Tag: relatable

SEASON: a letter to the future is a Bicycle Ride of Emotions

by macksamson, posted in Full Reviews, Gaming

If you’ve read my review of Spiritfarer, then you’d know that it takes a LOT for a videogame to make me cry. SEASON: a letter to the future is another one of those games; narrative-driven art pieces meant to change your life forever. However, SEASON is more than just walking forward and watching the assets do everything for you like in What Remains of Edith Finch. Read on to see why.

In SEASON: a letter to the future, the world is about to end. Apparently this happens all the time, but it doesn’t affect Estelle’s idyllic village. Estelle decides to go on a spiritual journey to record the world in its current state before it ends. Thus, she leaves her home to accomplish this task.

While I normally don’t care about story, such a thing is vital to make indie games like this enjoyable. However, before getting into the plot, I need to preface this by saying that I personally don’t dig the core themes in the game. It’s partially about media preservation, which is something I’ve grown to care very little about for an admittedly dumb reason. I’ve forgotten much of my childhood, especially a lot of the really bad bits (specifically school).

However, much of my disdain toward my own childhood didn’t come until adulthood. A lot of the YouTubers I watch were kids and teens back when I was growing up, and through them, I’ve learned of some really cursed things that I was alive for. As an example, my first session on SEASON was on the day I watched the episode of the Disc Only Podcast where they talked about some TV commercials from the 1990s and 2000s that would be considered horrifyingly unhealthy by today’s sensibilities. People tend to laugh hysterically when harkening back to these, but I honestly feel really uncomfortable. To think that an entire board room of adults in a marketing department thought that this stuff was A-okay… it just makes my skin crawl. I know it sounds dumb, but it’s through this that I really don’t care for media preservation. This kind of extends to actual personal memories. While I’d like to remember the best part of my childhood while I’m alive, why would I care if a complete stranger in a post-apocalyptic world received those memories after I’m gone?

Besides media preservation, SEASON has a much bigger, obvious theme. You could probably tell from the fact that these seasons have happened multiple times that the game is an allegory to change. It’s pretty apropos, since we’re four years into the most recent season: COVID-19. Anyone who was born before the pandemic should immediately be able to relate to SEASON. After all, it really did feel like the entire world transformed into a different planet overnight, and we’re still feeling those changes. I have not gotten over the trauma from 2020-2021 to this day. And now, another season in the form of the war in Ukraine is occuring before we’ve even had a chance to recover from THIS season!

In terms of the story therein, SEASON is what you’d expect from this ilk. Every line of dialogue and narration is as poignant and poetic, as it should be. I normally call this writing pretentious, but I actually didn’t mind it in SEASON. It allows for open interpretation, and you could have some interesting debates with a friend over the themes brought up in this game.

In SEASON, there are more-or-less five characters, including Estelle. Estelle is basically the narrator, and she takes notes from Edith Finch; every sentence is super esoteric and poetic. You never really know anything about her beyond three objects you choose to imbue into a pendant at the beginning of the game, and you don’t know what she’s thinking throughout her journey. While it seems like a lack of character development, in a game like this, it’s probably better that she keeps her thoughts to herself instead of a lot of times when writers appear to impose predefined takeaways into the audience.

The other four characters whom you interact with for the bulk of the story are the last people to evacuate from the main overworld, Tieng Valley. They’re what you’d expect from an indie game like this; relatable in every way possible. They are no doubt the weakest aspect of the game’s story, basically being templates for the audience to connect with from every angle; loss, moving to a new home, uncertainty, etc. The reason is because you basically show up to do their quests, and then… that’s it. You can speak to two of them and show them some of the stuff you’ve found, but it’s just cosmetic (Matyora is actually pretty great though).

Before we get to gameplay, I must praise SEASON‘s visuals. Despite being a world about to end the next day, it sure looks nice. It has a lovely cel-shaded look that makes every corner of the place look like a painting. It’s not the most novel style, but it beats out any of those photorealistic games nonetheless.

There are many games, like Breath of the Wild, where I go into them telling myself to enjoy every detail of the world in order to appreciate it. However, those games, especially Breath of the Wild, have so much to do and collect that I just never had the time to do that. However, in SEASON, those details essentially ARE the collectibles.

The gameplay is divided into two sections. First, you freely explore the world on your bike and collect anything you can find. Theoretically, you can take any photo and record any sound you want. However, there are specific sights and sounds that are actually considered “collectibles”, and you generally want those. Fortunately, these are pretty easy to find, as long as you are explorative. Visual landmarks stand out very well, while the game’s excellent sound design organically points you toward relevant audio keepsakes.

I’ll admit that recording stuff in SEASON felt really engaging, exciting, and rewarding, despite the latter not actually existing in gameplay. Each area of the game is thoughtfully handcrafted to be rife with metaphorical roses to stop and smell. You are meant to just drop everything you’re doing and just do nothing for minutes at a time. This is also a relatable aspect of the game’s story, especially in events where you can choose to record a scene or just listen. As someone who used to bring a big fancy camera to Disney, I wholeheartedly understand the pros and cons of actually choosing to preserve a moment in time versus just living that moment.

After you collect enough stuff, you can place them in that area’s page in Estelle’s journal. This part is really fun, and highly customizable. When you fill the Keepsakes gauge by finding the relevant capture points, then it is considered complete (although it doesn’t take much to get the bare minimum). It also unlocks stamps for that page as well, so you can really make it look nice.

However, the caveat comes in the form of the most justified use of bad inventory management in all of videogames. Estelle’s journal is not a College Ruled notebook; it’s a tiny little scrapbook. To keep with the game’s themes, the devs intentionally put an excessive amount of keepsakes throughout each area. As a result, you must constantly decide what stays and what goes. It’s actually pretty tough, since a number of keepsakes come together to frame the full extent of the game’s plot. The biggest battle is with the text that comes with each capture; you can’t shrink the font size.

This deters you from getting everything. Don’t worry completionists; you don’t have to in order to complete this game! Getting 100% is so easy that even someone like me was able to do it just by naturally exploring around. There aren’t even achievements related to filling the scrapbook whatsoever. 

If there is any big flaw I find with SEASON, it’s the same flaw I have with pretty much every philosophical narrative like this: us. One of the things I really resent is that we—in a pop culture sense—are aware of so much about good, evil, life, death, capitalism, the corruption of the media, climate change, yet… as is pointed out in the Tomorrowland movie, no one bothers to fix any of it. We just consume the latest thing, maybe write a pretentious review of it to make us look smart (I actually went out of my way to read reviews of things game to confirm that they were pretentious, and boy howdy were they), and then move on; I at least know I’m not going to be “transformed” by my experience. I just couldn’t let that feeling go during my playthrough of SEASON. In a sense, it could be interpreted as an allegory to the rapidly shifting “seasons” of pop culture, where the new constantly eats the old alive. SEASON, a game about remembering and forgetting stuff, will probably be forgotten, perhaps this year. However, not to toot my own horn, I will make sure as hell I do not forget the unique experience that is this game.

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Final Verdict: 9.5/10

SEASON: a letter to the future didn’t make me cry, but it is still a fabulous game that has helped me appreciate the unique and important role that this type of game plays in the community. Other than some frame drops in specific spots, it is an extremely well-crafted little story rife with universal messages. The price of admission (24.99 USD on Steam, and 29.99 USD on PlayStation) might seem steep, but if you play it the way it was intended, that price is well worth it. Besides, you probably paid 59.99 USD for Metroid Dread which isn’t even ten hours long. This one really is a no-brainer.

Steven Universe Full Franchise Review (Main Series, Movie, and Future)

by macksamson, posted in Western Media

I have a confession to make. Steven Universe, which I only finished just recently, is the first Cartoon Network show I have ever watched. I never watched Dexter’s Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Pickle Rick… nothing! I didn’t even watch anime on Adult Swim. So, with that out of the way, let’s check out Steven Universe!

It seems that Steven Universe just throws you in, right from season one, episode one. Basically, the titular Steven is a half-human, half-gem-boy; a product of his late mother, Rose Quartz, and this fat old guy named Greg. He lives with three gem ladies- Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl (AND STEVEN! Sorry… had to reference the opening)- and they protect the world from monsters and stuff.

If you couldn’t tell, Steven Universe is confusing. In my process of watching the show, I realized that the episodes seem famously difficult to watch in chronological order. The episodes weren’t just aired slightly out of order, but streaming services additionally have a number of massive continuity errors with the way they’re listed. Fortunately, the wiki has an episode list (in addition to a very comprehensive Reddit post) that you can use. Hulu is by far the best place to watch it, because it has the episodes listed individually, and not in two-episode sets, which avoids a bulk of the ordering issues.

But even if you watch it in the proper order (which I presume I did?), it really does throw you right into everything with no context, like I said before. Speaking of context, it’s almost as if the show expects you to figure out what’s going on THROUGH the context of what happens. I feel like that’s too much of an expectation for a cartoon, especially since 2010s cartoons have more involved narratives. But hey, the first few episodes do a good job at establishing a basic aspect of the premise, and how the series works in general.

Disregarding the confusion with the watching order, how good is Steven Universe anyway? Well, for starters, it is perhaps the slowest burn that I’ve seen in a cartoon. The first season more or less has all my problems with season one of Avatar: The Last Airbender; a lot of self-contained narratives, and not a lot of core narrative. The first episode set with a real sense of plot progression is episodes 25 and 26, but after that, it’s business as usual for a while.

One thing I noticed in Steven Universe was that I didn’t exactly find it funny. A lot of the humor, other than stuff from the gem ladies, is kind of flat. Apart from a couple of blips of cleverness, I didn’t exactly laugh all that much. But maybe… the show was not meant to be funny.

The big surprise is that Steven Universe has a bizarrely engaging core narrative. When the show actually tries to ramp it up, it’s a darn good time. There’s a lot of interesting stuff that they build up to when it comes to Rose Quartz’s backstory, as well as the lore of the gems themselves. The show also builds a more and more involved narrative over time. My biggest problem with it is that the gem world ends up being this super-dystopian society where there’s no free will, and they end up being all like “Wow, Earth and humans are so special and wonderful, my world sucks!” It bothered me as someone who doesn’t want to believe that humanity is unique in the cosmos, but in the end, it’s not that big of a deal.

Steven Universe also tackles one of the most relatable themes in human existence: identity. The most interesting mechanic of the gems is their ability to fuse with each other, creating new and powerful gems with their own fused personalities. In addition to that, Steven is technically his own mother, whose past ends up getting… rather tumultuous. Plus, there are multiple of the same gems that exist at one time. The show begs asking questions about “what is the self” and all that pretentious junk, but Steven Universe kind of just shows the fusion for what it is instead of waxing its own poetic. 

More than in any cartoon I’ve watched, I was seriously caught off guard by the characters. Steven starts off as your typical, overly-optimistic kid. But after a while, he ends up involved in some of the best and most emotional scenes in the series. However, he is kind of a Gary Sue. One running theme with the show is that he resolves a lot of conflicts verbally. While it does fit with the core themes of the story, as someone who had finished Kimetsu no Yaiba– with its overly righteous main protagonist that everyone, even his enemies, loves- I was a bit bothered by Steven when he’d wax sentimental mumbo jumbo.

Steven’s father, Greg, is also a great character who’s constantly had to live with the loss of Rose Quartz. The lead female human is a girl named Connie. She initially comes off as that “outcast girl who has the main character walk into her life and BOOM! all girls want to be her”, but her relationship with Steven is a lot cuter than that contrived romance. She ended up growing on me more than I thought she would. There are also a wide variety of other townsfolk, from Ronaldo the conspiracy theorist, to the enigmatic Onion, who all have memorable personalities.

But the real gems of the show are, well, the gems. Pearl seems cool and collected, but she has some serious O.C.D. Amethyst is the fun, rambunctious one who also happens to be an outlier of the trio. And Best Girl Garnet is very deadpan, but sometimes has some of the best one-liners. However, underneath their hard outer shells (pun intended) are some surprisingly well-fleshed out characters. They go through some serious issues, and unlike other cartoons, it actually felt engaging to, well, engage in their character arcs.

But they’re not the only gems. After season one, we see some new faces, such as Lapis Lazuli and Peridot. Lapis is kind of the tortured waifu who needs to be taught happiness by the main character, and is probably my least favorite gem. Peridot is a typical tsundere, but it’s funny to see her misinterpret aspects of human culture. There are many other gems, but. I won’t mention them because they don’t show up until over halfway through the story.

When it comes to visuals, Steven Universe is very appealing. The fights are well-animated, and everyone has memorable character design. The one complaint I have with this aspect is that people’s nostrils look kind of like slits instead of nostrils. But hey, a nitpick is a nitpick.

And speaking of nitpicks, I’m about to destroy my reputation in one fell swoop. Steven Universe has a good amount of musical numbers. And to be honest… I’m not a big fan of most of them. I know I just said something awful, but hey, I said “most”. There were a couple of songs that I liked, but I won’t name them, specifically because I don’t know what any of their names actually are (for the record, at least one of the songs I do like is the fan-favorite in the series).

But if you noticed the title of this post, you’d know that Steven Universe is not over, even if you finish the final episode of the main series. Set two years after the finale (and thanks goodness it is; Steven’s voice doesn’t sound whiny anymore), Steven Universe: The Movie initially comes off as cash-savvy filler, but has just as much plot relevance as the main story. Overall, it’s a fun movie that also has some of the better (and more abundant) musical numbers in the series. It can theoretically be skipped, but one of its characters appears late in Steven Universe Future, the concluding mini-series of the franchise.

Following the movie, Future attempts to bring final closure to Steven’s character arc, and teaches a number of additional life lessons. It tackles a lot of his emotional insecurities as his powers start becoming as unstable as his mental state. It starts off kind of hit-or-miss, but it ramps up to the highest emotional state in the entirety of the series. It’s kind of stupid that (at this time) the only way to watch Future all the way through is to buy it on Amazon Prime Video, but it’s well worth spending, provided that you sufficiently enjoyed the main series.

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Final Verdict (Average of all Media): 8.5/10

Normally, I cannot stand narratives that deal with timeless, “relatable” themes like growing up and identity. But Steven Universe tackles them in a thoughtful and honest way that isn’t merely just mooching off of people who want to see themselves in a fictional setting. I’ve grown to be able to respect Cartoon Network because of their willingness to air a show like Steven Universe. And if it weren’t for the end of COVID-19, I probably would’ve tried watching stuff like Rick and Morty. But alas, it was not meant to be; TV isn’t my primary calling after all. Anyways, I recommend Steven Universe to those who want a different cartoon, one that isn’t there just to numb your children with fart jokes.

Chainsaw Man First Impressions (Chapters 1-37)

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Manga

Aaaah, you gotta love a good Jump manga. Unfortunately, a lot of them have similar running themes, such as having a goody-two-shoes main protagonist; a privileged young man that anyone can relate to. But a new series, Chainsaw Man, published in English by Viz, looks to be attempting to tell its story with an utter turd of a protagonist instead.

In Chainsaw Man, a dreg named Denji makes a living by hunting devils, with the help of a chainsaw-dog-devil named Pochita. But “makes a living” can be read as “barely scraping by”, for he’s shouldering a serious debt from his late father. However, when he’s almost cut to pieces, he fuses with Pochita and becomes a chainsaw man, after which he is taken under the wing of Makima, a beautiful girl from an official team of devil hunters.

Normally, I’d go over the overarching plot as it is. However, Chainsaw Man’s appeal seems to revolve entirely around the characters and their interactions. Otherwise, it’s the standard Jump fare; bad thing appears, kill bad thing, get stronger. There is some strange fascination with Denji shared between Makima and some of the other devils, but that’s likely going to be an endgame reveal.

Like I mentioned before, Denji is a very unusual protagonist for Jump. He’s a guy who’s down on his luck, who gets lucky when he gets to work for the devil hunters. However, a lot of people there treat him poorly. It’s even made very apparent that Makima only sees him as a dog. But hey, he takes it because it’s all he’s got. He’s not someone who has a lofty goal, like becoming the #1 Pirate Devil Hunter King of the Hokage Wizard National Volleyball Basketball Baseball Champion; no, he just wants to… er… touch a breast. Thing is, he does get that very early on in the story, but he realizes that it was a shallow dream. He’s still as relatable as any Jump protag, but instead of throwing women on his lap and expecting the reader to pretend to be him, Chainsaw Man shows the more vulnerable side of the emotionally insecure target demographic in Denji.

Denji is treated like crap at first, but he starts to grow closer to his squadmates over time, all of which have devil powers like him. Most of them aren’t too interesting, except for Best Girl Power (Power’s her actual name). She’s a fiend- a devil that’s possessing a corpse. She’s awesome, and her interactions with Denji are some of the best moments throughout the entirety of the manga.

Makima is very beautiful and mysterious. Denji’s whole MO is to kiss her, but we- the readers- get an exclusive sneak preview of what kind of a person she is. A lot of bits and pieces of intrigue regarding her pop up every now and then, and I’m curious as to what’s going on with her.

The art is also pretty good. It has a very rough and gritty style. The devils’ designs are very unsettling, and there’s an uncharacteristically large amount of gore. The action is great as well! And most importantly, the girls are very cute.

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Current Verdict: 8.15/10

Chainsaw Man has a lot of great ideas, but at this time, I’m a bit underwhelmed. It has a number of risque tropes that wouldn’t normally be in Jump, but are prevalent in Jump Plus or any seinen magazine. And that’s why Chainsaw Man stands out; because it’s in Jump. I gotta admit that I’m curious about the direction it could head in, so I’ll keep my eye on it for a while (let’s see how much sooner this ends than Kimetsu no Yaiba, which’ll likely run for ten more years at least).

Onward Movie Review

by macksamson, posted in Disney Stuff, Western Media
The movie poster (that I don't own).

It’s been a hot minute since Disney came up with a new I.P. I didn’t know much about Pixar’s Onward, nor did I have high expectations, but I watched it because it was actually NEW. But hey, trailers for Pixar movies tend to not do the actual film justice. Is it the same case here?

In a fantasy world that’s evolved to the 21st Century, two brothers-  emotionally insecure Ian, and history buff Barley- are given an ancient staff, complete with the instructions for a spell that can bring their deceased father back to life for twenty-four hours. Unfortunately, they do a bad, and dad only comes back as pants and a pair of ugly purple socks. Now they must take Barley’s beat up van on a quest to find the MacGuffin that’ll allow them to recast the spell before dad is lost forever.

The idea of a fantasy world with modern technology isn’t even remotely new, but Pixar pulled it off in a way that felt fresh in its own right. It’s hilarious to see centaurs having to drive cars, and pixies being swole and in biker gangs. But even then, this is probably one of the least interesting Pixar worlds. It’s not really the movie’s fault; this movie has Inside Out and Coco to compete with, and those movies were pretty darn inventive. 

But in terms of narrative, Onward definitely exceeds expectations. There is a lot of great dialogue, and most action scenes make a surprising use of insignificant details peppered throughout the film. For the most part. Ian’s magic staff made me cringe, for it was another case of, “Okay, you can be good at magic now. No other time, though. Sorry, bub.” It does make one “death” later in the movie feel like a heap of shock value given the circumstances.

Of course, Disney and Pixar are still Disney and Pixar. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen this one. Onward doesn’t have one, but two of those out-of-left-field drama scenes that I always roll my eyes at. I get that it’s character building and crap, but you can only enjoy something so much after seeing it the thousandth time.

The characters are what you’d expect. Ian and Barley are a solid example of the “two-brothers-who-are-at-odds-with-each-other-then-realize-that-they’re-each-other’s-best-friend” trope. Sure, they’re no Edward and Alphonse, or even Mutta and Hibito, but they have some good chemistry with each other given the time restriction of a feature film. Dad is also enjoyable, despite never having a single line of dialogue beyond a cassette tape. Pixar’s prowess makes his mannerisms in such a way to where it’s easy to understand what he’s thinking. 

Surprisingly, the best character ended up being the mom. She’s not an absolute a-hole, nor is she a burden on the main characters. When she finds out about their quest, she goes full Marlin and becomes a freaking bada** in the process of finding them.

The visuals are stellar as always. They always do such a good job with expressions and movement that it’s not even possible to be blown away by Pixar anymore. Because of that, Onward almost feels like a step backwards, visually. Disney in general is all about pushing the envelope, but in their defense, you can only push it so far until it’s just pushed all the way completely. Maybe they were using some [insert advanced 3D modeling mumbo jumbo here] that a pleb like me wouldn’t recognize.

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Final Verdict: 8.5/10

Onward is a great movie, and a great NEW I.P. It’s not the best Pixar movie, but it’s still better than a lot of crap your kids could be consuming. I recommend it for any tier of Disney fan, and for anyone who likes a feel-good story.