The Wider Asian Cinematic Umbrella

TiberiusLeave a comment

The tour continues

Followers and newcomers will know that my tour of unsung media lacks borders. From the safety and comfort of these great United States, I always look outward. My favorite series, medium notwithstanding, have influences upon influences that go back seemingly for millennia. Max Payne? The squinty Finnish bloke who brought us that combined The Matrix with Norse mythos with John Woo operatic gun-fu. God of War? The title alone should tell you it’s Greek before it clues you in to the ancient tragedies and legacy Claymation Greco-Roman film adaptations of the late ’60s and ’70s. Mortal Kombat? Started as a love-letter to kung-fu films, added a flair of body horror–and being the target audience makes it difficult to understand why parents didn’t like it in the ’90s. Then again, consider what made headlines in the ’90s in America:

Among other things, the first black president did NOT have sexual relations with that woman.

Read More »

红衣小女孩

TiberiusLeave a comment

Also known as “The Tag-Along”

Ready to accompany me on another trip through the Asian film industry, dear viewer? Grab your bags, get your supplies, carry an extra flare and meet me at 13:00. The next stop on this tour is the 2015 film “The Tag-Along.”

Known also as Hong Yi Xiao Nü Hai or 红衣小女孩 or The Little Girl in Red

Read More »

The Gilded Age of Call of Duty, 2007-12

TiberiusLeave a comment

Revered by many at first glance

The original purpose of this blog was largely to give my most magmatic takes on animanga, TV, video games, and any other media, only to evolve into a comprehensive look at things I like, find interesting, or just plain don’t like. Case in point:

God of War III did better to make me feel guilty about f[growl]king up the world. I hate this game!

Read More »

Furuhata Ninzaburo: Japan’s Love Letter to Columbo

TiberiusLeave a comment

Another atypical police detective from another part of the world

It was the first week of April 2026 when I first wrote my piece on Det. Frank Columbo starring the incomparable* Peter Falk.

See this link provided for more details.

Read More »

Media Atmosphere

TiberiusLeave a comment

When networks were in on the fun

Originally, this was going to be about channel bumpers and how overlooked those are compared to other filmed and animated media that hasn’t been archived, and I will get to channel bumpers in this piece. It will merely open up into the springboard of wider media and what the bumpers mean. As a guy who jackhammers the corner of the YouTube mobile app screen hoping in vain that it’ll skip the ad sooner, this may seem odd, but the bumpers weren’t just a showcase of the network you were watching ChalkZone on.

It seems to be something of an exercise in animation. Already an expensive and labor-intensive medium, be it hand-drawn or stop-motion (the latter of which I have experience with TTwTT), making a silly animation in an extremely crude manner is nothing to sneeze at. The history of the medium has a rich lineage as attributed to the likes of Walt Disney and Warner Bros. With tech catching up and more and more animators and studios abusing the new tech to see what can and can’t be done, eventually some madman would turn channel idents into an art form.

Read More »

The Lack of Max Payne Clones ಠ_ಠ

TiberiusLeave a comment

Very few imitators

You wanna know something interesting about games in the mid 1990s to around 2011 or so? The most popular properties were cloned and imitated ad nauseum. Google the most cloned video games and the search results will pull up some of the obvious examples because of how influential they were at release and still are. Doom, GTA III, Minecraft, Flappy Bird, and to add onto that, God of War, Mortal Kombat (especially in the 90s when it first debuted), Devil May Cry, and so many others as seen in this screenshot:

Article overview of major video games that pioneered new genres, including images and descriptions of 'Minecraft', 'DOOM', 'Grand Theft Auto III', 'Flappy Bird', 'Dark Souls', and 'PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds'.

Even WatchMojo made a list of heavily cloned video games… multiple times. >_<

Read More »

Gran Turismo 4: The Racing Game that Sped Away (T_T)

TiberiusLeave a comment

And what a bloody shame too…

One of the earliest posts on this blog concerned racing games, three of which I ranked in order from great to terrible: Midnight Club 3, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, and L.A. Rush–with Gran Turismo 4 as the wild card that I would attempt to get back into at a later date due to vague memories of what it entailed.

I made that dedication on April 7, 2023 with this post: Racing Games. Attempts were made to fulfill that promise and short of typing “Results: Inconclusive. Project Cancelled” in bold letters, it’s worth noting what I experienced in the many times I booted the game up on PCSX2 and why it’s better to categorize it as “easy to play, hard to master.”

Read More »

Crackpot Conspiracy Theories the Anime

TiberiusLeave a comment

「それは愛じゃない．．．愛はそれじゃない．．．」

Those of you who can read Japanese probably see the cold open up there and have a guess at what this week’s topic is on about. If you don’t, this is the next big clue:

Read More »

Warriors~! Come Out to Play-ay~!

Tiberius1 Comment

1979 cult classic film and… 2005 Rockstar published video game?

A low-budget gangster film from the late-1970s has gone on record to achieve the cult classic status it would enjoy some 20 to 40 years later.

The basic premise of The Warriors is that the largest and most powerful gang of hoods, the Gramercy Riffs, calls upon all the gangs in the five boroughs of New York. Gramercy Riffs’ gang leader Cyrus spends the early film urging peace amongst all the gangs, all of whom outnumber the NYPD 3 to 1. Whether this includes corrupt cops and mafiosi isn’t explained, but beating the piss out of one cop would come after first trying to bribe approximately four or five. Four cops take the cash and look elsewhere, the fifth needs knuckle persuasion.

Read More »