve seen, you get to see and evaluate the entire field, and plan accordingly. Maybe there’ll be an odd stage with fog where you can’t see enemies until it’s too late, and those levels generally suck. Well, with Sight, TROUBLESHOOTER is that fog level all the time. While this is a stat that can be increased, and abilities to reveal enemies in unexplored territory, it is consistently your biggest enemy. You don’t know what an enemy unit is doing until you’re close enough. There are SO MANY times where I sent one person to fight a single enemy unit, when it turned out that there were actually eight of them just beyond my Sight. This kind of misinformation makes missions particularly difficult your first time through; it’s kind of like old-school videogame difficulty, which relied on memorization more than ability to problem solve and adapt, and is generally considered bad game design by today’s standards. While taking time and not splitting up your heroes can be encouraged, there are some more urgent stages where you need to save people or defend a zone (or because the map is huge and it can take forever to complete some missions, although the game autosaves after every turn which is nice). Furthermore, you don’t get to look at enemy units in detail like in other strategy-RPGs, which means even more memorization, and—if it’s your first time facing an enemy unit—absolute terror from not knowing the best strategy to fight them. There is a database for enemies in the company’s office, but by the time you can see all the enemies’ abilities, you’ll already have fought them several times.

Speaking of the office, that’s where your center of operations is. Here, you can do all your crafting and stuff. You must also keep your reputation in mind in different districts. District jurisdiction is vital, because it’s how you get paid. You get the starting district as a free-bee, but you’ll need to satisfy various prerequisites (including money), to apply for jurisdiction and reap the unique benefits of each area. You can also cancel jurisdiction if you hate earning money. Unfortunately, this mechanic is extremely strange and inconsistent. Not losing cases isn’t enough; you need to keep winning cases in the designated district to maintain reputation, but sometimes there’s only one or two missions there—and well—nothing you actually need to do there (at least I think that’s how it works). There are also times where you satisfy the prerequisites to apply for jurisdiction, but your company will arbitrarily not want said jurisdiction. Some districts want you to have a variety of case experiences, which is annoying since 9/10 levels are simple arrest missions. I ended up looking this up on the Steam forums, and it turns out that you only get as many jurisdictions as you have Troubleshooters, and apparently, not all of your party members are considered Troubleshooters in a business sense. In actuality, you only get to have four by the end of the game. You also lose reputation for NOT doing missions in given areas, though this can be helped somewhat by certain Jurisdiction policies that increase the reputation of multiple districts at once. However, it doesn’t take long for your salary to end up being a pretty paltry sum; like I said before, selling unneeded equipment can give you the same amount and then some.

Mission control is where you set out to defend the peace. Story missions are self explanatory enough, but take note of Ordinary and Violent Missions. These are optional filler scenarios that are infinitely replayable, and this is where most of your grinding will take place if you either get stonewalled or want to undertake the daunting task of completion. After a certain point, story missions can be replayed infinitely without repercussions. This adds variety to the completionist grind, and you can skip cutscenes. 

There are also TONS of sidequests, a lot of which are either secondary objectives in existing missions or their own thing. The immediate problem with them is that the first quest, which happens to be the prerequisite to all the others, is uncharacteristically hard if you do it at the earliest opportunity; it’s tougher than some of the quests that come up after-the-fact. A lot of them are a pain, though. From having to prevent large groups of mobile, highly evasive enemies from escaping the level, to having to find a specific enemy unit who isn’t marked on the map… it’s a thing. However, they are well worth doing no matter what; you get REALLY good rewards, and it’s the only way that your company earns brownie points toward its reputation.

With a game this long and chock full of content, it’d be tough to find time to play it in this day and age. As addictive as it is, it is NOT good to marathon; you might as well go slow and steady. In fact, I have yet to finish it even as you read this post. A hundred hours in at the time of publishing and I’m not even CLOSE to done. I just really wanted to get a review out for this underrated gem, and there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to complete it. I’m at the fifth of what appears to be seven or eight chapters, and that’s EXCLUDING the two post-game DLC stories!

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Current (Possibly Final) Verdict: 9.65/10

TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children is a true testament to the capability of indie game developers… and it’s only part one of a planned series. If you can somehow find the time (and the computer powerful enough) to sink your life into this one, then I highly advise giving it a whirl. Meanwhile, I gotta finish this thing myself… boy, One Piece will probably be done before that happens.

Neptune Frost: Bless the Hackers Down in Africa

by macksamson, posted in Miscellaneous

I have sworn off live action movies for a number of reasons, well really just one reason: the mainstream. In my experience as a consumer, you do not get aggressively bludgeoned nor pressured into any media more than live action movies. It feels like these movies—specifically ones of American origin—are given more clout than anything else, and if you don’t fill up that laundry list of films that come out faster than what you can possibly keep up with, you risk being alienated (for the record I only watch three theatrical releases a year at most just by following Disney alone). 

However, there is a whole other side to movies that goes beyond Hollywood. There are markets all over the world and in the underground. One such underground movie is an avant-garde little fella I happened upon on Kanopy… and you already know what it’s called since that’s in the title of the post. Neptune Frost is a relatively recent live action movie that actually looked good, and this is me we’re talking about. Eff it, I might as well!

Normally, I’d start the next passage with “In [insert title here]”. However, I did refer to Neptune Frost as an “avant-garde little fella” before. Ergo, this is not a movie where I can do that. Nothing in it makes sense, so it’s natural to write a review that makes no sense!

Anyway, the first thing to compliment is how it’s visually presented… for once. Like, these actors are wearing actual costumes. Use of CG is relatively light. Furthermore, the costumes are phenomenal. I’ve never been to Africa, but I’ve seen authentic African art at Disney, so I can tell how good of a job they did integrating that fashion statement with wires, circuit boards, and whatnot to adorn the main protagonists. I didn’t think “on location sets” (it was filmed in scenic Rwanda) and “costumes” existed anymore, so it was a welcome sight to see them in this century. 

Additionally, this is a musical. Traditional African chants mingle dissonantly with darkwave, EDM, industrial, and all sorts of electronic music to make some strange and gripping numbers. These songs are, naturally, where Neptune Frost is at its finest. The way they filmed and edited these sequences were really good; going all-in on weirdness without overwhelming you with excessive jump cuts and whatever you call that shaking thing they do in modern movies these days. 

However, that’s where the positives end… maybe? Well, the plot of the movie is a mixed bag. The basic idea is that a man named Matalusa(?) ends up joining a group of cyberpunked-out abolitionists who go against the status quo, and a lanky person named Neptune eventually follows suit. The structure, for the most part, is experiencing how crappy the world is, and then getting to see the far better pocket of space occupied by the cool kids on the block.

It seems straightforward, but it isn’t. Or is it? Neptune Frost is packed with strange edits and cutaways that scratch the avant-garde itch mentioned twice already. It’s engaging, but leaves you wondering what’s even going on. The content on screen often switches from rural Africa to a neon fever dream in an instant. 

Conversely, it gets more and more straightforward the further in you get. The takeaway of the movie will be blatantly told instead of shown, specifically in later musical numbers. It’s one of those plots that’s more confusing on the surface than when looked at with scrutiny. 

And… well… look. Okay, this technically counts as spoiler territory, but it’s basically telegraphed by the official product description telling you that this all-Black population is slaving away in a mine at the beginning of the movie. This is yet another one of the thousands of allegories to all the bad -isms in the world, that reviewers will be like “Hey, that’s an allegory to this and that!”, but then they just go back to their lives the next day and nothing changes. I admit I’m probably going to go back to my normal life as well. Look… As someone who worries about civil rights issues to the point of being prone to anxiety attacks daily, I must say that—as a reviewer—that Neptune Frost is a heap of often-used allegories with a novel paint job. The dialogue ranges from esoteric and abstract, to a guy saying “F*** Mr. Google”. It’s unremarkable yet remarkable at the same time. 

Originally, this paragraph was about me wanting to call Neptune Frost pretentious but then me denying that very claim. Well, just because it’s not made by Hollywood doesn’t give it an excuse. It is quite literally a textbook example of a pretentious movie: it blatantly telegraphs allegories that the masses generally already know, but through an abstract lens that feigns intellectualness. Take that lens away and it’s just The Hate U Give clone number forty thousand. It’s almost too on the nose, like how they reference White supremacy when—as far as we know—the Authority who torments them are as Black as they are. Its creator—Saul Williams—goes through all the trouble to fly to Africa and convince locals to stick wires up their noses… for something this lacking in originality?

For the sake of thoroughness, I suppose I should discuss the characters, despite them always feeling more like plot devices as a consequence of the feature film format. The actors, for the most part, are quite talented. However, the roles they play are underwhelming outside of the top-billed characters. It all revolves around Mata and Neptune, with the latter basically being the only one capable of doing anything in the movie. As pointed out in the official product description, she is intersexual, which—according to the Internet—means having an unconventional combination of reproductive organs. From various context clues, it seems that Neptune has both boobies and “the boys”. However, this doesn’t seem to be pertinent to the plot whatsoever. Neptune literally wanders in and—through a seemingly unexplained connection to Mata—is able to hijack the Internet. That’s… basically the gist of her character arc. She can also sometimes possess a bird? 

Before getting to the final score, I must stress that I am not really a movie expert. This is my first live action film since Mary Poppins Returns. I have no clue what any shot is supposed to invoke, or why they do this edit or that cut. All this has been speaking from the gut. If you want a more in-depth review, there’s probably one somewhere else on the Internet. 

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Final Verdict: 8.5/10

Neptune Frost—regardless of how smart it is or isn’t—at least taught me one thing: that even in my least favorite entertainment medium, there are still hidden treasures that exist beyond the mainstream. Hollywood churns out its endless cycle of big productions, while elsewhere, independent films come out in droves, only achieving underground success at best. That’s where movies like Neptune Frost exist; in that unpredictable territory meant for the adventurous. It’s by no means a masterpiece, but I can at least respect it from an artistic standpoint… if I give it a MASSIVE benefit of the doubt. If you really want to see it… just keep in mind that subtitles are only in English (the actors speak in Kinyarwanda and other African tongues for the most part).

Battle Dragons: City of Thieves is basically a Fusion of How to Train Your Dragon and Blade Runner

by macksamson, posted in Children's Novels, Western Media

I’ve known about Alex London’s Battle Dragons franchise since it was new. However, because of the ruthless march of time, I’ve only just gotten around to checking it out. I mean, it’s a cyberpunk with dragons. I know I’ve been disappointed before, but something like this—knock on wood—can’t possibly be crap! Well, let’s FINALLY read the first installment, City of Thieves, and confirm my wild claim. Hopefully.

In City of Thieves, a boy named Abel stays up late to watch the custodial dragons burn some trash. Instead, he sees his older sister parkour her way into his room, where she subsequently gives him a mysterious address and a secret to keep. Apparently, she’s a dragon thief, wanted by gangs and the secret police. Better yet, when Abel checks out this address, he finds—surprise, surprise—a rare dragon, smack dab in the middle of Thunder Wings territory. He is now forced to become its rider and fight illegal battles for the Thunder Wings.

Let’s address the elephant, or rather, dragon in the room: the worldbuilding in this series is actually kind of awesome. I’ve seen so many cases where a cool idea falls flat, and thankfully, this isn’t one of those times. Dragons are everything in the city of Drakopolis, including in the aforementioned illegal battles. Also, like in any cyberpunk works, gangs like the aforementioned Thunder Wings run the city. They aren’t even subtle about it; people in public jobs are openly showing their gangster imagery. Even Abel’s teacher is in a gang!

However, I don’t know what is with American literature in particular, or maybe it’s seriously bad luck on my part, but… well… London’s execution is—surprise, surprise—as aggressively safe as it could possibly be. City of Thieves has a mind-numbingly simple plot, and next to no battles, despite the series’ title. This sucks, since the worldbuilding is so well thought out.

I suppose the “risk” comes with some of the twists that come up. However, can you even call them twists? The story is framed to make you think everyone is a criminal, so when these twists happen, it feels more ridiculous than a case of “Wow! Moral ambiguity!” You might as well throw in one of Team Rocket’s famous disguises while you’re at it.

The story would’ve likely been better if Abel wasn’t the main character. He simply isn’t ABEL to do much of anything, and yet he’s the chosen one of the dragon Lina stole, explained simply as “it loves her so much that it loves her blood relative too.” I was spoiled when looking the book up on Goodreads that Abel has AD-HD (since Goodreaders cannot shut up about representation these days), which is something that is not overtly mentioned in the story. I don’t really know how much that justifies his stupid actions, but I do know that a kid with AD-HD once saved the Greek gods, so… it’s only so much of an excuse. Honestly, what really set me off about him above all else is that he never gets that everyone is a criminal.

This includes his best friend, Roa. In the first of many telegraphed betrayals, Roa reveals themself as a Thunder Wings member. However, it really doesn’t mean crap in the long run. They are still smart, supportive, and a much more capable human being than Abel. The aforementioned gangster teacher, Ally, is probably one of the best characters, but she doesn’t get enough screentime. Even Abel’s mom gets to show that she’s a better character than he is. His older brother, Silas the police officer, is… kind of unremarkable. He’s a one-dimensional stuck-up older sibling, and there’s a plot twist with him that’s so obvious that I legitimately thought it was something that had been established in the opening chapter. 

To be honest, Lina should’ve been the main protagonist. She’s cool, knows parkour, and gets to see so much more of the criminal underworld that readers probably want to see than Abel. London could’ve taken some real risks with her, since she would’ve made a great anti-hero. 

I sure bashed City of Thieves a lot, but it isn’t bad. It’s just, like a lot of American novels I’ve read, safe. The writing is good; it describes stuff well enough, there’s great humor, and the few battles that happen (all two of them) get pretty intense. The book is just not cyberpunk-y enough.

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Final Verdict: 8.5/10

The first book of Battle Dragons is better than I expected, but still not particularly amazing. I’ll probably read the sequel, since the books are short, and light novels eat wallets for breakfast. At least it’s not as pretentious as other cyberpunks. That’s something, right?

The Genesis Wars: It’s More Anime Than Its Predecessor, Therefore It’s Better

by macksamson, posted in Western Media, YA Novels

Holy crap… I forgot that YA novels don’t always have social undertones. Well, technically, Akemi Dawn Bowman’s The Infinity Courts asked questions about the self and smartphone A.I., but since—like many cyberpunks—it comes off as pretentious and ham-fisted, the book ended up being a perfect mindless romp. Now, we have its sequel: The Genesis Wars. Let’s hope Nami actually lives up to the amazing One Piece character she’s named after!

When we last left our intrepid hero, Nami Miyamoto was betrayed and her friends were captured. Now she’s hanging out with a secret collective of different Clans (with a capital C) of warriors who have been hiding from the Residents. As you can expect, seventy-five percent don’t want to fight back because it’s too wisky-woo-woo. As such, she trains up to potentially go and save her old friends on her own. 

The Genesis Wars starts off kind of… badly. We are thrown right into her life in the Clans almost a year after she initially found them, because timeskips are fun. There are MANY characters casually introduced as if we’ve known them since the first book, and you have to adjust to these new faces on the fly. Seriously… is it just me or does this happen a LOT in sequels?

This seems like the perfect set-up for a boring sequel where Nami complains about them not doing anything, and we spend eighty percent of the book complaining that nothing happens. Fortunately, that’s not the case. Before long, Nami packs her bags and leaves the Clans behind, which honestly, makes the whole thing seem like padding in hindsight (at least you don’t have to worry about picturing most of the Clan people). In any case, she goes off to War, which is the kingdom of Prince Ettore that is basically every YA dystopian world all rolled into one.

It’s a nasty place, but for the story, it really takes off. Nami finds a group of rebellious humans camping around in War, and unlike the schmucks at the Colony and Clans, these people are actually DOING SOMETHING. Thanks to this, The Genesis Wars has actual wars in it, especially in a place called WAR. There is no end to anime-like, adrenaline-pumping action sequences once the ball gets rolling.

Naturally, the cast improves as well. Nami gets… better-ish. She’s still kind of whiny, but she’s much stronger. She can really pull her weight in Infinity, and most importantly, she looks awesome while doing it. Also, Nami gets a familiar whom she can telepathically control at will. That’s VERY anime, which is always good for YA novels.

We meet many new faces in War, the edgiest of whom is Ozias, a Clan turncoat who wanted to fight the Residents. Like many of the rebels, he is very proactive. Of course, he has some semblance of moral ambiguity so readers can be asked the classic question of “Are the [insert antagonistic entity here] or humans the real monsters?”

Oh, right, there’s Prince Caelan, and he’s still an enigma. We had no idea what his motives were back in The Infinity Courts, and we still don’t know them now. At least there’s a scene where he’s topless. That alone EASILY bumps up the score of the book by at least one point.

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Final Verdict: 9.65/10

The Genesis Wars is a rare sequel that’s better than the previous book. There’s more action and intrigue than before. Let’s hope beyond all reason that the forthcoming third—and presumably final book—will be great. If so, then this might become one of my favorite YA series of all time.

Belle: Modern Fairytale Tropes Meet Internet Allegories

by macksamson, posted in Anime Movies, Miscellaneous

How long has it been since I saw an anime movie in theaters?! Oh right, 2021… Completely forgot about Earwig and the Witch (for good reason). More importantly, however, how long has it been since I saw a Mamoru Hosoda movie?! I actually own Summer Wars, his only movie I ever saw, and that was years ago. I didn’t exactly love it, mainly because I’m an autistic person who doesn’t understand neurotypical family relationships (i.e. half the movie), but his artstyle is pretty novel and I always wanted to give his other films a chance. The problem was that he apparently hates streaming? Call me a Zoomer, but streaming is a crucial money-saver in this century (and it helps Earth because it saves on the resources used to make a physical copy). Fortunately, Hosoda’s newest film, Belle, premiered in theaters just recently. I was skeptical due to it being a romance, but if I didn’t see it now, I wouldn’t be able to see it ever! Was the risk still worth taking, though?

In Belle, a social media network known as U is spreading like wildfire, dethroning Zuckerberg and becoming the most popular platform of its kind. It’s a virtual network that connects directly to your body and creates an avatar called an AS based off of your innermost self. It’s the perfect hobby for motherless, socially depressed Suzu, who ends up becoming Belle, the world-famous virtual singing sensation. However, things get dicey when she has a run-in with the Dragon, a naughty-boy avatar with a lot of cryptocurrency (and probably NFTs) on his head. 

Holy crap… Where do I begin with this movie? While straightforward, it ended up being way more involved than I had ever expected, especially compared to Summer Wars. Let’s start with the first thing you notice: how it looks. It’s called Belle (the French word for beauty) for a reason, and I’m not talking about the main character’s name. The movie looks absolutely spectacular. Hosoda’s style involves trading texture for consistent fluidity; basically, imagine a TV anime’s artstyle but with actual animation. The CG in Belle is some of the best I have ever seen in an anime, massive in scope yet able to incorporate the most minute little mannerisms. I probably shouldn’t be surprised, since it’s been over a decade since Summer Wars. I’m immensely glad I saw it in theaters.

I should also talk about the soundtrack. A lot of it is made up of original musical numbers, which are very orchestral and surprisingly powerful (for not being metal). One of these songs is called ‘U’ (like the setting), and it’s composed by King Gnu vocalist Daiki Tsuneta’s side band, millennium parade. They’re a band I tried when they were first starting out, but ended drifting away from when I converted to metal. I had no idea which song happened to be ‘U’, but since the whole soundtrack was solid, I feel like it was one of their better songs. However, you’ll just have to wait for my review of their debut album from last year before you know if I meant that as a compliment. Yay, marketing!

So, when it comes to Belle, it boils down to two major components: one, it’s inspired by Beauty and the Beast. No shit, Sherlock. The other aspect is that it’s an allegory to the beautiful digital prisons of our creation. It’s not new nor cerebral, but Hosoda conveys the general feel really well. Textboxes tend to clutter the screen as people mutter their crap. People make up stuff about themselves as well as stuff about others, such as the Dragon. Rumors form, cancel culture takes hold. The main villain, named Justin, is an SJW running a squad of Ultra-Mans who can literally reveal someone’s personal information to the world. As a blogger with a pen name, I could feel that anxiety of letting your other self be traced back to you. 

Of course, what it boils down to is some good ol’ fashioned waifu power. Suzu has to find the Dragon (or Beast, in case the symbolism wasn’t obvious enough), and make him less emo because… love? I dunno, she just gets enamored by his naughty-boy-ness when he first shows up. The plot is very straightforward for the most part. Despite it being Allegories ‘R Us, there’s nothing really left up to interpretation. Despite that, I still found myself surprisingly engaged throughout the whole film.

This is especially surprising because the cast was… something. Suzu is extremely relatable; in fact, Hosoda didn’t need to pull the “kill the mom” trope at all to make a character that people will resonate with, especially in this day and age. She has the classic Internet celeb character arc of having to find her true self between her physical and virtual bodies. Most of the others are just plot devices. Her nerd friend Hiro does all the techy stuff when she has to, these old ladies at this choir club Suzu attends offer support when they need to, etc. There’s some cringe-inducing, very teenagery romance, including a subplot involving some saxophone-playing girl and these two studs from school, and it means absolutely nothing. Also, why does Suzu’s father exist? He is the most passive fictional parent ever, practically letting her do whatever she wants. 

Also, the Dragon doesn’t get much elaboration either. It’s sufficient if you understand visual storytelling, and narrative tropes in general, but a lot of his arc also feels very plot device-y. Minor spoilers, he ends up not being among the characters we discussed, making his big reveal anticlimactic. On the flipside, it is realistic with how kids these days lose their minds over people whose physical forms they’ve never seen in any capacity (plus, Dragon’s situation is pretty darn urgent). Of course, being a romance, the ends justify the means this time around. 

Justin, the aforementioned villain, doesn’t get much development either. There’s no big fight against him or anything; he just ceases to exist after some point. Maybe that’s an allegory to beating back cancel culture people: ignoring them. In addition, don’t expect anything regarding the reason why U exists at all. They simply say it was created by “The Voices,” but we never get any more than that. The main focus of the movie is the romance, and the lack of any explanation of U is something that needs to be shrugged off.

~~~~~

Final Verdict: 9.25/10

I dunno why, but I really loved Belle. I was prepared to call its social commentary pretentious and its romance manufactured, which it arguably is, but I wasn’t mad for some reason. Hosoda has the same Disney-like vision that Miyazaki has, but he adds a lot more of that quintessentially anime nonsense that makes Japanese culture so exotic to Westerners. Most importantly, he’s a SIGNIFICANTLY better director than Makoto Shinkai! I’d recommend Belle, but by the time you’re reading this, you’d probably have to rent it off of Amazon Prime video. Hosoda movies on streaming services pleeeeeeeeease!

Magistellus Bad Trip Volume 1: SAO Meets GTA Meets Monopoly Meets Ready Player One

by macksamson, posted in Light Novels, Magistellus Bad Trip

I hate myself so much. I swore off all light novel series I haven’t read (and some I haven’t finished), yet this one—Magistellus Bad Trip—beckoned me into its world. It wasn’t even the cover art that got me, but the premise. It was something so inherently appealing that it couldn’t possibly suck. Despite having read a lot of LNs with fool-proof premises that end up sucking, I took the plunge once more.

In Magistellus Bad Trip, Suou Kaname is filthy rich in the world of Money (Game) Master, a VRMMO where your worth is measured in stonks and bonds. As good as he is, however, he’s not satisfied with his currents setup. No, he wants to track down the Legacies, which are ridiculously OP equipment left behind by a legendary player. Can he do it? Probably. It’s just a matter of when.

What immediately makes Magistellus Bad Trip appealing is its setting, Money (Game) Master. It is an open-world sandbox game where you buy properties, and make bank by utilizing the world’s wildly fluctuating stonk market. Of course, you can blow up in-game facilities and other players to give yourself an edge. But since every VRMMO series is morally bound to have some allegory to our actual society, the in-game currency in Money (Game) Master has ramifications in the real world. And with the Legacies in hand, one can effectively rule over all mankind.

However, the real world isn’t much better. In Magistellus Bad Trip, A.I are on their way to assuming full control of the world. And while low-income families are funded by these A.I., this effectively makes them slaves until their debts can be paid somehow.

Of course, good writing and storytelling matters the most. Fortunately, this is one of the better-written light novels I have read. There is a lot of thought put into the nuance of the world and its logic. Plus, there is no shortage of over-the-top action, which can be compared to the spectacle of Platinum Games.

And, for once, the characters aren’t completely unremarkable! Kaname is the best character for sure. While his uncanny sense of danger comes off as an overpowered protagonist trait, the stuff he does fits within the logic of the game world. Oh, and by the way, every player has an A.I. partner, the titular Magistellus. His is a succubus named Tsileka. And while her character design is what you’d expect, she actually has a fun relationship with Kaname that isn’t at all sexual. Unfortunately, that’s about it. The other plot-relevant characters are pretty meh, especially Midori, the sister of the legendary player that created the Legacies, who fulfills the role of waifu that needs protecc-tion.

~~~~~

Verdict: 8.75/10

I’m actually glad I gave Magistellus Bad Trip a chance. The series promises to be intricate and engaging; a rarity in the light novel market. It’s also one of the scariest cyberpunks I have read, since it expands upon stuff that already exists right now. Let’s just hope I can figure out how to juggle it with the rest of my life.

There’s Too Much: A Rant

by macksamson, posted in Miscellaneous, Rants

Okay, well, this post is probably something you can all relate to, and probably something someone has said in much more scholarly capacity. But similar to a certain minor disease that’s been circling around for a while, people must keep complaining about it over and over again as if that would make it go away even though it doesn’t! And today’s topic is something that can only get worse down the road: there’s too much stuff. 

It’s a classic first-world problem; the compulsion to consume media to the point where your actual life becomes forfeit. The first and easiest solution is to stop. However, what else would I do? Should I just toil at my job for forty hours a week, go to bed, and rinse-and-repeat until I die? Since I am an autistic man who has not attempted to make friends, fictitious worlds are all I got.

This issue is additionally difficult by nature of the mediums I enjoy. The Japanese literature industry is the one area I know of that does not have enough subscription services. Viz is a lifesaver, but it only applies to specific titles. Everything else I gotta pay a fat, flat rate on. It’s tough, to be honest. Maybe, in the far future, BookWalker will offer a full-on subscription service? Yes, I know they have a subscribe-to-series for Kodansha titles but that’s not the same thing. Basically, if I reviewed anime, I could get more content for much less than what I’m paying now.

Fortunately, I have managed to lessen the burden. I now have just enough time for YouTube, reading, music, and videogames. Unfortunately, I have to veto a lot of stuff that I like. There are some things that I want to finish, such as World Trigger or Jujutsu Kaisen, but they’re very long and I just don’t know if they’re completely worth it. I’ve already gotten to the point where I ignore 90% of all upcoming light novels that come out on BookWalker. For music, I also have to accept that I cannot learn any band’s discography in its entirety, and most fans probably haven’t either. My new mantra has been “There’s other fish in the sea.”

The issue is, of course, trying to figure out what basket you want to put your precious eggs in. I have low self-esteem, so I always find myself thinking my opinions are wrong whenever I read a review that doesn’t agree with my stance. And there’s always the possibility that I just “didn’t get to the point where it gets really, REALLY good”, even though something like 170-odd chapters of Black Clover should be more than enough of an impression. On the flipside, Mashle is a better-paced, funnier, and more engaging version of Black Clover. The same goes with Undead Unluck over Jujutsu Kaisen. Both manga are about magic kids who fight demons that embody human wrongdoing, yet Undead Unluck is way more creative, has better characters, and SIGNIFICANTLY better pacing. And yet, if I look hard enough, I’ll find a glowing review of Jujutsu Kaisen and I’ll feel bad for not hard-committing to it instead. I’ll need to make myself as confident IRL as I sound on my blog reviews.

As much as I rag on anime, I can thank the community for teaching me to let go. Each season, people get so passionate about anime as they air, just to forget about it. They have these massive emotional reactions, from hating a show so much it offends them as human beings, to loving a waifu enough to troll on her behalf. All of this just to seemingly forget the show happened once the next batch of hype drops.

As someone who takes words literally, I’ve begun to learn that there is no entertainment medium that is better than the other. There are so many all-encompassing reviews and blurbs about how “this particular thing will change your life and make you an altogether better human being”, but that’s objectively wrong. You can like something however much you want, but stuff is stuff. It’s just entertainment, and it’s up to each individual to decide which stuff is their stuff.

With all this said and done, I want to allude to a warning of potential long-term changes to the blog. I’ve been reevaluating my priorities for the sake of my mental and financial health. This comes with the likely possibility that I will abandon the bulk of the manga and light novel medium, which was why I originally started the blog. As someone who’s experienced a lot of stuff from different mediums, I’ve realized they each have their pros and cons, but no one is more “special” than the others. There will always be “worthwhile” things to indulge in with each. Basically, what I’m saying, is if I have to make this primarily a gaming and music review blog—the two mediums I had initially covered the least of—just so I can have more than zero dollars in my bank account, then so be it. I have no idea where this blog is going, so I ask you to be patient as I try to figure that out.

In conclusion, this has been a weird mess of a post. Sometimes, you gotta vent your emotional insecurities. If you want to leave a comment on how you feel in this stimulus-savvy world, then by all means. You can also tell me I’m crazy if you want.

Blood Like Magic: A Family Drama With a Cyberpunk Twist

by macksamson, posted in Western Media, YA Novels

I don’t consciously try to read books about racism. But when I began Liselle Sambury’s new series opener, Blood Like Magic, I was greeted with a disclaimer that basically said: “This book is about racism.” Well, let’s see how soul-grinding this one is.

In Blood Like Magic, families of witches get magic by having their periods (and Westerners think anime should be banned?). A young’un named Voya Thomas just had her period, and the next step after that is to have her nigh-impossible-to-fail Calling. Assuming you’ve had experience with urban fantasy before, what do you think happens when it comes to the main protagonist attempting some sort of magic test that everyone else in the world could do just fine? If you think Voya fails, you’d only be half-right. She calls Mama Jova, who—of course—happens to be the Dark Souls of the Thomas family.

So, the disclaimer at the beginning implies that Blood Like Magic is even more heart-rending and brutal than any other urban fantasy out there. It’s not. There is one scene (arguably two?) where racism is referenced at all. The scene in question is brutal, but it’s extremely out of left field. The reason for it is because Blood Like Magic is set twenty-eight years in the future, and in this future, racism isn’t that prevalent. Voya says that she has never been called a racist slur, nor conditioned to feel ashamed of being Black.

However, the book is still—to some extent—about racism, or at the very least, the fancy term known as “systemic racism.” Despite it not being in-your-face like in Legendborn, it still abounds in society itself. An example is showcased by NuGene, a big genetics company with a lot of weight in society. Apparently, if your genetic code implies that you might have a violent personality, you’ll be treated like a serial killer without even committing any crimes (or something), and this just so happens to be more punishing when it comes up in a Black person. The company’s employees insist on doing the whole “use gender identity at the end of their names” thing, but it turns out they’re hypocritical homophobes, which is shown when Voya’s transgender cousin is given the wrong set of chromosomes in their official record. 

The cherry on top is that Voya, as narrator, still uses those same race labels, despite the fact that they should be archaic given the context. In a way, Blood Like Magic more cynical than any other books of its kind. No matter how much progress we make, those in power won’t change. In that way, Blood Like Magic has left me emotionally distraught not in the moments of reading it, but when reflecting on it afterwards.

ANYWAY, let’s discuss the actual story! If you’ve read a YA novel, Mama Jova’s task will seem straight out of the edgiest urban fantasy ever: Voya must kill her first love. Fortunately for her, she joined a gene-matching program by the aforementioned NuGene, and was paired with Luc Rodriguez, the sponsor son of NuGene’s CEO. Of course, they hate each other as soon as they first meet. Key word: “first”.

After being given her task, Blood Like Magic becomes part-romcom, part sci-fi mystery as she juggles a classic tsundere relationship with Luc, and this weird stuff her family’s been hiding from her. It’s balanced surprisingly well, especially since YA novels this thick (just under five hundred pages) tend to drag. I read it with my butt clenched waiting for that inevitable conspiracy to be revealed.

Normally, I’d criticize the characters, but this time… I don’t actually hate them even though I should. By themselves, pretty much everyone is either unremarkable and/or very snarky. But together, their chemistry made them among the more tolerable YA casts I’ve seen. I loved Voya and her cousin, Keis, bouncing witty remarks at each other, or Granny—who basically runs the Thomases—asserting her absolute authority. Even what would be a cringe-inducing, formulaic tsundere relationship between Voya and Luc ends up seeming more legitimate and believable than “I hate you! I hate you too! *Proceeds to viciously make out*”.

Despite all its novelty, Blood Like Magic still has a lot of those annoying YA tropes. If you guessed that Voya falls in love with Luc and can’t kill him, then congratulations! You’ve read at least one YA novel! At the very least, the story manages to play out in a way that’s quite unexpected for the genre.

~~~~~

Final Verdict: 9.5/10

I’m probably wrong and off-base about a lot of what Blood Like Magic is trying to say. But regardless, the thing to be invested in is without a doubt the families’ relationships. And I use a plural possessive noun because I don’t just mean the Thomases; I’m referring to their relationships with each other, as well as with the other witch families. Overall, I’d recommend Blood Like Magic just for the emotional story of Voya’s family.

The Infinity Courts: What If Siri Ran the Afterlife?

by macksamson, posted in Western Media, YA Novels

I don’t know why I’m still trying to get into YA novels, considering that I tend to not like them. But sometimes, you just have an impulsive, smooth-brain moment. And in this particular impulse, I decided to try Akemi Dawn Bowman’s The Infinity Courts, the first in what is—according to Goodreads—a trilogy. I’ve apparently made a habit of reviewing individual installments of book series as of late, so I guess I’ll continue that pattern again!

In The Infinity Courts, a typical teenage girl named Nami Miyamoto is about to have the night of her life: a graduation party, whereafter she and her crush, Finn, will have their happily ever after. But when her dumb friend makes her buy something spur-of-the-moment, Nami has a true isekai-light-novel experience when she is shot in a convenience store and is awakened in a strange world known as Infinity. Everything here is perfect, which means it’s actually not even remotely perfect. And it doesn’t take long for Infinity’s Residents to start hunting her down.

I suppose that, being at most the one-third point of the bigger story, the following statement would be said too soon. But I’m going to say it anyway: if you’re looking for something that’ll make your brain gears whirl, then The Infinity Courts is not it. The world of Infinity is more-or-less that of The Matrix. Just like in those whacky conspiracy theories, our smartphone A.I.s—with this world’s model being named Ophelia—end up ruling the human race and want to brainwash everyone. Nami joins your typical Resistance group in an effort to take Ophelia down.

However, there is at least a bit more creativity this time around. Infinity has a lot of appealing and surreal setpieces, as implied by the map at the beginning. It helps that we get a good enough description of these setpieces; not too much and not too little. A lot of names are just common nouns with uppercase letters, but it’s not as excessive with that trope as other YA novels.

It also helps that Bowman is a legit good writer. Even though The Infinity Courts is a case of “same sh** different day”, I was thoroughly engaged with the story and wanted to know what happened next. It’s not too pretentious with metaphors, like most YA novels tend to be (even if it asks those philosophical questions a lot).

The cast is also surprisingly likable… for the most part. A lot of the resistance people are decent folks who just really prioritize the Colony above all else. However, Nami—despite being named after One Piece‘s Best Girl—is an incredibly hard sell. Like your typical YA female protagonist, she’s self-deprecating, and doesn’t want to fight the Residents even when shown how they enslave and torture humans. And of course, she has mysterious abilities that no one else has, even if this particular instance kind of makes sense, given her weird sense of sympathy with her smartphone in life.

Gil is the other hard sell. He’s a middle-aged, war torn veteran trapped in a teenager’s body, but some of that teenager-y-ness manifests as well. He’s so hard-headed and angsty, and is also that guy who hates the main protagonist just to be an asshole. The other leading lad is Prince Caelan, one of the four Princes of Infinity. He’s, well, Mr. Perfect, and is—for the time being—the only Prince to get an actual character arc. The main antagonist, Ophelia, is your typical robot overlord; she’s all like “humans are all born racist and violent and evil”, and thinks that trying to remove them from Infinity is an objectively good thing.

~~~~~

Final Verdict: 8.75/10

The Infinity Courts is not original whatsoever, but it reinvents the wheel in a pleasantly surprising way. I’m more than willing to commit to this series, which is saying something considering how I feel about YA novels. I recommend it if you want raw entertainment, but don’t expect your thoughts to be provoked.

Why the Cyberpunk Genre is Stale: A Rant

by macksamson, posted in Miscellaneous, Rants

The cyberpunk genre is definitely not as huge as it was in the late Twentieth Century, but it’s still a genre that a lot of people love and think is mindblowing. But as I said in my first impressions of the manga, No Guns Life, I find the genre to be not-so-mindblowing. In fact, it’s second only to romance (ROMANCE!) as my least favorite genre of all time. This rant details why, based on my admittedly small experience with the genre.

The Human Condition, Turns Out, is Pretty Conditional

To begin this passage, I’ll tell you about a memoir I came across, once for no particular reason (as in there’s no particular reason why I came across it, not why I’m telling you about it). I forgot its title, but it was published in the early 2000s, and it was about a deaf person who willingly signed up to have a computer installed that would essentially replace their dysfunctional human ears. According to the book’s description, the person had an existential crisis and began to question whether or not they were human, simply because they were hearing a “digital interpretation of a real sound instead of the real sound” or something. Although I never read it, coming across this book is one thing that made me question the popularity of cyberpunk.

Why would you have an existential crisis over one part of your body being a machine? I’ve seen this trope before. The main character sometimes has a robot arm or something, making them a cyborg, and then they’re all like “I’m not so human anymore.” My grandfather, who I love dearly, got an intramuscular pacemaker implanted in his heart, and it’s been proving to be one of the best health decisions he’s ever made. But by cyberpunk logic, he would no longer be considered my grandfather, let alone a human being, because the organ that gives him life is not entirely “organic”.

Beyond the scope of cybernetic augments, the trope makes cyberpunk extremely pretentious because it’s all under the notion that humans are special. Sure, we’ve evolved abnormally fast and done some crazy things, but that doesn’t make us special. There’s this one episode of the Neil DeGrasse Tyson reboot of Cosmos where he goes down a list of different animals who display traits that are conventionally thought of as distinctively human. It shows that we aren’t that much different from other species. Because of this, the big “What makes us human?” question that often frames the cyberpunk genre seems pretentious to me. And for the record, that’s why I hate the word “human” as an adjective for a well-written character arc.

“Robotic Overlords”

I’ve seen enough cyberpunk to differentiate between cyborgs and androids. While the previous passage mainly focused on cyborgs, this one will focus on androids, and A.I.’s in general. Androids are 100% machines, built from scratch, with the  intention to be sentient. Out of all the cyberpunk tropes, these guys can at least be done in an interesting way, if done well. But of course, I find them to almost never be done well.

Part of it is because it feels like nobody has bothered trying anything new with them in the past forever. While not technically cyberpunk, Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot did something important with the android trope in the Three Laws of Robotics. To sum them up in one sentence, the Three Laws of Robotics are a set of codes that make it so androids cannot harm humans, and also have to protect humans over themselves. The fact that this essentially robs what are technically living, sentient beings of their rights as people does raise some legitimate questions. But sadly, it feels like writers just repeatedly ask this same question over and over again in cyberpunk.

The whole “humans are special” stigma also applies to androids at times. If there’s one that isn’t evil, it usually hates its own existence. They observe humans and are all like “Wow, emotions are beautiful. Why don’t I have those?” They would give anything to be human, but the fact that they even want something means that they kind of already have what they wanted in the first place. The problem is that I’ve never seen any progress with the trope after the character arc of Data from Star Trek: Next Generation.

Like I said before, androids are the smallest problem I have with cyberpunk. But A.I. are worse. Technically, androids are A.I., but I’m kind of referring to sentient computer programs as opposed to humanoid machines. I’ve never seen this character type done in a way that’s interesting. They’re either some Mr. or Ms. Existential Crisis that—like Data—wants to be human, or something that wants to take over the world “for the good of the human race.”

A recent example of me having been disappointed by an A.I. is  a visual novel that I watched YouTuber NintendoCaprisun play a while back: Eliza. Again, I don’t know if it counts as cyberpunk, but I wanna talk about it anyway. Eliza is about the titular A.I. program, programmed to serve as a therapist. This could’ve been interesting, but nope, they cop out big time. Eliza feeds prompts to a human proxy to read aloud to the client as a form of A.I. therapy. I had hope with Eliza in that first client, when it was able to essentially pretend that the human proxy itself was  speaking to the client, when they were actually still reading the prompts. But from there, it goes south. All Eliza can do is provide a preconceived response to every patient, which doesn’t help them, and it concludes by making them load up on prescription drugs. And when you’re able to deviate from the A.I.’s responses at the end of the game—Whaddya ya know?—it low-key instantly helps everyone. Instead of making us consider the possibility that A.I. could be used as a psychiatrist, they do the “normal” thing and make it bad. I want to say that the message of the game is that A.I. technology is at such an infant stage that no one really knows what the future holds. But with the way the game presents itself, and the fact that its main antagonist wants to use Eliza to steal people’s information for his company’s gain—a typical conspiracy theory trope—I’m led to believe that they didn’t have the guts to challenge conventional thinking. The game slanders conspiracy theories left and right in its dialogue, but sadly, doesn’t practice what it preaches.

Don’t Believe Everything You Hear On the Internet

The Eliza part of the rant feeds into this passage. Cyberpunk first came around during a genuinely scary time in U.S. history, and it kind of warranted the social commentaries. But these days, it feels like the basis for cyberpunk is in the toxicity of social media.

You see, the media thrives on attention. And to generate attention, they have to present the news in a way to make people buy it. Sadly, because of how the human mind works, people are more interested in something negative than positive. As a result, the media will present certain bits of information and withhold other bits in such a way to make it seem that the world is ending. Many people know this and try to shrug it off, but there’s a very vocal, vulnerable part of society who will take it to heart, and if you have a social media account, you will be bombarded with this constant cynicism.

Some of these cyberpunk worlds, and dystopian worlds in general, are ruled by censorship and facist governments, and they’re supposed to be an allegory to our own society. And just… no. Ever since the U.S. federal government formed, people  seem to live under the impression that the president can—at any time—just do whatever he wants, without checks and balances. The U.S. Constitution was made specifically so that it doesn’t happen, even if George Washington and Alexander Hamilton both knew that the country’s political climate would go to hell. If I can’t take our actual society seriously, I can’t take a fictitious world based off of it seriously.

Am I wrong about this? I admit that I’m pretty out of the loop with society, and it often feels like I live in a different world. Everyone else seems to legitimately believe that George Orwell’s 1984 is happening right now, even though the book was an allegory to Communism. Also, they act like censorship is a current, prevailing issue in this century that’s rapidly worsening, as if the government can just disappear anyone at anytime, like in that “F.B.I. open up!” meme. I have no idea where people get this impression, and maybe that’s because I’m falling for that very censorship. How about I move on before I continue to counter-argue with my own post?

Oh No, My American Values!

I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a bad person, but I feel like a lot of writers are not willing to explore the less comfortable themes of cyberpunk. It’s not really anyone’s fault; people are raised on whatever cultural values of, well, whatever place they grow up. Cyberpunk is supposed to explore some darker areas, but in my experience, they take anything that an average person would fear, and don’t bother turning that fear into interest.

My biggest example is Arc of a Scythe (assuming it’s a cyberpunk). I covered it in detail once before, but basically, it’s set in a world where immortality is achieved, and specific humans are hired to govern all death in the human population. If it sounds scary to you, then you’re probably an average person. The author does the basic, obvious thing and makes the idea objectively terrible. A system like this could work, given an insane number of background checks, but in the context of the story, it’s the typical “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. No room for interpretation. And why? Because the idea is too uncomfortable. 

This also gets hammy when it comes to messing with individuality, something I’ve learned is highly prioritized, in the U.S. in particular. You know, the opposite of Spock’s famous “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” line. I most often see this tackled with the issue of altering people’s memories. First off, while the idea is scary, how the crap are we supposed to have that technology? The only way we can give someone false memories is to meet an amnesiac and tell them incorrect information about their identity. I sincerely doubt it’s possible to use technology to inject someone’s brain with an entire prefabricated lifetime. The other application is making an A.I. and giving it a real human’s memories. While that is also scary, my argument is: what’s the practicality of doing that?! That’s just a critical system error waiting to happen, and with how expensive they are, you don’t want to do that. Regardless of how this trope is handled, individuality is pushed to the Nth degree. It’s annoying, especially given COVID, where that individuality made people not willing to follow protocols for the sake of national health.

A great example of this tired trope being subverted is Ghost in the Shell, which I can at least admit is one of the better cyberpunks out there. SPOILERS for the ending: Kusanagi willingly fuses with another cyborg, and it’s painted as a good thing. What an outlandish turn of events, and all it took was coming from a country that’s not as uppity about the self as the U.S. of A!

One final thing I need to mention, which happens to be short enough to not get its own section, is that I have autism. As a result of living in society as someone with autism, I’ve had to study my own mind in order to combat my many anxieties; something I’m still doing to this day. So when the blurb says “This made me really look at the world and myself differently”, they probably mean that, since it actually WOULD be their introduction to such deep thoughts. My lack of interest in cyberpunk themes can easily be chalked up to the fact that I’ve already done the deep thinking that the genre is supposed to make you do for the first time.

A Silver Lining

Not to toot my own horn, but I’m nowhere near as conditional as a lot of other people on the Internet. I’ve seen so many comments from people who act like it’s written in stone that “generic protagonists” or “simplistic narratives” are objectively bad. Despite how much I rag on romance and slice-of-life, I enjoy some very specific ones. And I think the same for cyberpunk as well. The aforementioned Ghost in the Shell is one example. Furthermore, despite everything I’ve said, they still have some good entertainment value from their visually appealing settings (almost all of which look vaguely like Tokyo, which is a bonus for me), sexy sci-fi outfits, high-octane action, electronic soundtracks that pack ambience as well as adrenaline.

I might have ended up ranting about science fiction as a whole and not just cyberpunk (which is ironic because I had a separate rant about that). In any case, cyberpunk really isn’t as stale as I claimed in the post title. Like every other genre, 90% of it is crap. While it still bothers me that people actually think that this media rooted in archaic Red Scare thinking has any kind of accurate representation of our future, the genre is at least more respectable than romance.

Postscript

Look, full transparency here. This whole post was me trying to make a Hail Mary pass at disputing the common consensus that stuff like 1984 are accurate to our current society. Honestly, given my anxieties, I am actually all too willing to take cyberpunk worlds as accurate portrayals of our future. I mean, how many U.S. election results have been falsified? That, in addition to COVID data, including the stats on the CDC’s own website? I’ve also seen, in limited capacity, the notion that hackers are developing A.I. to pose as world leaders. Also, I don’t think I’m alone when it comes to feeling that crushing pressure to consume the same predetermined set of media, lest I be cast off from the human race.

But at the same time, what if it’s not society at all, and cyberpunk is just as BS as I made it out to be. Recently, I’ve had to dive into my own mind, and learn how human insecurities work. Our anxieties are not directly caused by society, but by how we respond, emotionally, to the stimulus from society. Basically, what if—in the same way that the media uses topics like illegal immigrants and minorities (which have real issues) as scapegoats for America’s problems—we use allegedly corrupt governments and censorship as scapegoats for our own individual problems? In that case, cyberpunk is just a shallow method to reaffirm those beliefs.

Look, I know America is not perfect; it never was. But at the same time, the Founding Fathers were idiots for making the American Dream something as impossible as a perfect nation. Sorry for rambling… Basically, cyberpunk can be a great subgenre, I just try to take it with a grain of salt.