The appeal of the Pokemon games.

I recently wrote an absolutely gushing review of Pokemon Sun, in which I praised it for just how much of a joy it is to play. In the same review, I mentioned Pokemon Black, and how its in-depth story and self-reflection on the series' internal logic made it appealing.

It really made me think: Why do I like the Pokemon games? I mean, there's a pretty simple reason why I like all of them: The Pokemon designs are endlessly creative, and the mechanics started off  really good and got progressively better and better with each installment. Even without the various distinctions of the different games strengths and weaknesses, Pokemon would be worth playing just for the combat alone.

And yet, that's not the only (or even main) reason I play any given game in the series. It seems like each game has a new and different appeal to me, and it's the series' ever-changing nature that really keeps me hooked, never quite sure what the thing that'll stand out to me in the next one is.

Because of that, though, I have trouble justifying to myself why Pokemon Blue is still one of my favorite installments in the series. Being the first, it's the most baseline of the Pokemon games, and I don't think many people will claim it isn't the absolute weakest mechanically. It's a ridiculously standard adventure, with the Kanto region lacking the originality of future regions and the story being as basic as it gets.

Part of me screams that this must be nostalgia goggles. This is the first game I ever really played, of course I'd be fond of it. But yet, on my very numerous return trips through Kanto on my by now decrepit GameBoy Colour, I've never been disappointed in my high expectations the same way I have by other childhood favorites. Instead, I find the simplicity and straight-forwardness of Kanto charming. Future regions go for specific vibes, be it the traditional Japanese Johto, tropical Hoenn, or distinctly European Kalos. Kanto is just a simple collection of fairly vanilla towns and fields, but that gives it its own personality and universal appeal (though there are certainly many memorable locations around). Meanwhile, the story, simpler than any other game, is somewhat charming, with Team Rocket being just obviously evil, and Red slowly growing in power to be able to defeat them. Pokemon Blue is charmingly simple and innocent, without the nuance of the future games. It's by far the most childish of the Pokemon games, and this is what brings me back to it a lot.

Its sequel, Pokemon Crystal, however, is possibly my least favorite game in the series, duking it out with generation four's Pokemon Platinum for the bottom spot. I can understand the appeal of it, I really can. Johto's a cool region, feeling distinctly ancient, which contrasted with Kanto's vanilla vague modernity, and the larger emphasis on story and character made the stakes feel both bigger and more personal. I view Pokemon Crystal as a stepping stone to the things that made me love every future generation, be it its larger emphasis on an interesting region or on character, but I simply don't think it fleshed out those aspects enough. I have heard from its many fans the argument that what makes it great is the lack of focus on every aspect, giving it a jack-of-all trades appeal, and that's certainly one that I can understand. It also features two of the coolest moments in the series: Realizing that you get to go through Kanto after beating Johto, and of course, the unforgettable battle with Trainer Red deep within Mt. Steel.

Generation Three for me is where the Pokemon I really love begins. Pokemon Ruby is in my triumvirate of 9/10 Pokemon games, though it definitely comes in behind Black and Sun. The Hoenn region is simply an accomplishment unlike anything else in the Pokemon series up until this point. It's fundamentally different from either Kanto or Johto, feeling considerably more fantastical. It's a tropical region, with lakes formed inside craters, fields of ash created by active volcanoes, a city entirely in the trees of a jungle, and a small, rustic village floating on logs in the ocean. Hoenn is brimming to the edge with cool things to discover, little cryptic secrets to uncover, and marvels of nature to wonder at. It's also full of unique characters, with their own quirks and personalities. It's bigger than anything the Pokemon series had ever produced, and I'd argue it's to this day the most creative region we've seen. I recently re-visited the region playing Omega Ruby, and was blown away by just how damn cool this thing is. Pokemon Ruby is a game that puts me in awe every time I turn a corner, no matter how damn well I know what is around that corner. Also, that soundtrack is the best, fuck everyone who complains about the horns, they rule.

Pokemon Platinum, however, takes a different approach. I've mentioned previously I'm not a massive fan of the Sinnoh region, but I can't really diss it for being badly made. Whilst approaching Kanto levels of blandness, Sinnoh is big. I mean, really massive. There's a lot to explore and do in Pokemon Platinum. This is by far the biggest game in the series, and, whilst I don't think the content is as fun minute-per-minute as most other entries, there's definitely more sheer amount of fun to be had simply because of the amount of time you'll be spending in even a non-completionistic adventure through Sinnoh. Familiarity with a world breeds fondness, and I was certainly fond of some of my favorite hangouts in Sinnoh by the time I was done with the massive adventure through it. It's not like Sinnoh is completely devoid of flavor by any means, but it's not as jam-packed with it as its predecessors or some of its successors. I tend to become irritated at Pokemon Platinum because of how damn slow-moving it is, and how it doesn't have as many cool things in it as say, Ruby, but it's not an experience I deem unworthy in any way.

Pokemon Black's Unova is just as dull, if not even duller, than Sinnoh. However, what Pokemon Black does is put all its eggs into one basket: That of its story and characters. As a result, this is by far the best story told in a Pokemon game, filled with fantastic characters with tonnes of depth and complexity. Pokemon Black is a dark and complex game, exploring moral questions that the rest of the series had taken for granted. Exploring its story and its moodier, more grown-up worldview would make it an outstanding game in the series, but it cleverly peppers its cast of great characters throughout the world, often making Gym Leaders active participants in the plot around the area of their town. As such, the world feels a lot more alive than it really is, and you get a real feeling as to what Gym Leaders' role in the world is, which is a huge boon for the rest of the series. It's also an absolutely gorgeous game, which I think was only recently overthrown by Pokemon Sun as the prettiest in the series. Whenever I feel like playing a Pokemon game that makes me think, or one that's slightly moodier than the rest, Pokemon Black is a solid choice.

I unfortunately have nothing to say about Black 2 or White 2. I own a copy of White 2 and plan to play it soon, but this duet is still the only main series installment I've not played.

Pokemon X carries the tradition of me not really caring for the even-numbered generations, though to a much lesser extent than Crystal or Platinum. The french-flavored Kalos region is a stunning place. It really does compete with both Hoenn and Alola for the "favorite region" spot, even if I think it falls slightly behind the two of them. Pokemon X might be the most stylish game in the series. It oozes with elegance and beauty the entire way through, in a way very uncharacteristic of the series. It also takes a similarly dark tone to Black, though playing it in contrast to the beautiful surroundings as opposed to Black's moody American-inspired cities. Its story is admittedly fairly boring, and the massive roster of important characters ends up being quite bland, but these are faults that Ruby also had, and I think just how damn cool Kalos is makes up for it

My main issue with X, and the reason I come back to it less than Blue, Ruby, Black or, I'm sure now Sun is that it's the only Pokemon game that I don't enjoy the combat in outside of multiplayer. Pokemon X  is simply too damn easy. In both of my playthroughs I turned off the EXP share, which means I was essentially playing on hard mode, and I never once lost a battle, breezing through every gym leader, the boss of Team Flare, and, most upsettingly of all, through the Elite Four. There's simply no challenge here, and as such the game becomes really boring to play. I'm just hoping the inevitable remakes a few generations down the line up the challenge. As is, I think I'll limit revisits to Kalos to simply tourist-trips through my completed save file rather than starting a new one. It's a real shame, because if I liked playing through the game getting to see Kalos again would be a treat similar to the pleasure of seeing Hoenn for the millionth time. I may prefer X to Platinum or Crystal, but it's a lot more likely I'll replay the latter two.

Of course, I already gave a very long explanation of why I absolutely adore Pokemon Sun, which you can find here. To summarize: I think this is the game with the best region in the series. Alola is an amazing place, one that feels more real than any other region so far. It's full of welcoming, warm people, but is deeply connected to its primal roots. You're also graced with an absolutely fantastic assemble cast of characters that go on a journey with you, and with Lillie, the best character in all of Pokemon. Most of all, it's an amazingly pleasant experience. Most of everything is nice, warm, and inviting. This makes the moments that aren't stand out even more, but most importantly it makes Pokemon Sun a real joy to play through, a game that kept a smile on my face for most of my play time in it. Rather than the complicated reasons the rest of the series gives me for playing them, Pokemon Sun made me real happy, and that's all I needed.




I really do adore the Pokemon series. It's often accused of sticking too closely to the same formula, but I think that that's an unfair accusation. It's a series that goes in many different directions, with different reasons to play each entry. It's maintained itself fresh and enjoyable throughout the years because it's willing to shake up what makes the experience stand out whilst leaning on the same incredibly solid mechanical core. Even the entries I like less I enormously respect, because I think they simply nail experiences I don't necessarily care about having that much. You don't get to be a series as well-loved and enduring as Pokemon without having the guts to present experiences that have such wildly different appeals.

Pokemon Sun is the best one yet

Note: I'm talking about Pokemon. Since they have two games per installment, I'll just be referring to either the one I played or the one that has the first title when you usually say it (X and Y, Ruby and Sapphire, etc)

Seldom has a game made me as happy as Pokemon Sun. I'm a big fan of the Pokemon series. Pokemon Blue was the first game I ever owned, and I'm told by my parents that my young self liked it so much that I learned to read in order to be able to play it. Pokemon Blue, along with the mechanics of the Pokemon series, will always have a special place in my heart, for obvious reasons. I'm also a big fan of the generation three games, with Pokemon Ruby being my favorite game before I got properly into games, and definitely one of the games I've played the most. It's an expansive, fantastically crafted world, with tonnes of creative monster designs and a kickass soundtrack.

Up till now, however, it was the first wave of generation five games, specifically Pokemon Black, that I considered the best, due to their unusually story-focused approach. You still had the usual depth of a Pokemon game, but with a story that actually made you care about it. Cheren, Bianca, Ghetsis and especially N are fantastic characters, and the story as a whole is a fascinating look into the morality behind the whole premise of the series. Whilst the Unova region shares some blandness with Sinnoh, Pokemon Black had me legitimately thinking about the big questions that, up until that point, had been relegated to jokey observations between Pokemon fans.

That said, it was tonally a lot darker than the series had been up until that point. It's not that there wasn't dark stuff previously (Lavender Town is still a symbol of childhood trauma for many gamers), but generation five put dark themes at the very core of the experience of playing it. So did generation six, with its major theme of war and death. This isn't necessarily a bad thing (I just got telling you that the darkest game in the series used to be my favorite!), but it's not why I originally came to Pokemon. Pokemon Blue was a fun, relatively light-hearted romp through a land full to the brim of cool looking monsters.

In this way, despite all of its advances, bells and whistles and clear effort to shake up the formula, Pokemon Sun is the most old-school game in the series since the GameBoy. Set in the Hawaiian-inspired island paradise of Alola, it has you play a newcomer who's soon to obtain their starter Pokemon, chosen from one of three types that play off each other in a rock-paper-scissors manner. However, instead of a relatively lonely journey to fight the Gym Leaders of the region in Pokemon battle in order to gain access to the Elite Four and become champion whilst ocasionally running into your jerkass rival who picked the Pokemon with a type advantage to yours, this time you set off as a group with your new friend Hau who picked the Pokemon at a disadvantage to yours, the local Pokemon Professor Kakui and his mysterious assistant Lillie on the Island Challenge, an ancient Alolan rite of passage for trainers.

The sense of community is immediate and effective. From your doorstep when you first leave home to go get your first Pokemon to the final steps before your final challenge, you're accompanied by a rotating group of friends on the same journey you're on. The brunt of your journey is done alone, of course, but you'll often stick close to each other in dangerous or intimidating stretches of road, help each other out of trouble, and always all meet up at the next town or Pokemon Center down the road. It's a sensation that reminded me of my pilgrimage down the Camino de Santiago, a network of roads that encompasses most of Spain. I'd come across the friends and acquaintances that I made on the road and stop to chat, do stretches of path together, and then we'd all see each other, plus a few new faces and minus a few old ones, at the pilgrim's hostel in the next milestone town at the end of the day. Some people you'd meet on the road once, have a few nice words with, and never meet again, and some people you'd see each day for hundreds of kilometers. It's a unique feeling, one of strong community even when the great majority of your time is spent alone, and not one that I'd expected to be captured this perfectly in a silly game for kids where a ghost owl made of grass can beat up a sandcastle.

What's more, despite its size, the stable of characters you end up travelling and meeting along the way is fantastically characterized across the board. Hau's relentless enthusiasm and cheer isn't some sort of facade he puts up, it's genuinely who he is, but he's this way for a reason. Professor Kakui is energetic and goofy, but it barely hides the strong mind, will, and heart that make him one of the most respected and beloved people across all of Alola. The kahuna of Melemele Island, Hala, is a stolid elder who is deeply entrenched in his ways and not only cares deeply for his island, but enjoys a good joke and party as much as anyone.

Most importantly, almost everyone you travel with is fundamentally a good, likable, well-rounded person. Where Cheren and Bianca were deeply flawed individuals with tonnes of issues to get through, Hau is just a cheery, friendly guy. He's nice, and he wants to help you out and be your friend. There's some stuff he struggles with, sure, and he's got some internal conflict and some growth to be done, but he's a well-adjusted, kind-hearted individual. Most individual characters from Sun do fail to live up to the depth of Black's smaller cast, but they all have enough depth to be interesting and, in this case at least, I'd say that quality beats quantity.

Even this, however, is discounting the star of the show, Lillie, the one person who never leaves your community, and who is the best character in the history of Pokemon. Her arc is a pretty archetypal one. She starts of kind of shy, cowardly, and weak, and slowly grows braver and stronger. The real strength here is in execution, and in Lillie's very specific character. From the very start, she's obviously a kind and caring person, refusing to become a trainer because she doesn't want Pokemon to get hurt on her behalf, and making sure to keep a large stock of healing supplies on her at all times in order to be able to help the Pokemon of the trainers around her. 

Lillie's caring nature is the fundamental building block of her personality, and all her growth comes from her understanding how to be herself better through interactions with the rest of the cast. It seems natural, as she learns about how other people see things, and as she sees more of Alola and the way the world works, that her attitude towards doing the things she wants to do slowly changes and becomes stronger until all she shares with the person she was at the start of the story is her fundamental her-ness.

One of the game's best traits is how Lillie forms complex and heartfelt relationships with many of the other characters. Professor Kakui becomes a father figure to her, albeit one she can't keep up with the energy of. It's thanks to him that she has the courage to befriend anyone else at all. Hau cheers her up and makes her laugh, and teaches her the value of a smile and a positive outlook on life. Acerola becomes her weird, offbeat friend, and she ends up forming a strange, mostly silent friendship with short-tempered Hapu. Most surprisingly of all, she grows a deep bond with the silent player character, growing to very much look up to them, yet still feeling on equal ground, and it never comes across as the same creepy wish-fulfillment stuff that other Pokemon games with similar relationships did. If anything, you get the feeling your player character ends up looking up to Lillie's kindness and strength of purpose the same way she looks up to their courage and strength of will. I certainly ended up that way.

That is a large part of what makes Pokemon Sun such a joy to play. It's basically a given that a Pokemon game has excellent mechanics and level design at this point, but Pokemon Sun feels like a very particular kind of journey with a large quantity of very likable and interesting people, many of whom you form close connections with as you travel across the land. The other big part is that Alola itself is the best region yet to appear in a Pokemon game, beating out generation three's fantastic Hoenn region and generation six's woefully misused, but beautiful, Kalos region. Part of this is the inevitable advance of technology: Generation seven is by far the prettiest so far, with a massive improvement in looks even over the very good looking Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.

That's far from all that makes Alola special though. It's full of spectacular vistas and creative little areas, and the developers obviously put a lot of care into making the place make sense. One of my favorite aspects is the Alolan Pokemon, new takes on old generation one Pokemon that have adapted to the Alolan environment in different ways to their Kanto counterparts. Alolan Sandshrew, for instance, made the icy flat mountaintop mesas of Ula'Ula Island its home due to Alola's lack of straight-up desert since it can only deal with flat terrain, and eventually learned to live with an icy shell. But this also goes way deeper, like of course resort towns would hire young people to keep its beaches clean by throwing the disgusting-looking water Pokemon Pyukumuku back into the ocean, or obviously there'd be a respectful fear of the small, inoffensive looking fish Pokemon Wishiwashi, which school into incredibly dangerous rampaging swarms.

There's also a real sense of history and tradition here. Rather than the modern-feeling Pokemon gyms of previous games, the recurring challenge points here are Island Trials, small tasks set to you by respected citizens (known as Trial Captains) with a deep connection to the elements in order to honor one specific element. Rather than battling gym leaders, you battle Totem Pokemon, the powerful guardians of each Trial Site, in order to gain their respect and be allowed to continue your journey towards adulthood. Once you pass all the trials on an island, you battle a Kahuna, an individual chosen by the legendary guardian Pokemon of their island, who embodies the spirit of their island's people and acts as a de facto leader to the people of the island. The people of Alola hold a deep respect and adherence to their land and its traditions, and as such there's a primal, ancient feeling to the entire place.

And yet, Alola is also a deeply inviting and fun place. It's sunny, just the right amount of tropical and relaxed. Its denizens spend their time doing their jobs, but they're open, pleasant people, who've always got the time to give a stranger a kind word and a smile, and who never seem to be in a rush to get anything done. There's places with a deep, ancient connection to primal nature, but just as often you're spending your time on a nice wooden beach path, or a pleasant leisurely trek up a gently sloping hill.

To be completely honest, the sense of community, Lillie, and Alola probably would have been enough for me to start considering whether I like Pokemon Sun more than Black. I don't know on what side I would have fallen, but it'd be a debate I would have had to have. What pushes Sun as the definite victor is its story. At first glance, it's nothing extraordinary. There's a lot of the old tropes of Pokemon games here: There's a bad group of people who name themselves Team followed by some goofy word (in this case Skull) who steal Pokemon. On the way through your adventure, they keep doing bad stuff and you keep fighting them, and eventually a legendary Pokemon ends up unleashed, after which they recognize the error of their ways and stop being bad.

The story of Pokemon Sun isn't as good as Pokemon Black, but then it's Black's main focus, whereas Sun is more focused on creating the aforementioned sense of community, fleshing out its characters, and making its setting solid. As such, its story doesn't have the thematic depth of Black. It's also lacking the personal touch of the generation six games, the giant stakes of generation four, or the pleasant simplicity of generation one. What it does do is serve as a fantastic vehicle for the strengths of Pokemon Sun. Team Skull seem like villains at first, but you end up discovering that most of them have a soft side, be it Guzma's secret deep concern for Lusamine, Plumeria's mother-like care for the grunts, or the grunt's deep, genuine admiration for both Guzma and Plumeria. You end up understanding how Team Skull formed out of Alolan community, a bunch of people irritated by society's emphasis on respecting nature over Team Skull's value of human togetherness. Team Skull is decidedly villainous, but at no point do they come across as bad people, and even at their most heinous their goofy "gangsta" attitude and general incompetence keeps the tone appropriately cheery for Alola. This is true for any element of the plot: the downright dark is kept funny enough to fit Alola's cheery atmosphere aside from a few key moments, and everything else is made to further the player's understanding of Alola as a region.

But the real star, as I said before, is Lillie, with the story serving to guide her through her character arc. The events of the plot aren't really all that interesting or innovative, but they force Lillie to change. As such, the plot becomes secondary to seeing how Lillie (and whoever else is travelling with you at that point) reacts to the events unfolding, both in terms of the player's interest in them and the time that the game spends on either thing. This allows the game to spend large amounts of time on things insignificant to the main story that are actually big character moments (one of my favorite early game sub-plotlines is about Lillie getting stuck on a hill with no Repels, while one of the best late ones involves her going out shopping). It knows that this is its strength, and it makes the story about the characters and setting rather than making the characters and setting simply things that inhabit the story.

Pokemon Sun is a truly joyous experience. From beginning to end, exploring Alola with my ever-changing group of travelling companions, and getting to know and form a deep bond with that strange girl with the big hat I initially dismissed as just a friend of Professor Kukui had me with a, big, joyous, smile on my face. Alola is a beautiful region, full of whim and whimsy and childish joy to see what's beyond the next corner, yet with more texture and depth than even previous regions which you'd think sacrificed creativity for complexity (I'm looking at you, Sinnoh and Unova). I really can't stop repeating that word "joy", because it's the perfect word for what Pokemon Sun made me feel.

9/10
Pokemon Sun made me feel tremendous amounts of joy, and that's all I need to know.

Quickfire Cleanup

The following is a series of short thoughts about a bunch of shows that I didn't have enough to say about to justify a full entry on the blog. As the percentage of free time I spend on anime increases but my free time decreases, this might be a recurring series. Note that very few of the scores I give are below 5, with most of them being higher than 7. This is because I'm only reviewing shows I completed. I drop stuff that doesn't hook me pretty quickly.

Ace Attorney
An adaptation of one of the greatest series of games. Starts off completely terrible, adapting the material way too faithfully to work as a show and with some shoddy art and animation, but picks up once we get into Justice For All, getting bolder with major changes to make the material work better in show form. Inferior in every way to the games aside from the fact that Turnabout Big Top is a lot better here (mostly because it's an awful case in the game). Overall, acceptable but unremarkable adaptation of remarkable material. 5/10 

Bakemonogatari
Weird as fuck. It took me a while to get invested in the characters and story, but physically watching this thing kept me hooked long enough that it eventually happened, and once it did I really loved it. Fantastically directed: makes the 90% of its running time that consists of characters standing somewhere and talking super engaging and exciting through visual style and framing alone. 8/10

Food Wars
Stupid, stupid fun. Nails the "non battle battle" shounen style. Consistently high production values as would be expected from J.C. Staff. Enough engaging and endearing characters to keep me hooked the entire way through. Vapid and substanceless, but enough fun that I really didn't care. 8/10

Girlish Number
I love seeing this thing take down the anime industry. Unfortunately it relies too much on the strength of its main character, who isn't really all that interesting or likeable. Its strong satire of the industry carries it a long way, but it's still brought down by a relatively bland cast of characters with the exception of the producer. 6/10

Haikyuu!!
Fantastic sports show. Led by a cast of likeable underdog protagonists, with the "non battle battle" shounen style polished to an absolute shining sheen. My favorite sports story, though I really haven't seen that many of them. Drags a tiny bit in mid-season 2, but the first and third seasons are phenomenal. 9/10 

Hibike! Euphonium
Conflicted on this one. Loved it upon watching it, but my opinion of it has steadily dropped since. Needs a rewatch, but my initial impression was incredibly positive, so I ranked it accordingly. 8/10

Konosuba
Everyone knows this thing is hilarious. I thought Season 1 was a bit overrated, but really loved Season 2. 8/10

Keijo!!!!!!!!
Fuck those exclamation marks. The concept (girls must compete in wrestling matches using only their breasts and butts) seems degrading, but it actually treats its characters with surprising respect. Fairly bland cast with a couple exceptions. Fantastic animation makes it worth a watch unless you're averse to fanservice. 6/10

Mahou Shoujo? Naria Girls
One of those "voice actresses doing improv and then we animate some CG" shows. Painfully unfunny, terrible audio quality, CG models look terrible. Slight redemption in that there's some OK concept art here and there. Only finished it because it's super brief, at 12 episodes that are 8 minutes each. LATER EDIT: Space Patrol Luluco is even briefer and is brilliant, which makes me like this less.. 2/10

Sansha Sanyou
Perfectly average, middle of the road "cute girls doing cute things" show. The cast of characters is pretty good, but the show struggles to do anything at all with them. Entertaining enough to pass the time with, but not really worthy of any attention given how crowded its genre is. 5/10

Tengen Tonpa Gurren Lagann
Considered a classic for a good reason. Gorgeous, inhabited by fantastically fleshed out characters, and with a plot that consistently increases in magnitude and stakes until it reaches entertainingly ridiculous proportions. Weirdly reminds me of The Wonderful 101 in that regard. Real good. 9/10 

The Seven Deadly Sins
A super generic shounen action series. Competent but unremarkable in every way. 5/10

A Tribute To The Golden Age of BioWare and Mass Effect

I love BioWare. From their earliest work in the Infinity Engine era, putting out the classic Baldur's Gate, to even their more modern and controversial work, being one of the few that will defend Dragon Age II and Inquisition, as well as thinking that The Old Republic was a great game before it went free to play (though I haven't played the recent and poorly received Mass Effect: Andromeda yet).

Everyone has an era of BioWare they consider the golden era. For some it's the time when they were the Baldur's Gate people, the hardcore RPGs that gave them their start. To others it's the advent of an EA owned BioWare, with the very solid Dragon Age Origins and critical powerhouse Mass Effect 2. I'm sure yet others will argue that they're at their best in recent years, producing games like Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age: Inquisition, which are less popular but have very entrenched fanbases.

To me, the golden era of BioWare is a very specific, relatively short timeframe where they were putting out the games I most associate with them: incredibly ambitious, quirky little RPGs with lots of faults that nonetheless revolutionized the industry. I am talking for the four-and-a-half year period between July of 2003 and November of 2007, when BioWare put out Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire and Mass Effect. It's hard not to admire the Bioware of this era: they're consistently putting out games that are very decidedly for the niche that loved Baldur's Gate, but aim in a different direction. This BioWare's more interested in world building and characters than they used to be, and are interested in coming up with unconventional gameplay systems that fit world they're setting their game in.

My writing of this piece has been motivated by my coming back to the first Mass Effect after half a decade since my last playthrough, shortly before Mass Effect 3's launch in March of 2012. Despite loving this game, I remember thinking it was the weakest in the trilogy at the time. It's held up magnificently, and there's a number of things to appreciate about it that I was simply too young and inexperienced to understand at the time, many of which I think are very indicative of games in BioWare's golden age.

It's strange, seeing how polished and massive the franchise became with the release of Mass Effect 2 to see how janky this first game is. The main combat system is incredibly clunky, attempting a take at tactical shooter action that isn't satisfying as a either a shooter or a tactics game, but that still remains very unique with its focus on activateable abilities rather than positioning and squad managment. Many things around it also suffer from jank: the clunky controls for the Mako tank that you're forced to drive through vast, uninspired alien landscapes that feel like they've been randomly generated, the repetitive rooms of bases on alien planets that serve as the meat of the side missions, and the simultaneously oversprawling and oversimplified nature of the leveling and equipment choices.

Despite the jank though, and despite the fact that a lot of this clunk makes the game less fun to play, one gets the feeling that it's put there out of a place of caring for the world and characters. Yes, it may not be much fun to play the awkward tactical combat, but it makes sense that this is how combat is for a small strike team of highly skilled specialists in this world: a lot of peeking around corners, waiting for the right moment to strike, managing your team's shields and surroundings as you wait for the engineer or biotic of the group to be able to use the ability that will tip the scale in your advantage before going on the offensive for a short period, whilst the enemies usually made hard to kill by energy barrier technology are vulnerable.

Even the much maligned Mako, which I still hate with a passion, feels like an inclusion in order to make the world feel more real. Whilst the Mako controls like crap and you are forced to waste entirely too much time driving through boring, empty worlds, I can see how this was intended to give you that space opera feel of adventure and discovery - "To go where no man has gone before" and all that. Even as I struggle with the controls and curse my bouncy space tank for doing a backflip because I dared to go mildly fast on a slight incline, there are moments when this works, when I get the feeling that I'm driving through uninviting, vast alien worlds and it is truly awe inspiring.

Hell, even the writing and worldbuilding, the usual reasons to play BioWare games, are somewhat janky. Take Noveria, for instance: it's meant to be a corporate planet, a nest of vipers, full of intrigue and backstabbing, where Shepard will have to carefully navigate their way through an intricate web of politics in order to achieve their objective. Instead, you talk to a guy, then talk to his secretary, then talk to a guy in a bar, shoot a few dudes, talk to the secretary again and are done with the "corporate intrigue" section of the planet. Mass Effect really tries: it's got a very ambitious idea of what its world is going to be and it goes for it hard. Most of the time it works really well, and even when it doesn't, it's entertaining. The plot on Noveria is disapointing because of how small and linear it ultimately is, but it's still a very good experience that feels tarnished by a lack of the scope that it promises.

This is what makes me really like Mass Effect. Whilst Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 are both polished to a shining sheen, with gameplay that feels great, tightly written character sidestories and fantastic worldbuilding (though I'd definitely be less charitable about their actual plots), they simply don't have the ambition of Mass Effect. They never aim for something as big as Mass Effect. Where Mass Effect clearly wants to be an actiony space opera that talks about big ideas and presents a galaxy that feels real and vast, Mass Effect 2 and 3 are both straight up sci-fi action stories set in a small number of tiny, well realized locales, with some of the best casts of characters in fiction.

Even having re-played a large amount of Mass Effect and gaining a massive amount of appreciation for it, I still think that Mass Effect 2 and 3 are both better games (this may or may not change when I re-play them). That said, it makes me feel a bit sad about them. Whilst both Mass Effect 2 and 3 are certainly at the top of their game, they're a sort of game that you get elsewhere. I can name a good number of sci-fi action games with a focus on story. Mass Effect is to date the only game I've played that feels like a space opera, like a somewhat actioned-up episode of Star Trek. It's the sort of clunky game design that isn't very polished but that's endearing in its imperfection and usually succesful at transmitting the incredibly specific feel it's going for.

Unliked a large amount of gamers, I don't think BioWare ever stopped making good games. Hell, the much maligned Dragon Age: Inquisition is my favorite of their games, and I even have a soft spot for what many would consider their worst in Dragon Age II (though I won't pretend for a moment that that game isn't massively flawed). What I think BioWare has stopped doing is making interesting games. You know exactly what to expect from them. But, for a brief four year period, you didn't. In four years time they put out Knights of the Old Republic, a flawed game that reinvented the RPG as we know it for good, Jade Empire, a game with a ridiculous, strange, and fantastic combat system and one of the most unique settings out there and Mass Effect, a brave and ludicrously ambitious attempt at bringing a completely different genre of sci fi into videogames. Their games had ambition, heart, soul. They were inventive, unique and revolutionary.

I love BioWare. I really love the games they're putting out to this day. They're a tremendously talented studio. But I miss old, pre-EA BioWare. I miss the insane bunch of maniacs that thought making a semi-open world space opera RPG with a tactical shooter combat system was a good idea. I miss that insane bunch proving against all odds that it was a good idea. BioWare is still great, but they're no longer visionaries, and that's kind of sad.

Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Yet Another Reason I Wish Everyone Would Stop Dismissing "Cute Girls Anime"

Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid may be the most pleasantly surprising anime I've ever watched. What I initially ignored as a fanservice show because "maids be cute yo" with a dragon component for no apparent reason has turned out to be an absolute delight, and the best romantic anime I've ever seen.

Kobayashi, a quiet and reserved IT worker wakes up hung over one morning. Upon exiting her apartment, she meets a massive dragon, who transforms into a girl in a maid outfit, introduces herself as Tohru and expects to be allowed to work for her due to an agreement the two made the previous night whilst Kobayashi was drunk.

This seems like a traditional set up for a show of this kind: a straight-man protagonist is saddled with a wacky, usually supernatural hanger-on that they get into all sorts of comedic hijinks with. As such, I was surprised by how little of this there was in Ms Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. There are definitely amusing shenanigans that go on, but after the first couple of episodes, they take a back seat to simply observing the daily lives of Kobayashi and Tohru, as well as young dragonling Kanna, whom they adopt, and a decently-sized supporting cast of colorful characters composed of similar dragon-human pairings.

The main draw of the show comes precisely in what the most time is spent on: the relationship between Kobayashi, Tohru and Kanna. I'm going to go straight for the throat here: Kobayashi and Tohru are a couple, and Kanna is essentially their adopted daughter. It's never made explicit in the show (Tohru does explicitly say she's romantically attracted to Kobayashi, but the reverse is only ever implied, if incredibly heavily), but it's there as clear as day. I'm not a fan of shipping, or making relationships that aren't textually explicit "head-canon" (in fact I'm mostly very opposed to the idea, since this thinking usually misses the point), but Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid makes its romance as blatantly clear as possible without confessions of love or kisses, and is very obviously centered around it. If you don't read Kobayashi and Tohru as essentially being in a relationship, the whole show is a pointless exercise in boredom with basically nothing of interest happening, the very bottom of the moeblob barrel.

In my mind, there's five clear stages to a relationship. There's the period before the relationship is there. There's the formative stage, where the parties involved realize there's an attraction and get together. There's the relationship stage, when people are just in a relationship. In most relationships, there's two stages after that: the breaking apart stage, and all the time after the relationship.

There's stories to be told about all of these: say longing to find someone special in the before stage, the traditional romance story in the formative stage, exploring relationship dynamics in the relationship stage, character exploration in the breaking apart stage, and possible grief in the after stage. Despite this, almost every romance story is about the formative stage. I can see why: it's the story with the most obvious arc (meeting, realization, hesitation, consummation), and the one that art has told the most stories about, making it more likely to inspire more similar stories. There's a decent amount in the breaking stage, and the after stage as well. The before stage and the stable relationship stages, obviously being the hardest to make a compelling story about, get next to no love.

Part of what makes Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid special is that it's a story about the stable relationship stage. After the first two episodes, dedicated to introducing the characters, Kobayashi and Tohru are just together. They're just happily in love with each other, and functionally together. Instead of exploring how a relationship is formed, or what happens when a relationship breaks apart, Ms Kobayashi's Dragon Maid explores how relationships work, and how the people within them genuinely improve each other's life.

This might sound very saccharine, and it honestly kind of is. The entire show is a feel-good, colorful pleasant little romp. That said, despite being one of the sweetest shows I've ever watched, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is surprisingly grounded, understanding that people genuinely need to make sacrifices for their loved ones. Medium sized-spoilers in the rest of the paragraph, since I'm talking about an example of this. One of my favorite episodes revolves around Kobayashi having to do overtime at work in order to be able to be at Kanna's sports day at school, which Kanna is very enthusiastic about her attending. She wonders throughout the episode whether she wants to do this: Kobayashi doesn't really like the idea of going to the festival, and she doesn't want to do overtime, being overworked enough. Kanna, understanding this, ends up telling her it's fine if she doesn't go. This makes up her mind: Kobayashi doesn't want to go, but she should go, and go she does. She ends up having a good time, but that's not the point. The point is that she was willing to give Kanna what was needed.

It's this back-and-forth approach, where both ends of the relationship are willing to compromise more in favor of the other because of just how damn much they both care, that make the relationships feel real. This dynamic in particular is central to the relationship between Tohru and Kobayashi. They're both willing to sacrifice their own comfort for the other, and are rewarded with the same amount of care and loyalty in return. The show manages to walk a very tight rope here: stray too much towards the "they care for each other" angle, and it turns into unbearably saccharine dreck. Emphasize what they're sacrificing for each other too much, and you end up telling a depressing story about two people who allegedly care for each other making their partner's life worse. Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid manages to make it clear that these people are willing to do this for each other because they love each other, and that there's very little pressure (usually none at all) put on them to behave this way: this is entirely their choice.

This wouldn't mean anything if I didn't like the characters, and Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid manages to put in punch where it counts. The main trio are all great. Whilst Tohru initially comes across as the annoying energetic type, it quickly becomes clear there is more to her than this. She's quietly giving in almost every way, more than willing to put in effort to make others happy. Being the only one here that is literally said to be in love, Tohru is also allowed a very open adoration of Kobayashi that just makes me happy. The way she genuinely seems to look up to her in every way, and the many subtle ways in which it becomes apparent that Tohru is happier whenever Kobayashi is around are incredibly heart-warming. There's a purity in her relationship with Kobayashi, a sort of naive, full-hearted awe and adoration. In the later parts of the show, Tohru has some pretty serious internal conflict over her relationship with Kobayashi, specifically in how she must deal with dragon's lifespans being much longer than humans. It's not particularly deep or even novel, but it gives her character a nice extra bit of depth, and builds up well to the show's emotional climax.

Kanna is equally great. She's a lot more archetypal than either of the other two, but she works, damn it. She's a pretty textbook deadpan child, but I'll remind the reader that this is a character archetype that seems to obtain almost universal love in the fandom. Kanna is exemplary of why this is. She's got a fantastic character design, her little quips are often genuinely funny, and how little she talks allows her to combine child-like innocence with an odd brand of wisdom. That said, the most important aspect of her character is her relationship with her two mother figures, which is, like any relationship between the main trio, near perfect. Having spent considerably more time around Tohru, their relationship is more relaxed, with the two of them regularly chilling and playing together. It's nice, intimate, and comfortable.

Her relationship with Kobayashi is less comfortable, if just as loving. Due to Kobayashi's busy work schedule making her unable to spend much time at home, Kanna finds herself really craving her attention, and being very happy when she receives it. At the same time, being a clever little dragonling, she understands that Kobayashi is busy and doing her best to support her and Tohru, and will often go out of her way to quietly accommodate her, and not put too much pressure on her. Kobayashi will in turn often notice this, and go out of her way to make room for Kanna in return. It's a simple and somewhat repetitive dynamic, but it's used so sparingly and with such masterful touch that a lot of the show's emotional high points come from moments like this.

The side cast isn't a major focus of the show, but it's pretty appropriate. Almost every "dragon" could be reasonably interpreted as being somewhere on the LGBT spectrum (aside from Elma, I would argue), but these are very much obscure side-traits. They're a colorful enough bunch, and there's a couple nice relationships they participate in (particularly Tohru's almost sisterly relationship with Lucoa, which I thought was woefully underused), but they're almost entirely defined by one personality trait, and only ever show up to participate in comedic scenes. Aside from Lucoa (whose main gag of "she has ridiculously large tits and that's funny" basically never works), they're amusing enough, and the show knows to use them in moderation, usually in very short scenes to act as a buffer between scenes with the main cast.

The observant viewer (or one with half a brain cell) will have realized I missed out Kobayashi herself here, and that's because I wanted to be done with everyone else before I began gushing over how great this character is. Kobayashi is a middle-aged, tired IT worker who lives in an apartment with clothes thrown around all over the place, mostly eats takeout, and often gets drunk. This is precisely the kind of character that would normally be portrayed in a negative light. The usual direction this character is taken is that they hate their job, feel stuck in a rut, and turn to alcohol to dull the pain. Instead, Kobayashi is portrayed in a way that is a lot more representative of the great majority of human beings in real life. She doesn't hate her job, nor does she particularly love it. Because of her strong work ethic by the time she gets home she's just too tired to put away her clothes or cook. Most shocking of all, her drinking isn't a problem, it's simply a way she likes to occasionally cool down and spend time with her friends, even if she does sometimes get drunk enough to wander into the woods, meet a dragon, and forget about it the next morning.

It's amazing how rare this is. In fiction, characters who aren't in love with their job are stuck in a dead-end job they hate. If their house is messy, it's a sign of their deteriorating lifestyle, and anyone who ever gets actually drunk is clearly an alcoholic who needs help. Kobayashi manages to just be a regular person despite (or even because) of all these traits. She's not incredibly happy with it, but her life isn't in a state of disrepair, nor does she hate it by any means. Kobayashi is leading a completly healthy, normal life. This isn't a story of Tohru showing up and fixing someone's shitty life, it's a story about how Tohru elevates Kobayashi's perfectly fine life.

This has a massive amount of fantastic ramifications throughout the show. Kobayashi's life feels surprisingly grounded, which helps us believe in the world presented to us. It also means no one is "the weak one" in the relationship. Usually, this story would've had Tohru pulling Kobayashi out of her rut. This way, when Kobayashi helped Tohru, it would've felt like she's overcoming her weakness, and made the event about the fact that Kobayashi is able to do this at all rather than her choice to do it. It also would've made the delightful dynamic between her and Tohru feel awkward: Kobayashi, to use a term that I've never liked, is decidedly the one who wears the pants in the relationship. She's the one that goes out and earns a living while Tohru stays at home, looking after the house and Kanna, and the one that the bulk of the decision-making falls on.

It's a very traditional dynamic, one that I know excessively progressive people would disagree with being presented positively on principle, but it works fantastically because of all the effort the show goes to to demonstrate that it's both consensual on both sides and that it just works for these two. Despite the very clear distribution of responsibility, it's demonstrated that both Kobayashi and Tohru are more than content to have the relationship work this way, and that it makes them both happy to care for and support their significant other in the way they do. The show also goes out of its way to make sure that neither Kobayashi and Tohru think they're owed any of what the other is giving them: they're both obviously incredibly grateful that the other is as giving as they are, which only makes them more willing to keep giving themselves.

Kobayashi herself is the only character that grows significantly, as the show is mostly just focused on providing us with snippets out of her and Tohru's daily life. Her arc is an incredibly subtle one, taking a very removed back seat to the rest of the story. For the first few episodes, it revolves around her feelings towards Tohru and Kanna changing from "friends" to "wife and daughter", later changing to be a gradual realization of the myriad small ways that her newfound family has changed her from a normal woman to a very happy one.

As much as both Tohru and Kobayashi are happy in their relationship, there is some friction. The way they show and expect to be shown affection differs, and their attitudes toward certain things are drastically opposed. For most of the show these are small, niggling little things that don't really matter. However, they do build up, combining with Tohru's aforementioned internal lifespan-difference related conflict, and it results in an uncharacteristically dramatic climax to the show. It's still very low-key and calm compared to what one would expect from most romance, but it's deeply effective and stands out a lot precisely because the rest of the show is so bereft of any sweeping emotional moments. The climax to Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is a fantastic one. It lets us see different sides of all our main characters, pulls at the heartstrings just enough to be resonant without ruining the otherwise upbeat atmosphere and ends the show on a deeply satisfying, near perfect, note.

Despite how long I've waffled on about it, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is a very simple show. It presents us with a few simple characters and has them interact, content in the knowledge that they'll make the audience happy. The reason I've felt the need to say so much about it is that I think it's incredibly easy to dismiss this as being an unremarkable achievement. Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid really doesn't have much to say, but what it does have is near perfect craftsmanship. I've spent enough time in the online anime community to know this show will be dismissed by many as just another damn moeblob show, pointless fluff that doesn't do anything more than entertain. This'll doubtless be the assessment of many people who don't even watch the show, - it was mine for a decently long time, and I feel ashamed for that - but it'll also be the conclusion an unfortunately high proportion of those that actually watch the show come to.

This isn't a show with much to say, but it does have something to say. Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is a show about how people who genuinely, deeply love each other can improve each other's lives, and is simply content to let the audience bask in the glow of these people's happiness. The warm, happy feeling that people in the online anime community are entirely too quick to dismiss is the result of a masterfully crafted romance, exploring a part of the genre that isn't touched upon nearly often enough. It's a product of interesting character dynamics, that just happen to overwhelmingly produce contentment in the incredibly well-defined, nuanced characters rather than drama. The fact that Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid makes you happy rather than sad isn't a point against it. What could be a point against this show is its lack of depth, which I think I've proven is not a good argument.

Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid main couple of characters are both nuanced, not in their internal growth, but in their relationship with each other. Even as the show was ending, I was noticing new things about the way their dynamic worked, about how they showed in the smallest little details just how much they cared for one another. It's a relationship without real complications: there's not much drama, it's formed very quickly and effortlessly, and there's no real threat of it ending. This does not make this an unnuanced, uninteresting relationship. I would, in fact, argue, this is one of the most nuanced relationships in all of anime. It's a true master-class on how simple, well-defined characters are interesting to watch bounce of each other by the simple fact of them being incredibly well-defined.

10/10
Hands down the best anime romance I've seen, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is a show that is a joy to watch due largely to its masterful character writing. It's rooted in an absolutely delightful untraditional take on a romance, opting for exploring what makes a good relationship work rather than the usual melodramatic stylings of the genre. The worst thing about it is how a community that is too easily dismissive of anything that falls outside certain groupthink-dictated boundaries, and is unwilling to turn a critical eye on the minutiae of good writing, will almost certainly not give it the respect it's due.

Kill la Kill Review - Fever Dream

Studio Trigger have made a name for themselves as a nest of seemingly drug-powered insane creatives. They've become famous for their distinctive visual style combined with feverish, crazy stories that nonetheless make sense to one immersed in this high-octane drug trip. Kill la Kill is my first Trigger show, and as such, it comes as a bit of a shock. I'd heard rumors, but this is the kind of thing that nothing can really prepare one for.

The first thing one notices about Kill la Kill is how insanely gorgeous and stylish this thing is. I've recently said that Cowboy Bebop is the most stylish thing I've ever watched, and I'd probably still hold to that, but Kill la Kill is a different beast altogether and makes a very serious grab at Bebop's hold on that title.Where Cowboy Bebop's style is confident, suave, and laid back, Kill la Kill is aggressively, energetically almost frantically stylish. Its visual style is what can only be described as loud. The art may be rather simplistic, but it's colorful and expressive to the extreme. Also, fucking gorgeous. Google Image Search "Kill la Kill screenshots" and be bombarded with a barrage of fantastic images that are at once very nice to look at and easy to parse.

What's even better is how Kill la Kill animates. It's frankly scary how well this show moves, and the variety of moods it portrays. Almost everything here is exaggerated: characters drastically scale up or down for effect, move at inhuman speeds for comedy and action alike, and distort their proportions to suit the scene. Kill la Kill is a show that isn't afraid to drastically change its artstyle to suit the mood at hand, and it results in basically every beat of the show hitting twice as hard. There's a version of Kill la Kill in another universe where the giant Ira Gamagoori doesn't suddenly grow to take up the whole room when his presence becomes extra threatening, or where there isn't an inexplicable rainbow-colored lens flare that follows Ragyo Kyruin's overwhelming presence, and that world is much worse for it.

The character's unique interactions with the artstyle, and Kill la Kill's effective use of animation to emphasize the various characters' defining characteristics is backed by a fantastic soundtrack. While most of the incidental music is good in its own right, with blood-pumping action tracks and fantastic comedic themes, it's the large number of character leitmotifs that really make this soundtrack unique. Almost every character comes with a personal theme song that absolutely fits them to an incredible degree - they capture the spirit of the character perfectly, and imbue scenes centered around the character with a truly transcendental feeling, as though the character's presence is flowing out of the screen and into the real world itself. These may be the best character themes at capturing their character I've ever heard. My favorites have to be Ragyo Kyruin's slow, throbbing and intense synth-rock-pop thing with German chanting that just absolutely channels the depth of this woman's malicious, radiant presence, and Nui Harime's cutesy jingling melody that is almost immediately overridden by oppressive, loud, psychotic synth that makes the jingling tantalizingly close to being heard is just perfect for the character's completely unrepressed psychopathy with the thinnest possible veneer of cuteness thrown over it.

To recap, so far Kill la Kill is a gorgeous show that is masterfully animated to increase the impact of each and every event in it, backed with a fantastic soundtrack that enhances this even further. I guess this is where I go "Unfortunately, the story/writing/characterization doesn't really hold up"?

Well, kind of.

For the first two-thirds of its run, Kill la Kill is glorious. It doesn't quite hold up to some of the greats: It can't tell a crazy-whacked out story on the level of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, or go into the same character depth as something like K-On! or Cowboy Bebop, but it does hold up admirably. It follows Ryuko Matoi, a transfer student at the fucking bonkers Honnouji Academy, where fights to the death occur on a daily basis, every school event is some variation on a battle royale, and the incredibly powerful student council rules not only the school but most of the country thanks to their control of the Goku Uniforms, which imbibe the wearer with superhuman strength. With the help of her own uniform Senketsu (who happens to be sentient), and her new friend Mako, Ryuko aims to fight her way up to the student council president Satsuki in order to obtain information that will allow her to avenge her father's death.

This may seem like a very basic set-up, but it's utilized well. There's genuinely interesting themes here: Ryuko's struggle to take down the school from the inside turns into a struggle to take it down from outside, and interesting points are brought up in favor of Satsuki's tyrannical rule over Honnouji. There's plenty of good character development here as well, from Ryuko, as well as the many colorful characters surrounding her, and I do mean many and colorful. 

The cast is truly phenomenal, made up of a large amount of main characters that all somehow manage to feel distinct, unique and worthwhile, largely in part to their absolutely beautiful character designs and how effective the show's animation is in portraying personality. I wanted to mention a few that I liked the most here, but it's really difficult to pick. Almost every character in the show has a couple great moments, raging from the myriad small moments in which various characters prove themselves to be more complex than they appear to the big emotional climaxes involving our leads, and it's an injustice to any to pick another out above the other. Ryuko, Mako, Senketsu, Satsuki, the Elite Four, Aikuro, the Mankanshokus, Tsumugu, Nui, Ragyo: Any one of these characters is brimming with more personality and jaw-droppingly powerful scenes than entire casts in some other shows. This means, that there's constantly something going on in terms of character, and it's surprising how little of it feels contrived or like it's only there for the sake of being there. Even minor, one-episode characters are memorable, ranging from endearing to utterly hateable.

It's obvious in the first two thirds that the show is building up to something, and the build up is handled well: intertwined with the moment-to-moment plot in a manner that makes it all the more intriguing and that helps maintain a sense of importance even for events that are ultimately only significant for one episode. It's good foreshadowing, and the last third does pay off most of the things that are set up here. There's a concept or two that seem like they should be more important than they ultimately are, but it's obvious they're just there for the sake of making one fight scene more interesting. In general, there's almost nothing that's set up that's just awkwardly left unused in the last third.

About two-thirds of the way through the show finally hits what it was building up to and fucking explodes. Shit gets fucking crazy in the final third of this one, and it gets unrepentantly, unflinchingly dumb in the best of ways, even more than the first part of the series. While Kill la Kill is decidedly a loud, twitchy, fast-moving action show through the entirety of its run, its last third is near constant action, with the plot going in a completely different and somewhat unexpected direction. Whilst it really is a wonder to behold, with a lot of the show's best action scenes happening in this stretch, I feel this part is somewhat lacking thematically, and I found the direction the show's plot took to be a bit disappointing: it comes out of the blue and goes in a completely different direction than the first part would have you expect. Instead of continuing to build on the characters and themes that the first two thirds had developed, the final third of Kill la Kill smashes them together in a bombastic, loud, colorful explosion of a finale.

This is fine, but isn't my cup of tea. I much prefer some nice character and theme stuff to go along with my explosions, and the last third of Kill la Kill doesn't really deliver on that. It's not that it completely stops its characters arcs, but it takes emphasis away from them (and what emphasis there is left delivers only the ol' cliche "friendship is magic" message, though admittedly it does so very well) and this left me disappointed: I wanted to keep discovering more of the things that Kill la Kill had hidden away from me the way I'd discovered them in the first part, but instead I was expected to use the things I'd already discovered to keep me invested in watching characters fight.

And, honestly, despite my better judgement and stubborn unwillingness to let it do so, it worked. The final third of Kill la Kill may be a lot less interesting to me than the first two thirds, but everything that was fundamentally great was still there. I had nuanced characters clashing in this over-the-top, absolutely ridiculous nonsensical high octane fever dream of a plot. Let's not forget the thing that's the most evident about Kill la Kill: The visuals rock. This is in the top two best looking shows I've ever seen, and good looking action scenes are fucking awesome when I care about the characters, especially when some of the phenomenal animation flourishes may as well count as character moments in and of themselves. I wasn't invested on the same level as the first two-thirds, not really, but I was having an absolute fucking blast watching some cool-ass shit happen on my screen

The last third wasn't my cup of tea, but it was a cup of tea so delicious I downed it in one go and asked for more.

9/10

Kill la Kill moves. It moves so much. From the constant, fluid and incredibly creative animation to the rapid motion of its story and the non-stop barrage of character moments, Kill la Kill is a show that very seldom stops to take a breath. As such, it's a testament that it's never tiring: It's constantly engaging, whether it be in its plot or incredible fight scenes. I've watched anime better than Kill la Kill, but I don't know if anything tops this show on a production level. When I reviewed Cowboy Bebop I said that this was a show that could've been worthwhile just by relying on its incredible style: it didn't need to have substance. After a pretty juicy first two thirds, Kill la Kill's final third does do this, cruising on its style and the characters and themes the first part built, and it remains a fantastic time throughout. Sometimes entertainment is just so damn stylish I don't care if there's not much to it. High octane has never been better.

Catching up with JoJo's - Part 4 of 4: Diamond is Unbreakable

Where the other parts of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure are massive, exciting adventures - be it Phantom Blood's epic origin story, Battle Tendency's fight against Gods, or Stardust Crusaders' globetrotting odyssey - there's something very small about Diamond is Unbreakable. This speaks to Hirohiko Araki's insane bravery when it comes to his writing. After Stardust Crusaders' massive success, no one would've blamed him if he'd chosen to stay in the same ballpark for his next story. Instead, Diamond is Unbreakable is by far the most unique part of JoJo's so far, straying the farthest from the tone of the previous entries. This part is admirable just for that alone.

Diamond is Unbreakable follows Josuke Higashikata, Joseph Joestar's illegitimate son, as he... doesn't really have a singular goal for a lot of the arc. Where every previous JoJo was very single-minded in their purpose (Both Jonathan and Josuke wanted to fight Dio, and Joseph wanted to fight the Pillar Men), Josuke's motive constantly changes as the circumstances do. It's interesting to see a JoJo that's reactive in their own story, and whilst excessively reactive main characters can be annoying, Josuke's changing motivations feel more like character growth than they do flip-flopping.

Of course, Josuke is more than a ball of motivations: he's got a personality outside of that. We've moved away from Jotaro's badass stoicness towards a more traditional "school punk" character. This is a JoJo that's more reminiscent of Joseph: goofy and good-natured. That said, where Joseph's persona hid a cunning, cold-blooded, strategist, Josuke's hides a mercurial side. This guy's surprisingly easy to anger, and his rage is actually rather terrifying. This is used in battles a couple of times, but is thankfully not overused, as there's a lot less to this gimmick than Joseph's cunning. Still, Josuke's personality when he's not angry is actually very likable: he comes across as a very warm and genuinely caring guy. This puts him second on my list of list of favorite JoJos, above his uncle Jotaro.

The truly special thing about Diamond is Unbreakable, however, is directly linked to the genre-shift from previous arcs. As opposed to the distinctly action-friendly genre of Phantom Blood through Stardust Crusaders, Diamond is Unbreakable is a small-town supernatural mystery set in the peaceful seaside town of Morioh. This means that, in contrast with the small cast of well-defined characters that dominated previous arcs, Diamond is Unbreakable focuses on creating a sense of community in a larger cast of characters.

It's easy to think that this means that each individual character in Diamond is Unbreakable is less well drawn than the characters in previous arcs, but it's not to be underestimated what focus on character will do to a show. After all, previous arcs were mostly about the adventure, and, aside from the major characters, was populated entirely by fairly one-dimensional archetypes (which is fine for those stories), but this arc focuses on character. In Diamond is Unbreakable practically every secondary character is well defined, and we get the feeling that they lead a full and complex life. This is because, though their introduction episode is usually the traditional stand battle, it's focused on them rather than our protagonists. The fight will either arise from a misunderstanding of the opponent's personality, or will end by appealing to or exploiting their character. There's a sensation that you get these side characters in a way that wasn't here in previous arcs.

Not only this, but Diamond is Unbreakable's main cast is far and away the best in the series' history. Because of the majorly recurring nature of some of the side characters it's hard to say where "main" cast ends and "side" characters begin, but both of Josuke's best friends Koichi and Okuyasu go through full, interesting character arcs, and significantly grow as people. Jotaro has also returned, playing the mentor role similarly to Joseph in Stardust Crusaders, but from more of a distance. I like him a lot more here: if it isn't enough that his "quiet badass" role works a lot better as a distant mentor, he's also just got more personality than he ever did in his own arc.

A cast as large as Diamond is Unbreakable calls for cool stand powers to do battle with, and boy do they deliver. Gone are the days of Stardust Crusaders' main cast's boringly vanilla powers. Every member of the cast has unique and interesting stand abilities: Josuke's Crazy Diamond is like Jotaro's Star Platinum in that it punches hard and fast (if not quite as hard and fast), but it's also got the ability to heal anything except Josuke himself and death. Okuyasu's The Hand can scrape away the fabric of time and space, leading to some really interesting shenanigans, and Jotaro's back, with Star Platinum still having the ability it learnt at the very end of Stardust Crusaders. There's plenty more crazy stuff, but I'll stop there to avoid spoilers: after all, half the fun of this is learning what each stand can do.

Despite the main cast having way more interesting powers than before, and the villains they fight having powers just as crazy as in Stardust Crusaders, the stand battles feel just a tad less satisfying here. This is due to the increased focus on character, meaning stand ability interplay is de-emphasized in some battles, and we get to see less Jotaro-style magnificently satisfying and violent conclusions. I want to emphasize again that the drop off in fight quality here isn't massive. I'd also argue that the high points of action sequences in Diamond is Unbreakable are higher than Stardust Crusaders', if less common.

The elephant in the room that I still haven't talked about is Yoshikage Kira, the main villain of the arc, the serial killer hiding in Morioh. He is simply tremendous. There's not the same level of malice and pure evil that we got from Dio. Yoshikage Kira is a surprisingly human villain. He's mostly a normal man, one who enjoys sandwiches in the park, is particular about his schedule, and wants to lead the peaceful life that makes him happy. Where Dio was a kind of theatrical, overwhelming evil, Kira is a very human, insidious, everyday evil. Yes, what he does is inhuman and monstrous, but he's never dehumanized the way most villains are. This isn't some monster, he's just some guy who's demonstrated a capacity for immense evil, and it's the ease with which we can forget how monstrous he truly is that's disturbing about him. Kira really, immensely, hurts Morioh in a way that's a lot more subtle than Dio's vampiric takeover of Wind Knights' Lot in Phantom Blood, but somehow feels more tragic and real.

Whenever I think what to say about Diamond is Unbreakable I come to the same words: "feeling of community", and it's one that everything in the arc works toward. If we weren't focusing so much on making sure every character in the show was so properly defined, we wouldn't really know who the people that make this community are. If Kira wasn't so perfectly characterized, and if his actions' consequences weren't painted as well as they were, there wouldn't be a reason for the community to unite this way. Unlike previous arcs, this isn't really a story about the JoJo of the season battling an evil monster. Diamond is Unbreakable is a story about a town uniting against the evil that plagues it, about the power of community beating Kira's overwhelming intellect and stand power. Phantom Blood introduced us to a Joestar family that was bound to fight against evil alone, Battle Tendency revolutionized the way they did it, Stardust Crusaders' showed us that it needn't always be this way, and Diamond is Unbreakable turned the Joestars from lone heroes to members of a community.

I said earlier that Diamond is Unbreakable would have been admirable even if it wasn't as effective as it is, just because of the boldness of the experiment here. I often say that I'd rather see series try something new and fail than grow old and boring doing the same thing over and over. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure as a whole and Diamond is Unbreakable in particular is the best example I've seen so far of why. If it'd stuck to familiar territory, this would still be the somewhat mediocre story of Jonathan Joestar in his endless battle with Dio Brando. Instead, we got the marvelous Jonathan Joestar, and his scheming ways against the fabulous Pillar Men. We also had Jotaro Kujo, and his stoic badassery, with the constant fighting against all sorts of crazy stand powers. Even through this variation, the series had some sort of repeating structure, with the same "travelling to fight an enemy" formula. But it reinvented itself yet again, and we got the touching tale of community that is Diamond is Unbreakable.

Even with as much as I liked Battle Tendency, Diamond is Unbreakable is my favorite part of JoJo's so far. I'm a sucker for stories about groups of high school kids who control monsters fighting a disturbingly human serial killer, it turns out (coughPersona4cough). There's just something about this arc that's particularly engrossing, watching every character grow and learn, and slowly getting to know the town and becoming attached to its inhabitants. But a story of this caliber would never have existed if Hirohiko Araki wasn't willing to take risks, if he'd stayed within his comfort zone. As glad as I am that Diamond is Unbreakable exists, it makes me a bit sad to imagine how many stories of this quality don't exist by virtue of television shows just doing the same thing for years upon years, when change could invigorate them and make them into something special.

9/10
Diamond is Unbreakable is a great tale about the power of community and human unity. It maintains the craziness and spirit of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, but doesn't stagnate in what's successful, and takes the series in a new and exciting direction.