Tag: meta

Baba Is You Is Fun And Insane

by macksamson, posted in Full Reviews, Gaming

If you’re reading this, then I have managed to complete enough of this ludicrous indie puzzler to write a review of it. I had originally played Baba Is You on my Switch with my sister. However, time caught up to both of us, and since she got her own Switch with her data transferred to it (since we used to share mine), I could no longer play—or finish—Baba. Because I thought it was such a great puzzle game (with a LOT of bang for your buck), I had decided to get it on Steam, and play it over again (since we only got about less than a third of the stages done before). And, well, I both hate and love it to death.

There really isn’t a premise, nor plot to Baba Is You. Simply put, Baba is you. You is Baba. And Baba, who is You, wants to Win. That’s about it.

So, how does Baba, who is You, Win? It’s simple, really. Just touch the Flag, which is Win. However, some things get in the way, and sometimes, there isn’t Baba, nor a Flag. That’s fine, though, because that’s the whole point. Every level has an assortment of words that can be pushed like blocks, and… Okay, I should stop teasing since you probably read the description of this game already. Long overdue TL;DR: you form sentences that dictate the rules of every level.

This is definitely not the first game to be so meta, but Baba Is You is one of the best when it comes to this kind of gameplay. This simple idea branches out into an incredibly in-depth puzzle game that teaches you through level design. Every time you think you’ve seen everything, the game pulls something even crazier. 

The way to Win is for You to be touching the object that is Win. While Flag is most commonly Win, that can—and often has to be—changed. Baba doesn’t necessarily have to be You, either. You can be a rock, a crate, or the entire level, as long as the words are there to form that statement. Just be careful not to touch anything that is Defeat, or dislodge whatever statement dictates your existence, because that’s how you die in this game. Fortunately, a simple press of the X or Y button will begin to undo your actions, up to the very beginning of the level.

If the game sounds hard to you, that’s because it is. Word of warning, Baba Is You is NOT for people who have busy careers, unless you want to look at a guide. Figuring out puzzles on your own feels good, but that takes time, and we don’t have that much of it these days unless you’re a kid. In any case, Baba Is You’s puzzles are brutally mind-bending, and for the most part, ingeniously clever. The biggest battle is figuring out certain nuances with the game’s mechanics, such as what rules get priority when assigned to the same object; for example, something that is Defeat cannot kill you if it is Stop, Push, or Weak. The game also expects you to create some incredibly bizarre scenarios that completely disregard everything you understand about videogaming itself. Unfortunately, the difficulty is quite inconsistent. Either that, or it’s just a matter of how each individual thinks. I’ve had more trouble with some of the “normal” levels than some of the super-secret psychopath levels in the late-game!

Fortunately, the game is pleasing enough to look at to where it’s really hard to get mad. It has a very minimalistic pixel-art look that’s surreal and dreamy. Enabling the “wiggle” animations (or whatever they’re called) makes Baba Is You feel very cartoony and alive. The soundtrack is also very chill and atmospheric.

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Final Verdict: 9.25/10

Baba Is You will probably be my favorite puzzle game of all time. I haven’t gotten 100% yet; thank the passage of time for that, but I at least beat it. Baba Is You gives you insane bang for your buck: 226 levels for 14.99 USD. If you like puzzle games, there’s no reason to not play Baba for that deal alone!

Kakushigoto First Impressions (Volumes 1-4)

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Manga

When reading ecchi or hentai manga, sometimes it makes you wonder, “What would the mangaka’s relatives think? Do they even have kids?” Well, that topic is explored quite thoroughly in the manga about a mangaka, Kakushigoto: My Dad’s Secret Ambition, published in English by Kodansha Comics.

In Kakushigoto, a dad by the name of Kakushi Goto (wow, title drop), is a famous mangaka… of hardcore ecchi. The problem is his little daughter, Hime. Will he be able to protect his secret? Or will his princess (literally, because that’s what the word “Hime” means) be scarred for life?

Surprisingly enough, Kakushigoto proved to be a much more confusing read than I thought. For starters, the opening pages of each volume show Hime already having discovered her father’s secret. It took me a while to realize that these are flashforwards, which shows that he’s going to be fighting an uphill battle throughout the manga. Another issue, which is moreso a nitpick, is that the chapters are really short. I’m not someone who understands manga serialization… but according to MyAnimeList, Kakushigoto runs in a monthly magazine, which sounds really counterproductive for something with such short chapters. The third and final quirk with it is that the chapters… weren’t compiled correctly (at least not in the North American release)? At certain points, the chapter count will randomly reset midvolume. The first time this happens is towards the end of volume two, where it says “Volume 2 Issue 1”. The entirety of volume three is still considered volume two which seriously bugged me.

But as far as content is concerned, Kakushigoto certainly has a wild sense of humor. Unlike father-daughter manga such as Yotsuba&!, this one goes a bit more out of left field. In the first volume alone, Kakushi goes bananas over one of his editors wearing a lewd shirt in front of Hime, and he also ends up getting hunted down by Hime and her friends because he saved some cat with a life preserver. 

However, Kakushi’s secret isn’t the only sitcom situation going on in the manga. Kakushi builds a harem of sorts without even realizing it. Because he has a terrible way with words, a number of women think he’s hitting on them. He has no idea that this is happening, and it’s funny to see how they interact with him and each other. 

The manga can also be strangely depressing. The content of this narrative is supposedly based on the author’s real life experiences. It portrays a number of things, like the feeling of not being popular, or the state of the industry itself. Kakushigoto makes fun of this stuff just as often as it’s brutally honest about it. The mangaka also has a lot of rants throughout the volumes as well that go deeper into their psyche.

The characters prove to be surprisingly enjoyable. Kakushi is just a single dad who wants all the best for his little (*cough* marketable *cough*) daughter, and he goes to crazy lengths to be the best dad he can. His co-workers also have lovable personalities. They’re all quirky enough to have substance, but not to the point where they’re not “unrealistic like those battle shounen trash protags”. 

The art may be off-putting to some. Kakishigoto is drawn in a minimalistic, vector-like style. The shading appears to be entirely through a preset tool in Clip Studio, and the proportions are definitely odd. However, the girls are uniquely cute looking (even if they have same-face syndrome), and the characters are surprisingly expressive.

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Current Verdict: 8.25/10

Kakishigoto: My Dad’s Secret Ambition is definitely a different slice-of-life. It’s a weird combination of wholesome and cynical that’s definitely not seen too often. I recommend it if you want a father-daughter slice-of-life that isn’t just “Hey look at my moe blob and buy my stuff!”

Millennium Actress Movie Review

by macksamson, posted in Anime Movies, Miscellaneous

I stated in my Tokyo Godfathers review that it was the “best anime movie I’ve seen since Ghost in the Shell“. As such, it was a no-brainer that would watch another Satoshi Kon flick, Millennium Actress, on Kanopy, from a completely different license holder than GKids. Going into it, I was aware that Tokyo Godfathers was a black sheep in Kon’s career, and that this movie was going to be much darker and stranger than I could possibly expect.

In Millennium Actress, two documentarians, Genya Tachibana and Kyouji Ida, are given the opportunity to interview retired actress Chiyoko Fujiwara. The old bird gladly divulges her life story to them, and those two end up along for quite a ride.

And I mean that literally. The movie seems straightforward at first glance, and that’s because it is. Minor spoilers: it doesn’t take long before the men interviewing her are literally IN Chiyoko’s flashbacks along with her past self.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get more meta, here’s a real hum-dinger. The bulk of Chiyoko’s story isn’t just told through flashbacks, but additionally through assorted scenes in her movies. These are seamlessly integrated into the actual plot, which is quite impressive (also, it’s convenient that all of her movies had similar premises). In these sequences, Tachibana ends up inexplicably planted into each given movie as an extra, further adding to the meta aspect.

Unfortunately, the biggest issue with Millennium Actress is Chiyoko’s story itself. The main conflict of the movie involves Chiyoko trying her butt off to find a tall, dark, and handsome guy she met for five minutes when she was, like, twelve. It’s so annoying when a female character gets her heart set aflutter by these idealized bozos. Sure, she was young and dumb, but the guy looks like he’s at least fifteen years older than her, which is kinda weird. Look, I don’t hem and haw over these intentionally controversial old-on-young people romances, like the Monica and Richard thing from Friends, but at least they GOT TO KNOW EACH OTHER FIRST.

This doesn’t help her as a character either. While it’s always fun [for Westerners] to watch someone descend into madness, her issues seem cringey and annoying. At least characters like Citizen Kane had REAL issues, his case being his own mother selling him to the freaking BANK, or Mildred Pierce, whose case I won’t mention because it’s a spoiler. Overall, Chiyoko comes off as a whiny brat throughout the film.

Fortunately, the two reporters are better. They have great chemistry with each other, and add a lot of humor to the movie that very much reminds me of Tokyo Godfathers. Also, they sort of represent the audience in some way. Tachibana comes off as the self-proclaimed intellectual who is totally into whatever the movie throws at him, and Ida acts like the trend-savvy, filthy casual who wouldn’t know REAL art even if it placed his head into its bosom. The fact that I’m not waxing poetic about Kon’s “Schrodinger’s Cat, quantum-reality-warping transcendentalist genius” or whatever means that I’m CLEARLY more like Ida in this case.

When it comes to visuals, despite being only a year or two before Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress looks much more aged. But even then, it still looks better than pretty much every TV anime these days. It also seems that Kon’s movies have a signature face style, similar to that of Ghibli. I hope that I don’t get sick of it if I choose to watch any more Kon movies.

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Final Verdict: 8.85/10

While I didn’t enjoy it as much as Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress was still a great movie, and proof that this Kon guy knew what he was doing. However, when you take away the whole “warping between past, present, and movie scenes” thing, it amounts to little more than a bog-standard tragic love story. This brings up the question of what’s more important in storytelling: The story or the telling? I’m a bit of a weird combination of both, but you’ll need to lean a lot toward the latter in order to enjoy Millennium Actress.