Tag: edgy

Chained Echoes: One of 2022’s Best JRPGs (other than Xenoblade 3)

by macksamson, posted in Full Reviews, Gaming

With CrossCode beat and Sea of Stars not yet ready, it’s natural to experience pixel-art JRPG withdrawal (and I probably won’t live to see Secrets of Grindea be finished because, well, it’s Secrets of Grindea). Fortunately, thanks to my stumbling-on-things power, I happened across Chained Echoes. It’s an old-school turn-based JRPG with whimsy and mechs. I like both of those things, so it was an easy impulse buy! Let’s find out whether or not said impulse buy was a mistake.

Before I even get into the premise of the game, I MUST praise its visuals. I remember a bygone time when I was not too impressed at modern pixel art in games, but nowadays, it’s what I crave, and Chained Echoes satiates that appetite. It is vibrant, stunning, and gorgeous. It runs silky smooth, and bursts with life. Sure, Sea of Stars and CrossCode still look better, but Chained Echoes is sure as hell up there with them.

In Chained Echoes, a man named Glenn is part of a mercenary group called the Band of the Iron Bull. He engaged in a reckless mission to conquer some place, but when he destroyed the object he was assigned… it exploded. Fortunately, this explosion caused the three kingdoms that were at war to sign a peace treaty. Of course, this is a JRPG; we know there’s gonna be a big adventure and whatnot.

I know that this was in development since 2015, but boy does its basic theme hit hard coming out the time that it did; last December, ten months into an ACTUAL war; the one in Ukraine, to be exact. Right at the beginning, it brings up things that have sent me reeling these past three years, mainly the impossible-sounding process of forgiving the people who were just your bitter enemies. It only corroborates Ezran’s speech in the fourth season of The Dragon Prince, which purports that we must live with our inter-generational hatred bottled up inside instead of trying to not feel it.

Otherwise, it’s your usual classic JRPG story, albeit really dark. In the end, we gotta fight the bad guys and steal the evil superweapon. Eventually—spoilers of a trope that happens all the time—you get to fight gods. It’s not all doom and gloom; there is a lot of good humor. It’s an indie game, meaning that the dev really knows how to meme. There is literally an achievement for selling poop. The peak of meme-ness is the turtle racing minigame; it’s worth doing at least once, because of what occurs during it. The plot is basic enough to feel nostalgic for ye olden days, back when twenty hours was the average length of a JRPG and it didn’t take ten hours to get out of the first town. 

Unfortunately, the trappings of the classic JRPG is the biggest flaw here. One of my least favorite tropes is when you set up all this moral ambiguity, with allegories on real-world issues like racism and war, just to have all suffering in the world be because of a single, higher power pulling the strings. It’s a very good/evil solution to a problem, when the entire story  told you that such clear-cut sides don’t exist. Couple that with the staggering, potentially excessive amount of suicides in the game, and you could honestly argue that the story is actually REALLY bad. It kind of resembles Square Enix’s current philosophy to make everything as grim as possible because of a preconceived notion that the majority of people prefer it that way. The cherry on top is that it ends with sequel bait, despite the dev saying in a post that they didn’t really know where to proceed from here. Maybe it’ll be a DLC campaign?

The cast of characters are pretty good, though. They don’t ham in the memes like Xenoblade characters, but they’re memorable enough. Glenn is a pretty good traumatized war veteran, and it shows. If the game was more popular, people’d be fighting over if the tomboyish Princess Celestia (who uses the pseudonym of Lenne for the most part), the sexy thief Sienna, and a third person who shows up too late to justify me talking about her was the Best Girl. Victor is generally the rational guy who actually knows how to do anything. 

As a retro-RPG, Chained Echoes reinvents the wheel. However, any retro-RPG worth its salt would still find a way to upend the original wheel’s design, and Chained Echoes does that. First off, it has amazing quality-of-life mechanics. Not only is the turn order shown in battle, but enemies, strengths, weaknesses, and whether or not they can be pickpocketed are automatically shown in battle. The bestiary also shows drops, including ones that can only be obtained via a steal. Even more importantly, you are automatically fully healed after battle, basically like in Xenoblade; no consumables nor White Magic required! Oh, and don’t worry about saving your invaluable Ultra Meter for the next boss; it will fill up to full during any boss encounter.

Battle itself is also very wild. Sure, you have your usual attacks, skills, items, whoop-dee-doo. However, the Overdrive bar is where it gets interesting. Actions will automatically fill it up, and when it enters the green zone, your whole party is boosted. Skills cost less and you take way less damage. However, when it enters the red zone, it backfires and you take WAY MORE damage. The fun involves juggling between actions that increase and decrease the meter, so you can maintain Overdrive indefinitely. Most importantly, using skills that match the symbol shown on the left end of the meter (the top-left corner of the screen) will decrease it substantially.

Another interesting feature is how the team participates in battle. You thought Xenoblade 3 was cool for allowing all six party members to fight? Well, technically, Chained Echoes allows EIGHT. Each of the four active party members has a reserve tag team member. You can switch between these two without consuming an action every turn, and reduce Overdrive in the process. To spice things up, most enemies can inflict stagger, a status which lasts about an eternity, but is instantly cured if the staggered person switches out.

Things get fun with the game’s stand-out mechanic: Sky Armors, a.k.a. mechs. They are useful for travel, but make for interesting battles. In combat, you are not able to go into Overdrive, but are instead juggling the meter to stay as close to the center as possible, lest you hit the Overheat zones to the left and right. Sky Armors can switch to Gears 0-2. Gear 1 is the balanced Gear, while Gear 2 grants an attack buff and defense debuff. Gear 0 is when you recuperate; in this mode, all actions significantly restore the Sky Armor’s TP, but you can’t use skills. Like in Xenoblade X, each Sky Armor can equip weapons with various skills (and RAMs that function as accessories). Weapons have their own experience meters, and leveling them up earns new skills, as well as stat bonuses that stay for good regardless of if it has that weapon equipped. This means you’ll be shuffling weapons a lot, and sadly, that also means giving physical weapons to mechs with magic-based builds; maybe you should grind those up later (fortunately they level up pretty fast). To make things simple, there are only four specific Sky Armor pilots in the entire group, unlike Xenoblade X where all fifteen party members can pilot a Skell.

Power progression is perhaps the most interesting it’s been since Final Fantasy X. Instead of XP, you gain SP, which is only used for leveling up equipped skills. Skills are learned through Grimoire Shards—earned only through bosses or other means. These aren’t boons to help you in battle; they’re also your passive skills and even stat gains. Fortunately, you get additional stat gains depending after learning certain amounts of skills in total. Leveling up skills is a combination of both winning battles with them equipped as well as spending accumulated SP on them. It’s a unique way to make you work toward something long-term, while also giving you a semblance of control in deciding what skills you want upgraded faster.

Furthermore, you have Class Emblems, earned by finding a special statue AND a special type of consumable key item, THEN winning a tough battle. Class Emblems give two battle and passive skills that can be freely set on the character once mastered. Basically, it’s jobs meets Espers from Final Fantasy VI (I think?). Also, have fun trying to decide what skills to equip; if you’re an RPG junkie, you’ll feel like you’ll need them all but you can only have ten battle skills and five passive skills.

Of course, the stuff you do outside of battle is important too. The big shaker-upper is how item selling is done. Well, you sell stuff and make money like normal. However, selling the right kinds of items unlock Deals. These are special sets of items that require both materials and cash. Just keep in mind that the item list on the menu only counts the amount of said items that you SOLD, not the ones on you; it can get confusing since that’s generally not how it works in 99% of RPGs. 

Upgrading equipment is like Materia from Final Fantasy VII… but really hard. All weapons have crystals set in them. Crystals need to be at least Rank 3 to be equipped, and you can get stronger crystals by fusing ones with the same abilities together. However, crystals take up more slots the better they get. The slots of equipment can be increased by upgrading them, but require materials and money, and can only be done twice each.

To be frank, the crystals are probably the worst mechanic in the game, at least early on. Unlike the color-coded gems in Xenoblade, EVERY type of crystal possible comes from the same source, meaning that each draw point takes from a pool of every property. Even if you have an idea of what crystals to use for a tough fight, you aren’t likely to actually have them, especially early game. Also, setting them into a piece of equipment is kind of a done deal; you can remove it, but it will lose all of its purity, and thus the ability to be used as a base in crafting better crystals. You get new and better equipment pretty fast if you’re diligent, so you’d be removing and crippling these crystals quite often. 

Exploring the world of Valandis is fun and rewarding… literally. They have a giant Reward Board where you complete various tasks and get rewards on the board. Completing tasks adjacent to each other can start a chain which has its own set of rewards (of course that doesn’t matter if you’re an MLG pro gamer who was going to get them all anyway). In any case, it does borrow from CrossCode and has numerous layers and secrets. Just pay attention to the environment to know where you can jump or climb (and I mean serious attention, because these points can blend in if you have tunnel vision).

Things really open up at the start of the second act. You don’t only unlock Sky Armors at this point; both sidequests AND your airship become available. An important mechanic involves finding various NPCs willing to join your cause. Don’t worry if this sounds daunting; literally the first person you find, right at your home base, exists to give you hints on where to find others. The real problem is that your base is kind of confusing, and has no map.

Anyway… Chained Echoes is actually really hard. It’s not Dark Souls-ian, but it will test you. There are a LOT of nuances, a lot of which is thankfully hinted at via NPCs. The most important nuance is that both you and the enemy will naturally gain resistance to a status effect after you’ve had it once; after that, the effect needs to be re-applied an additional time each subsequent time.

In any case, Chained Echoes follows the usual RPG tradition; random mobs aren’t so bad, static mobs (like the ones from the statues) can catch you off guard, and bosses are where you’ll be put to the test. Due to how leveling up works, there is no such thing as grinding; so you really, truly need to git gud for this one. There are both story bosses and optional Unique Monsters straight out of Xenoblade. Unfortunately, there is some RNG-based difficulty, since the Overdrive bar can ask for a skill that is not AT ALL what you want to perform (including healing skills when I don’t need it and attacks when I DESPERATELY need healing). Switching out partners and defending can reduce it briefly, while Ultra Moves reduce it by a lot. Glenn eventually learns skills dedicated to manipulating the Overdrive meter, and they become very useful. Otherwise, stock up on the special consumable items that activate the corresponding skill type that the Overdrive meter wants.

The Steam Page says thirty to forty hours of playtime. If the higher estimate was to account for completion, then it’s grossly wrong. In fact, the website How Long To Beat puts a completionist playthrough at fifty-three hours, and I’d say it’d be longer if you don’t already know what to do. While there isn’t any such thing as grinding to level up, there is a lot of grinding to get everything. Some of the later Deals require rare drops exclusive to Unique Monsters, which will need to be fought repeatedly if you aren’t lucky. There is also an unrealistic need for money late in the game: to buy expensive cosmetics for your airship, and the need to have one hundred thousand moneys on hand in order to spawn a particular Unique Monster. You will also need to grind Sky Armor proficiency to get the achievement for mastering all weapons (although that honestly goes by really fast if you fight the right mobs). Last but not least, you will need to fight with the annoying crystal mechanic to build the perfect setup for the superboss. Fortunately, one of the recruits can help manipulate the RNG of the Crystals to a decent extent.

~~~~~

Final Verdict: 9.5/10

Chained Echoes is a phenomenal game, definitely up there with the best retro-style JRPGs. While it does take a few too many pages from Square Enix’s current storytelling philosophy for my liking, I still found it worth playing. I highly recommend it to any fans of the genre.

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!

~~~~~

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.

Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction: Independence Day with Anime Girls

by macksamson, posted in Full Reviews, Manga

Over four years ago (before the blog), I read through Inio Asano’s manga Goodnight Punpun. It was a bit pretentious, and VERY edgy, but for some reason, it was really good. Something about the panel flow and the unique artstyle of Asano (which we’ll get into later in this post) made Punpun a very hard-to-forget experience. So of course, I decided to start his newest “experience”, Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction.

In Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, the world is ending. A mysterious flying saucer has appeared over Tokyo, and everyone is in a state of panic. However, instead of focusing on the politicians and the military side of things, this manga instead focuses on Kadode Koyama, and her very strange friends, who just try to go about their lives.

Just like Punpun, Dead Dead Demon has some phenomenal and unique art, which forms the backbone of the whole experience. Asano complements hyper-realistic backgrounds with cartoony, caricatured people. Seriously… a lot of them look really, REALLY weird. Also, the panel flow is as sporadic as it was in Punpun, and contains a lot of desktop-worthy two-page shots. 

It didn’t take long for Dead Dead Demon to have the same strange sensations that coursed through my body during Punpun. Despite the whole alien invasion, Dead Dead Demon is—bizarrely enough—more lighthearted than Punpun. Well, at least compared to Punpun. There’s still stuff like hints of an illicit relationship between Kadode and her teacher, as well as the fact that Kadode wants the aliens to win, while one of her friends wants to be a dictator when she grows up. All that, along with a pervasive sense of misanthropy.

For the most part, Dead Dead Demon is—of all things—a CGDCT: Cute Girls Doing Cute Things. Like I said before, most of the manga is focused on the civilian side of things; the obligations of society don’t just freeze up because of an alien invasion (even if they did freeze over a virus). A lot of the chapters are just the girls hanging out, and well, that’s about it. Would this manga be a typical CGDCT if there was NO alien invasion? Yes, definitely, absolutely. Call it superficial, but that seems to be the nature of Asano’s work; after all, would Punpun be so unique if its main character wasn’t drawn as a bird-stick-figure-thing?

Another issue with Dead Dead Demon is the fact that it has overly on-the-nose writing. I had a similar problem with Punpun, where a lot of the characters seemed to be overly aware of how the world worked. One example is a scene where a character uploads a clickbait article to social media, and goes into some huge poetic speech about how he’s starting a cyber war and plans to be tried as the greatest criminal in all of humanity. I get that clickbait posters are definitely aware of what they’re doing, but it’s not natural to go into such a clearly pre-written speech off the top of their heads (it’s as if the manga is pretentious). 

Although a lot of the chapters are typical CGDCT interactions, there is some semblance of an overarching plot, even if it’s mainly in the background. Most of the main story is told through news reports and various signage. Things pick up at volume three, which follows a tragic event, and ends with the main cast’s graduation. We also get to learn about the aliens and their perspective during the incident. Eventually, we learn the true nature of the invasion and relevant parties involved. Unfortunately for me, it didn’t help that I waited months at a time for new volumes through Viz, as I most likely forgot what was going on. However, as I’ve made clear, you don’t read an Asano manga to know what’s going on; in fact, you read them just to enjoy being confused in perpetuity. It also ends very unceremoniously, which will likely leave you wondering what the point of any of it was. Going off of Punpun, that’s just another part of Asano’s brand.

I tend to not like characters in a CGDCT, and not even Asano can make that an exception. I found a lot of the girls to be pretty bland. In fact, (spoilers until next paragraph) one of the main characters is killed off early on and I felt like it was merely a means to get you to sympathize with the others. For a mangaka who was genuinely good at portraying a tortured soul, I found this to be kind of a downgrade from Punpun. 

Fortunately, I did enjoy one of the characters: Oran. She’s this snot-flinging moe blob, who happens to be the aforementioned girl who wants to be a dictator when she grows up. She’s a real sociopath, and would be the subject of much controversy if this manga’s upcoming anime adaptation gained enough traction in the community.

Similar to Punpun, the manga hard cuts to many other individuals, but I don’t find them to be that interesting, especially not compared to that cult leader guy from Punpun. The only other interesting character is this one kid who happens to be one of the aliens in the guise of a human. They’re just cool, man.

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Final Verdict: 9.3/10

It’s superficial. It’s ham-fisted. It’s pretentious. But man, despite all that, Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction is so damn good! I wouldn’t be surprised if some critics consider Asano a hack; in fact, I’d believe them. However, when compared to eccentric writers such as NISIOISIN of Monogatari fame, I’m much more willing to respect Asano, since he’s a talented artist and doesn’t just vomit words while intentionally committing writing sins. I recommend it to fans of Punpun, as well as anyone who wants a unique take on the slice-of-life genre.

P.S. back to Disney again after this. Next post on May 20th!

The Owl House (Season 3): The Short and Sweet Finale

by macksamson, posted in Disney Stuff, Western Media

Well, The Owl House has been a fun, albeit predictable ride. Of course, the end of a ride can leave a pretty strong impression of the whole experience. Let’s see if this show finished off on a good note.

When we last left our intrepid heroes, King ended up freeing a mysterious child with god-like powers, known as The Collector, in order to stop Belos’ grand plan. He convinced said Collector to end the draining spell so they could play a made-up game called “Owl House”, with everyone on the Boiling Isles as players. The plan worked, but The Collector ended up capturing King and remaking the entire isles in their own image. In a final, noble sacrifice, King sent Luz and Co. back to the human world.

As anime gets more mainstream worldwide, we get more of its tropes incorporated into modern American cartoons. In The Owl House‘s case, I’m referring to the classic time skip. They thankfully condense what would’ve been numerous filler episodes of tween drama escapades in the human world that meant absolutely nothing in the long run into a montage of the crew living a mundane life. A lot of devout fans probably don’t like the model of three longer episodes, but I think it worked out for the better. 

So, is the plot of this final season any good? Well, for the most part, yes. It resolves plot threads, character arcs, etc. Again, thanks to the three-part structure, it doesn’t waste time, and trims the fat that would fill most final installments. It doesn’t jump the shark as far as I could tell.

However, that’s almost the season’s drawback—scratch that—it’s the whole show’s drawback. Since my review of the first season, I’ve made it clear that The Owl House is pretty generic and mainstream for the. The plot is predictable, even the strongest character arcs are outclassed by something else, and I don’t really think of it as anything other than a fun diversion; nothing to hem and haw about. I’m sure people would point out the elements of horror that the show has tried to capture, however—probably at Disney’s behest—it just isn’t that horrific. Maybe it could traumatize a child, but I’ve heard enough horror stories of 1990s and early 2000s cartoons to know that The Owl House doesn’t hold a candle to the sheer disregard toward children’s mental health back then (ironic how the word “death” wasn’t allowed to be used but the literal stuff of nightmares were perfectly healthy). Heck, even some modern cartoons—like Steven Universe—are still more haunting. By comparison, The Owl House takes absolutely zero creative risk whatsoever.

Sure, I’ll admit that there are some very powerful character moments. They portray anxiety, trauma, and emotional insecurities in a realistic and relatable way. The moments in this final season are no slouch. However… I use the word “very” for a reason, since modifiers like “really” belong somewhere else. You’d have to be willing to let your raw emotion run wild for this one.

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Final Verdict (Whole Series): 8.5/10

The Owl House is an all-around solid show. However, that’s about it. If you look under the macabre imagery, it’s creatively bankrupt. The plot is predictable and unremarkable, the characters—while enjoyable—just never really engaged with me (except for Hootsifer), and—well—the show just isn’t exactly what I’d call a masterpiece. I’d only recommend it if cartoons are your primary fix. Otherwise, save your precious time for bangers like Gravity Falls.

BABYMETAL’s Fourth Album Almost Gave Me an Existential Crisis

by macksamson, posted in Miscellaneous, music

So… I know I have normally rescinded doing single review posts of an album, as opposed to my much better bi-annual highlight reel. However, when writing the first one for 2023, the blurb for BABYMETAL’s newest full-length—The Other One—ended up being more than a blurb. It was a diatribe that went on for at least double—if not triple—the length of all the other blurbs on that post. A lot of it was also… quite ranty. However, I still did want to touch on this album, since I don’t think the target on my back that I got for being one of the band’s critics was big and obnoxious enough. I’ve had a long history of trying to understand why and how they are the statistically most popular Japanese metal band in the entire world, to the point of being considered the face of Japanese metal as a whole. As a weeb, I want to love them, but struggle to do so.

Before getting into the proper review, I must contextualize the band for anyone who somehow hasn’t heard of them. Regardless of what I think about them, a lot of my all-time favorite Japanese metal bands owe their existence to BABYMETAL. The reason is because BABYMETAL invented the idea of fusing idol pop with metal in the first place. This was a novel idea at the time, and it paved the way for far better forms of the same idea to follow. The Other One is their first new album in four years, after a “hibernation” period or whatever.

Initial impressions were good when they released the first single, ‘Divine Attack – Shingeki’ (not related to the metalcore idol group Shingeki). It was as basic as expected, but it hit the right notes without having the chorus be overly infectious. Would I finally be able to unironically love a BABYMETAL album?

The answer to that is: it’s complicated. Positives: the songs are, for the most part, quite good. They are as heavy and catchy as ever. However, The Other One presents a stark change in the band’s sound, where they veer from their idol silliness toward a concept album that supposedly doesn’t play by the rules. As someone who has been open to changes in the styles of bands (and gave Oceans of Slumber’s Southern rock album a perfect score)… I’m not sure I welcome this change. I’ll admit that I had initially considered this a power-metal-influenced album going off of the pre-releases, which is very much not the case now that the full thing is out. However, they still feel as underwhelming as ever, perhaps moreso without the kawaii nonsense; a textbook example of jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none. Sure, it shows that “they’re grown women who aren’t idols any longer,” but at this juncture they kind of become Schrödinger’s Sellouts. What I mean by that is that their new shift is both selling out and not selling out at the same time; they sell out by making a more “normal” sound that’s more accessible across the board, but they also don’t sell out by showing that they are capable of different ideas outside of their established image. It’s an argument that could go on for an eternity. 

Maybe it’s just because I don’t listen to metal 24/7. Other reviews and people on Reddit could easily attribute each track not just to specific subgenres, but to the sounds of specific BANDS, and specific SONGS by said bands. Maybe I’m not music-y enough to tell that the one song “starts off with Architects-like drumming but with riffs from Gojira” or whatever. Honestly, I don’t even know if I want to be able to do that. Do people really enjoy looking at music that way?

Another disappointment is due to the press and myself. There’ve been rumors of them recruiting a third vocalist to replace the girl who left in 2018, and well, those are still rumors. I myself had figured that they were going to hire a dedicated unclean vocalist; something that could greatly help the band’s style. It would’ve been a brilliant move to have the pre-release singles with just the two, then—at launch—change them to rerecorded versions that unexpectedly rip our faces off with the new vocalist. However, that still remains a pipe dream (NOTE: This post was published mere hours before the actual third member was hired). For some reason, people think the two current vocalists are goddesses. Well, they are, but only as a given since they’re women in the metal industry. I know that it’s disrespectful to put women in metal on a tier list, but on the witness stand, I’d stand by my claim that BABYMETAL’s singers are kind of mid in the long run. I’m tone deaf, so I can only go off how they sound on a superficial level. Both of them always came off as lacking in pitch-range and versatility.

I must call myself out on one thing: I kind of have an inflated, unfair expectation of what Japanese music should be. A lot of the music down there is very eccentric and fuses subgenres as a given, to which I basically came up with this motto: “Japanese music is basically avant-garde by default.” As such, I get mad when a Japanese music artist sounds more bog standard. I admit that The Other One will force me to question how much I really like not just Japanese bands, but any band I love that has generally stuck to one style. The Other One almost spits in their faces; they can do all of these crazy, intricate things that defy logic, but are they really that talented if they can’t do something “normal” with equally good results? Would, say, Brand of Sacrifice still be great if they abandoned the Berserk themes, synthesizers, and just did classic blood n’ guts deathcore? Should that even be a metric to measure musicians on? THANKS GIRLS YOU’RE THE BEST.

Still reading? Yeah, this post became a mess, didn’t it? Part of that was from me making the mistake of looking up press releases related to the record. One thing I’ve noticed in a lot of articles is that the band was getting praise for abandoning the idol look; such as Metal Hammer saying they have “shaken off the ‘novelty’ tag” in a positive light. When I listened to this album in full, I was like “Yeah it’s still mid, end of story.” However, I really spiraled when trying to understand the reasons for The Other One‘s acclaim. This is BABYMETAL, the band that turned the very definition of metal on its head… yet they get praised more than ever for being normal? I was tempted to go into conspiracy theory territory, with crackpot theories that the press wants to belittle artists who go out of left field. Maybe what they’ve published don’t even reflect what the human beings behind-the-scenes really think. 

Fortunately, I shouldn’t have to be so jealous of their fame for much longer. For whatever reason, it looks like this decade will be the one where a number of those tragically underrated Japanese metal bands will break through into the global mainstream. BAND-MAID, the group that seemed the closest to achieving this, has toured with Guns N’ Roses, and even opened for The Last Rockstars, a supergroup composed of Japan’s most famous and important rock pioneers. That makes them mainstream now, right? In any case, Broken by the Scream has had their first overseas gigs, hanabie. has been booked for numerous festivals—including the coveted Aftershock—while Lovebites recently returned with their new lineup (and even got acknowledged by the almighty Metal Hammer), and Gyze—now Ryujin—have signed with THE Napalm Records. All of these bands will probably still be in BABYMETAL’s shadow for the time being, even with these achievements, but they’re slowly creeping in on that world conquest.

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Final Verdict: 7.5/10

This band is one of the reasons why I sometimes hate having autism. Loving them has become a way of life as natural as breathing. No one questions BABYMETAL’s greatness, and anyone who does is clearly wrong, and gets choked out immediately by people such as Rob Zombie. The Other One isn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination—I’d argue it’s great even—but on the metric of how popular the band is, the score I’ve given certainly doesn’t seem positive. 

I think I just need to give up. Temple Grandin once said that she needed to accept things about neurotypical people that she didn’t understand, and people’s undying love for BABYMETAL is one of those things. Maybe I’ll give them another chance if they hire a death growler, but for the time being, I shouldn’t milk my vendetta with them any longer. The bottom line is this: nothing by this band sets my heart aflutter. End of story. I myself can’t adequately explain why, and that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. 

I of course recommend Lovebites, BAND-MAID, Broken by the Scream, hanabie., Shingeki, Utsu-P, Ryujin, and other powerful Japanese metal artists over BABYMETAL. May their Fox God have mercy on my soul I guess.

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).

Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen is as Macabre as it Gets (Full Series Review)

by macksamson, posted in Full Series Reviews, Light Novels, Torture Princess

I literally said I was never covering light novels again, yet here I am talking about Keishi Ayasato’s Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen again. Because I can never be consistent, I had the thought of “Well, in the rare chance I manage to finish a light novel series, I can do a full series review of it as if it were a manga, right?” And so here we are. If this becomes a thing, it will be the only time I discuss light novels in any capacity (and if it did, it would be pretty rare because I haven’t had good experiences with most light novels, and all of them are massive money sinks). 

In Torture Princess, a young lad named Kaito Sena gets isekai’d, not through death by truck, but death by abusive relative. The world he ends up in is a hot mess to say the least. Oh, and here’s the kicker: he’s the servant of Elisabeth La Fanu, the Torture Princess who has been tasked with slaying a bunch of demons, afterwhich she is to be publicly executed. 

What immediately jumps out is how edgy Torture Princess is. No, “edgy” doesn’t even describe it. The world in this series is what H.P. Lovecraft would come up with if he was born and raised inside of a Hot Topic. It’s gothic and broken, full of innocent people being killed indiscriminately in over-the-top ways. 

Yes, “over-the-top.” That’s a term that comes up in criticisms of anything that has an excess amount of gore. Seriously, Torture Princess has gore in perhaps the most excess of anything I have ever experienced in my life (it’s at least up there with Chainsaw Man). But you know what, Ayasato commits to it. The prose is both poetic and misanthropic, and always finds creative ways to convey its despair and hatred for humanity. The ways that people are brutally destroyed are varied, creative, and wildly effed up. In fact, I might lose this blog if I listed an example.

However, the plot is perhaps Torture Princess‘s weakest aspect. It starts off straightforward enough, but in typical Japanese fantasy fashion, it goes down a road of conspiracy theories revolving around the in-universe religion that isn’t even subtle about it mirroring Western religions. You can even say that the novels have battle shounen-like escalation. To be perfectly honest, most of the story is pretty tropeish, and since I haven’t reread them since first starting the series, I can admit that I forgot most of the story itself.

However, there are still two things that make Torture Princess really good, one of which is its truly star-studded cast. Kaito is a legitimately complex isekai protagonist, full of insecurities and conflicting emotions. He’s edgy, sure, but having an abusive father who murders him is a pretty good justification this time around. When he confides in his waifus, it actually feels emotional this time, as opposed to fan-service.

Speaking of waifus, Elisabeth is a badass, who can bring on both verbal and physical assault with elegance that would make that old dude in Spy X Family kneel before her. She has tons of baggage, courtesy of society, which makes her an ideal waifu.

Of course, the best girl is the automaton, Hina. She’s perhaps the best yandere of all time, with her manufactured love for Kaito feeling more real than most actual human girls. She’s powerful and priceless in every way. Other waifus include a warrior named Izabella Vicker (whose story I won’t get into because of spoilers), and the rootin’-tootin’ Jeanne de Rais. 

From the peanut gallery is Elisabeth’s nonchalant, nihilistic father, Vlad. He is killed off early on, but his spirit sticks around for the bulk of the series. He’s an ass, but I still love him. Same goes for the demon known as the Kaiser. He just chills while watching the world burn.

The other thing that makes Torture Princess so enjoyable is that it’s actually well-written for a light novel. Like I said before, the prose is poetic. Everything is described in gruesome detail, especially the violence. There are some clever instances of redundant phrases and passages that actually help make the story have more impact. I can’t say why, though; you’ll have to experience it for yourself to see.

Of course, it’s not a review of any media franchise without saying it gets iffy toward the end! The first six volumes of Torture Princess are, for all intents and purposes, a perfect, complete story. However, the final third is a second act that is… weaker in some areas. The action and insanity are still high, but there’s a lot more dialogue, and the story isn’t that much better. I get that the second act is there as an allegory to how humans will keep wanting to destroy themselves for no reason, but it still puts a few knicks in the series’ armor.

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Final Verdict: 9.85/10

Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen is one of the best light novel series I have ever experienced. It’s a dark take on isekai tropes I feel like actually works, and it has some of the best characters in the market. It’s also cartoonishly gorey enough for me to not be able to attribute it to the real world, allowing for some semblance of escapism. I recommend it if you’re sick of those typical harems.

The Death Mage (Volume 1): I Don’t Think This was What they Meant by “Third Time’s the Charm”

by macksamson, posted in Death Mage, Light Novels

This is a crucial post, for it is my second review of something that I have received an advanced copy of, and once again, it’s a One Peace Books publication! It’s got nothing to do with The Rising of the Shield Hero this time; yes, they publish other things, such as Densuke’s The Death Mage. I decided to give it a whirl, not only because it gives me brownie points, but because it actually looks good!

The premise of The Death Mage is extremely complicated for an isekai….so here’s a TL;DR version. Our main character, Hiroto Amamiya, dies along with his classmates in a terrorist attack. Everyone except for him gets second lives complete with superpowers. With nothing in store for him, Hiroto’s second life is as a subject of experimentation with death magic. After he dies again, he’s given a third round, as a half-dark-elf-half-vampire kid named Vandal. His death magic carries over by the way (this IS an isekai after all).

So… The Death Mage is a lot. In typical isekai fashion, Vandal is a baby who still has his memories of being Hiroto. Once he’s able to use his death magic, he’s able to summon an army of undead animals. I love this angle, because it basically makes him “Stewie Griffin but a necromancer”. After his mom, Dalshia, is killed, he saves her spirit, and plans to make a hot new body for her. So… he’s not really like Stewie because he actually loves his mom.

As far as the narrative is concerned, The Death Mage is a traditional isekai with a slow start. As with the start of Shield Hero, Vandal can’t do crap, and pretty much has to rely on his army to get tasks done. Unfortunately, for the many isekai critics, XP gained by his minions is shared with Vandal, circumventing his own inability to gain XP, which will inevitably make him into your typical overpowered protagonist. Despite how edgy it feels, with all this death magic and revenge narrative and whatnot, The Death Mage isn’t too edgy. For example, he exacts vengeance on the townsfolk who killed his mom not by murdering them all, but by destroying their economy. It’s a more creative play, and helps ground Vandal’s character (and critics like grounded characters, don’t they?).

Well, since I seamlessly segued from talking about the story to talking about the characters, I might as well discuss them next! For the most part, it’s just Vandal—whom I already discussed—and his mom. Dalshia is what you’d expect from the main character’s isekai mom; hot beyond all reason, and seemingly incapable of not loving her son no matter what he does. Fortunately, because she’s dead (wow, I never thought I’d use those four words in that order), we are freed from the usual… er… tropes that come with adult characters being reincarnated as babies pretty early on. Other than that, she’s basically the exposition dump character. Exposition is more justified this time, since Vandal grew up in the boonies, and has no other way to learn about the world, since his half-vampire-ness puts a target on his back. The best character by far is Sam, a spirit who joins Vandal and possesses a carriage, literally becoming Vandal’s own talking car.

The biggest problem with The Death Mage, as with Shield Hero, is the length of this volume, assuming that it’s the precedent for the rest of the series. It’s over four-hundred pages, and like Shield Hero, there’s a lot of fat that can afford to be trimmed. Painstakingly showing the different steps of Vandal’s journey is one thing, but in isekai tradition, it has too many POV swaps that tell the entire lifestories of characters that we don’t need to hear. Sure, some of these involve plot-relevant characters, unlike So I’m a Spider, So What? which literally gives useless NPCs the floor. However, a lot of what’s told us is simple enough to derive from context. Take Sam, for instance. We know that bandits killed his daughters and that Vandal avenged them; that’s his notice for joining Vandal. Yet, later on, he goes on this whole spiel about it, even though we already know all that’s necessary to know about him at that given time. Why do isekai love pulling crap like this?!

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Verdict: 8/10

So far, The Death Mage is a pretty harmless isekai series. It sets the foundation for a solid story, and has some good worldbuilding. I am quite interested to see how Vandal’s abilities grow, even if I may not have the time to continue the series. If you wanna experience The Death Mage for yourself, then read the first volume when it comes out on September 27th!

Once again, I thank One Peace Books for its generous offer. 

No. 5: Spectacularly Weird

by macksamson, posted in Full Reviews, Manga

If you’re an anime nerd, you’ve probably heard of Taiyo Matsumoto’s classic manga Tekkonkinkreet; it was made into a critically acclaimed movie after all. Of course, me being me, I instead gained an interest in No. 5, a sci-fi manga of Matsumoto’s that I doubt any Westerner would’ve even heard of if it weren’t for Viz’s recent omnibus publication; it didn’t get adapted, so it might as well not exist over here. I don’t even know what it’s about, except that I should expect it to be weird because Matsumoto is famous for weirdness. Well, when it comes to Japanese literature, I shouldn’t expect anything less, should I?

No. 5 is set in the distant future, where the peace is protected by the Rainbow Peace Brigade, an elite squadron of genetically modified soldiers. The best of the best are designated under the numbers one through nine, and they all answer to an old man in a pair of bunny pajamas. Things aren’t so peaceful, however, when the titular No. 5 kidnaps and flees with a strange woman for no apparent reason. He travels with her as the rest of the Rainbow Brigade hunts him down.

Lemme tell you, this manga is as weird as it looks, if not weirder. Matsumoto’s art is strange and extraordinary, operating under no rules whatsoever; sometimes it’s detailed, sometimes it’s cartoony, and sometimes you don’t even know what you’re looking at. What’s even better is that panel changes tend to jump from POV-to-POV several times per page, all to maximize your confusion.

To add to that confusion, No. 5 doesn’t exactly give you exposition dumps. All the characters talk as if you—the reader—already understand how the world works, and you have to adapt fast. Everything is context-sensitive, and I’m sure as hell I missed a lot of important nuances during my read-through of the manga. There was probably some allegory to the true meaning of being human in there somewhere, and it flew right over my head.

Fortunately, this is a case where you don’t really need to know what’s going on. I was pretty damn engaged with the story despite being confused the whole time. The reason is all in the aforementioned art. Matsumoto really knows how to keep an audience on their toes no matter what’s happening, and there’s always something happening. The plot is followable on the most basic level, but good luck figuring out the purpose of any of it.

Because of how confusing the manga is, I don’t exactly know what to think of the characters in No. 5. The titular character is a very hard-boiled ex-cop-type, who doesn’t seem capable of any emotion except hard-boiled-ness. Unfortunately, we don’t exactly get the full details on why he wants to protecc the woman, Matryoshka, like an anime nerd’s favorite waifu; when we get the full backstory, it actually skips(?) the time between No. 5 first meeting her and ultimately kidnapping her. 

It’s also not easy to tell why he loves Matryoshka so much, or rather, why everyone in-universe seems to loves her. You could argue that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, since she’s not the stereotypical ideal woman in terms of physical features. However… she’s kind of awful? She acts like the perfect picture of innocence, exclaiming everything she sees like a child, but it seems like she just follows whoever gives her food, as evidenced by a part where this one guy grabs her and she doesn’t resist at all. 

The rest of the Rainbow Brigade are even more confusing. We get into the heads of every one of the numbered people. It’s natural to assume that the ones who die earlier are less impactful, but it doesn’t really matter. I don’t get No. 9, who dies first, any better than any of the others. I feel like the most impactful ones are the No. 4s, two twins who create hallucinations, and No. 1, who is… well, I probably shouldn’t spoil him. 

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Final Verdict: 8.75/10

No. 5 is really something. It’s surreal and intense, and always leaves more questions than answers. If you want to experience a weird, old manga, then No. 5 will serve that purpose well. 

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.