God of War Original: On Kratos

TiberiusLeave a comment

Norse God of War looks impressive, but…

Going back to notes on future topics, I hadn’t really planned all that well for future topics. This week just says God of War original, but I didn’t really elaborate any further on what I meant by that; I was just listing things off for what I’d like to cover well into September of this year, though for reasons to be revealed much later as more details come to me, I doubt I’ll be anywhere near a device long enough to make regular weekly Friday blog posts.

For this week, I don’t remember whether I wanted to talk about what makes even Greek Kratos a good character along with Norse Kratos or if I wanted to cover a timeline of the Greek era games. I’ve seen more videos contextualizing and/or defending Greek Kratos to rebut the game journalists who were ready to discard him with very little knowledge of the rest of the series, and I’ve done this before as well. My first blog post defends Kratos while still acknowledge that his behavior and actions are downright brutal, so instead of repeating that, I think I’ll put together a comprehensive timeline.

Note: this will mostly before the Greek era and may only cover the games I’ve played, so although the developers claim God of War: Betrayal is canon, I currently don’t have a means to play this. I did find and save a comment on r/GodofWar that tells people how to play on a modern smartphone since it was developed for cell phones when they looked like this:

So I don’t think I can add it to the timeline I’ll create since I haven’t played it yet. Also, most people haven’t really played it either due to how much of a hassle mobile games were in the mid-2000s, so whether its omission changes anything or not depends. To my knowledge, it doesn’t all come to a head until God of War III, but let’s not jump the gun and follow Kratos on his journey.

The extras in the first God of War game set the stage for Kratos the character who coincidentally shares the same name of the mythological god of power and strength and one of Zeus’ best agents/servants.

Kratos’ Origins:

As I recall, the extras in the first game explain his origin story. A mortal woman with a child of dubious paternity in tow was cast out of her city-state and chose to make a home in Sparta and raise her son accordingly. Later, the same mortal woman mothers a second child but cannot establish his father either. The boys live the typical life of a burgeoning Spartan warrior in preparation for the lifelong training to be undergone by young boys around the age of 7.

Tragedy strikes the younger of the brothers. Born with a distinctive birthmark, the gods of Olympus are warned that a marked warrior will bring doom to Olympus, and set out to virtually erase this boy’s existence. Two gods, a brother and sister, take the younger brother and wound the elder. Normally, Greek gods seldom leave survivors so the older brother and their mother had to live with the fact that the younger brother had perished.

This failure to save the younger brother motivated the older brother to become a fully devoted Spartan warrior. Native son or not, this was his home and he was determined to fight in his memory, even gaining a distinctive tattoo to honor his brother’s memory.

Later in life, the older brother known as Kratos married the most beautiful woman in Sparta: Lysandra and fathered a girl named Calliope. In Ancient Sparta, the health of the infant determined their lot. Sickly children were often discarded and Calliope born sickly would surely have been abandoned pertaining to Spartan law.

Kratos made a promise that he wouldn’t be weak and fulfilling that promise, after hearing about the Ambrosia of Asclepius, god of medicine and healing, he sets out to find it to save his daughter. The problem here is that he’s not the only champion who sets out on this quest. Other champions, personally gambled on like race horses by the gods of Olympus, are also on the hunt for the ambrosia. Kratos eventually wins this wager without knowing he was being bet on and sees Calliope well into her own childhood.

After this, he set out on campaigns to expand and strengthen Sparta’s brutal reputation, but his relationship with his family suffers as a result. One such battle eliminates a large number of Spartans and almost spells the end for Kratos until he pleads to the god of war, Ares to save him from death. His offer was his life. Following on this, Ares gifts Kratos a brand new set of weapons to carry into battle. Their chains were seared onto his arms to remind him of his oath to the god of war, never to be removed.

These blades took the head of their first victim soon after, and would set a course for Kratos’ downfall. His time as a devotee to the god who saved him drove him to extremes, you’d grow to be scared of the monster he was becoming. Across the Greek world, Kratos’ name would be made infamous with one single act.

The final straw that broke the camel’s back came when he set his fellow devotees on a rampage against followers of Ares’ sister, Athena, the god of wisdom. The village was massacred behind Kratos as he set his sights on the temple in the middle of the village.

The associated oracle warns him not to go inside, but the prophecy falls on deaf ears as he slaughters the lot of these civilians, the final two pulled him to his senses. Through trickery and manipulation, Kratos slaughtered his family.

Soon after Kratos understands the horror at his feet, an image of his patron god appears to praise him on his lack of mercy and make him into a warrior with nothing to lose. Ares misunderstood though that Kratos’ family was what kept him going for so long. Now that he’s widowed and fatherless, he can’t bring himself to continue to worship Ares.

As punishment for spilling familial blood, the oracle fastens the ashes of his family to his skin, a sign to all of what he was, thus birthing the Ghost of Sparta, a derisive moniker to remind him of his crimes. Worse yet for Kratos, the Furies, keepers of oaths and goddesses of vengeance punish him for breaking away from the god of war.

Ascension:

Breaking away from any deity is a punishable offense. As an example, the Hecatonchires, Aegaeon, was punished by having his many heads and limbs turned into a living prison, or more accurately a zombie prison since Aegaeon’s corpse was used extensively as the prison and he doesn’t get to move until activated by the cruel Furies.

Megaera, Tisiphone, and Alecto all vow to bring Kratos back to Ares or kill him whichever one comes first. Along his journey, their son, Orkos, guides him on his path to free him from the crippling visions that have since followed him. Part of this journey involves seeking out the Oracle of Delphi, Aletheia. Guarded by slave workers and their owner Castor and Pollux (reimagined as conjoined twins), Kratos climbs up the the temple to seek an audience with the Oracle, though without tribute as would be expected. Castor attempted to turn him away for forgoing this rule, but learned first hand why he was the Ghost of Sparta.

The fight carries a third casualty; armed with the Amulet of Ouraborus, Castor destroys the temple and mortally wounds Aletheia, but fortunately for Kratos, she survives long enough to further assist him. His next move is to travel to the island of Delos, home of the statue of Apollo currently in disrepair to gain the eyes of the oracle.

At the same time, the Furies give chase and almost have him prisoner until Orkos intervenes and gives him the stone he uses to be in multiple places at once. At the same time, Kratos rebuilds the statue with the amulet and eventually gains the eyes of the oracle, but doesn’t hold onto them for long. The other mystical relics on this journey of his are confiscated while he gets chained to the Hecatonchires prison. He later regains them and fights off the Furies as they fail to entice or coerce him into serving Ares once more.

To this end, the last method used is the image of his family. But Kratos chooses reality and kills the Furies, seemingly freeing him of his oath until Orkos reveals that as a last ditch effort, Orkos was made the oathkeeper and Kratos can’t be free of his hallucinations until he kills Orkos, which he does reluctantly.

Chains of Olympus:

The journey of redemption is a long one. Kratos stopped serving Ares after it cost him his family, but still seeks to forget his past while under the service of the rest of Olympus. As such, he serves as the main guide for the Attica military in the midst of a Persian invasion with a basilisk in tow. Kratos fights off the Persian Army, their king and destroys the fire breathing beast, thus saving Attica, but Kratos, halfway through his decade of servitude for penance demands another challenge.

On cue, the sun falls out of the sky as a black fog engulfs the lands. At Helios’ temple, a statue of Athena reveals that Helios was kidnapped and without his command of the sun, Morpheus, god of dreams has taken over the lands.

Morpheus doesn’t physically appear in Chains of Olympus, just his name is used. Kratos finds Helios’ sister, Eos, goddess of dawn, who tells him that Atlas the titan kidnapped Helios. She doesn’t know where they went and can’t help any further weakened by the absence of Helios. However, he can still find him by activating the steeds that pull the chariot everyday.

We’re all adults here, but the images of Eos in game have her with her breasts uncovered and I don’t want to risk myself or anyone else reading getting flagged. I could definitely censor the bare nipples, but I chose the easier method of showing her back since I wanna finish this in time for lunch.

Anyway, Kratos activates the steeds and they take him to Hades where Helios was taken by Atlas. On his way, he demands the ferryman Charon bring him to where Helios is being kept. Charon refuses as the gods still needs him and soundly defeats him in battle and sends him to Tartarus.

Kratos breaks out and acquires the gauntlet of Zeus. Climbing out with this new weapon, Kratos returns to the docks to defeat the ferryman and take his ship further into Hades. An apparition haunting him since he was at Helios’ temple was that of Calliope, whom Kratos gifted a carved flute for her to play in reference to her namesake being one of the nine muses.

This apparition of his daughter takes him off his course to save humanity and he willingly sacrifices his powers to be with her in Elysium since there’s no other way for him to get into Elysium elsewise, at the instruction of Persephone.

The reunion is short-lived as the goddess of spring and wife of Hades reveals that she was the one who freed Atlas and used him to kidnap Helios. The next phase of her plan was to use him to destroy the pillar that holds up the world. Instead, Kratos traps the titan beneath the world and uses the gauntlet of Zeus to kill Persephone. The sacrifice he made though was his own daughter. If the pillar was destroyed then Kratos would lose her and her memory, but if it was spared and the world saved, he would have to abandon her. Nonetheless, he fulfills his promise and begrudgingly accepts his place as the servant of the gods.

2005:

Five years after the events of Chains of Olympus, Kratos onboard a ship combats the hydra and sets a course for Athens. Athena calls upon Kratos to save her city from her brother. This doubles as a chance at redemption and a means for Kratos get his revenge on Ares. Before he had to live with his crimes as nightmares, but with a chance to defeat Ares in sight, he jumped at the opportunity hoping it would mean his nightmares would finally end.

Chaos is ensuing at just the gates to Athens proper, and Kratos goes to the oracle of Athens to consult a guide on defeating Ares. He saves her from the minions of Ares and tells him that the power to slay even a god rests within the box of Pandora.

Still a risky picture, but there’s significantly less breast exposure. The oracle tells Kratos that the path to the box is through the desert and Athena, through her statues, elaborates that it’s hidden at the highest level of the temple which is in turn chained to the back of Chronos, who is forced to forever traverse the desert.

Along the way, Kratos comes across deadly traps and perilous enemies, while also being aided by the gods. Finally he reaches the box itself, but is then killed by Ares and has the box taken from him. He still has this task to complete and fights his way out of Hades to complete it with aid of a grave digger that he ran across earlier in the game.

I’ve seen the above photo several times, and only now has it dawned on me that the bottom half is like that meme of the elegantly drawn horse but half-finished. Back at the Temple of the Oracle, Kratos treks through the building to reach Ares, now proclaiming his possession of the box, and threatening to use it on Olympus.

Kratos hurls a Zeus lightning bolt at the chain holding the box, opens it, and uses its power to kill Ares. A mortal man defeated a god for the first time in history, and Athens can rebuild anew, but Kratos learned that he was only set up for redemption and forgiveness. He’s stuck with those nightmares for life. Taking this as a betrayal, he sought to end his own life, but the gods had other plans. Because of his service to Olympus, he’s given the seat of the God of War as consolation. But this wasn’t enough for Kratos.

Ghost of Sparta:

Now that he has the throne of Ares, a long repressed memory of his brother Deimos resurfaces. This time, though, he seeks an answer as to the true fate of his brother. Organizing a fleet of sailors, he sets a course for Atlantis where his mother, Callisto, rests in a chamber, ailing and waiting for her son’s arrival. Knowing his intentions, the gods attempt to dissuade Kratos by unleashing beasts like Scylla, but it doesn’t work out as they hoped.

Through whooping coughs, she reveals that she was forced to lie to Kratos about the fate of his brother at the behest of his father, whose identity she was also cursed to keep secret. Failure to do so transforms her into a beast that Kratos kills. In her dying breath, Callisto urges Kratos travel to Sparta and find a key to the Gate of Death, the realm of the primordial Greek god Thanatos.

After this battle, he travels through the Methana Volcano and acquires the bane of Thera which imbues his blades with fire. In doing so, the stability of the volcano’s interior is in jeopardy as Kratos also uses the fire to destroy the gears that operate the Archimedes screws that regulate the temperature of the volcano. Without all of these, the volcano begins to erupt and Atlantis sinks to the seabed.

The resulting eruption sends Kratos flying into the city of Heraklion, where the Grave Digger greets him, this time with a warning that the destruction of Atlantis will cost him whatever favor he gained from his prior service to Olympus, especially Zeus. Unfortunately for Olympus, occupying the god of war’s throne wasn’t what he desired, and so he sets forth to continue on his trek to Deimos.

Part of this path takes him through the Aronia Mountains where young Spartans are sent to conquer their fears. Going back to the god of death foreshadowing, he and his daughter Erinys are tasked with preventing Kratos from reaching his goal.

During the battle, Kratos conveniently returns to Sparta and his treated as a legend among his countrymen. While there, he comes across a dissenter in the jails who nearly gets him killed. Despite the results of his battle, there’s a small minority of devotees to Ares. Nevertheless, Kratos makes it out of the jails of Sparta and travels to the temple of the fallen god of war to retrieve the key: the skull of Keres.

With the skull in hand, he sets a course back to the now submerged Atlantis to activate the Gate of Death with the key. The realm of death (which I interpreted as Purgatory) is described as a place where neither god nor mortal dares enter willingly.

Navigating the realm, Kratos finally finds his brother, but the reunion is a bloody affair. The associated trophy suggests that Kratos held back because he just wanted his brother back even if it meant he died with hatred in his heart. Not long afterward, Thanatos took Deimos away again and when Kratos returns to save his brother from death again, the two engaged in battle with Thanatos, who admitted the short-sightedness of Olympus’ decision to take Deimos and not Kratos. Though it wouldn’t have made a difference which brother was abducted.

Deimos dies in the fight and after Kratos kills Thanatos, he lays his brother to rest for real this time. Now that it’s only him left, Athena arrives to bestow godhood to Kratos as he now lacks a familial bond on earth. Kratos doesn’t take very kindly to being forced to massacre his family piecemeal and promises to topple Olympus for it one way or another.

II:

Now a god, Kratos relished in the comfort of battle and war in defiance of the peace that Olympus desired in the world. Athena implores him to stop, but he refuses and continues to aid in an ongoing invasion of Rhodes. His brutality turned out to be worse than what Ares was capable of, so Zeus strips him of a fraction of his godhood while bringing the Colossus of Helios at Rhodes to life to fight Kratos and defend the city.

Kratos battles the statue, but Zeus feigns aid by lending him the Blade of Olympus. He’s tricked into pouring the last of his powers into the blade and uses it to destroy the statue soundly, but falling debris causes him to drop the blade and his mortality returns to him. He tried to save face and retrieve the blade, but Zeus beat him to the punch. He expressed his disappointment at what’s become of the Ghost of Sparta.

When Kratos refuses this last opportunity to stand by Zeus, Zeus killed him and annihilated the combating armies of Sparta and Rhodes, save for one lone Spartan. Kratos was then resurrected and encouraged by Gaia to return to the world of the living. He greeted the last Spartan and issued orders to return and fortify Sparta’s defenses while he prepared to face Zeus again, commandeering a Pegasus who doesn’t take him straight to his destination of choice.

A pair of titans has keys he needs to even stand a chance against the king of Olympus. Typhon’s Bane to be retrieved from its namesake’s eye, and the Rage of the Titans to be retrieved from sacrificing Prometheus to the fires of Olympus. With both, Kratos frees the Pegasus previously trapped beneath Typhon’s hand and travels with his new weapons to the Isle of Creation.

This island is the home of the Sisters of Fate, where travelers can request an audience with the sisters. As it turns out, others had similar ideas. The island is filled with numerous traps and guarded by the Steeds of Time which were meant as a gift from Chronos in a feeble attempt to change his own fate from what Zeus had done to him after the Titanomachy.

The steeds are guarded by the last person you’d expect to serve anyone before himself: Theseus.

The old man challenges Kratos to battle and gets trounced by the Ghost of Sparta who then uses his key to traverse the rest of the island and acquires some of Chronos’ lightning magic. Here, he encounters the first of his old enemies in search of a do-over from the sisters: the Barbarian King who fought on the Persian side all those years ago.

Long dead, he returns as a zombie in possession of an undead horse and the hammer that almost killed Kratos when he pleaded for a second chance. The barbarian dies a second time, and Kratos takes his hammer as a secondary weapon. He then encounters Jason and his Argonauts stranded around the island and in varying degrees of screwed. Jason himself in possession of the golden fleece when he gets eaten by a Cerberus beast.

Kratos retrieves the relic and now has the ability to throw attacks back and parry limitlessly. This acquisition of extra relics takes him through Euryale’s temple where he battles her and takes her head as he did her sister years ago in Athens.

The second person seeking counsel with the sisters is Perseus who failed in his myth to save Andromeda without Medusa’s head. Kratos kills him and stumbles upon hobo Icarus who attempts to reserve the right to seek the sisters of fate.

In their fight, Kratos takes his wings and navigates the body of Atlas. Before breaking out from the chasm, Kratos is discovered by the titan who is convinced to stop exacting revenge on the Spartan after hearing of his plan to use the Blade of Olympus on Zeus himself.

Atlas talks about the first time he encountered that blade and what he would’ve done if not sentenced to his position by Kratos. Now that they’re both enemies of Olympus, Atlas grants him his magic and helps him reach the Palace of the Fates. Kratos once again fights his way inside, dodging the traps and enemies inside to get reach the sisters, even defeating the kraken that Perseus was supposed to defeat.

Finally reaching the sisters, Kratos proclaims that fate doesn’t work on him and the sisters fight him in a last ditch effort to prevent him from fighting Zeus, expecting the death of Olympus to follow suit. Kratos proceeds anyway and fights the king of the gods on Olympus, but with Athena protecting her father, he misses the opportunity and accidentally kills Athena in the process. She used her dying breath to reveal what Callisto would have revealed in Atlantis about Zeus being his father and urges him to spare Olympus, which was his original goal.

Kratos declares that only Zeus is his target but won’t let anyone get in his way. Calling forth the Titans from the Titanomachy, Kratos declares war on Zeus and any remaining Olympians.

III:

Expecting heavy resistance, Kratos welcomed the challenge brought on by the Olympians, the first of them being Poseidon himself. The sea god is the first to fall and his death negatively impacts bodies of water across the world. Another confrontation with Zeus leads to Gaia losing her hand and Kratos falling to the underworld again after Gaia reveals he was a means to an end for the titans.

Kratos’ circle of allies shrunk rapidly and now that he’s in Hades, the king of the dead isn’t going to let him slip through his fingers again. Armed with the bow of Apollo, recovered from Peirithous’ corpse, Kratos kills Hades which unbinds the souls from the realm of the dead, and leaves the dead in limbo while Kratos gets to use Hades’ titular claws in battle.

Between battles, Kratos encounters the former Olympian smith god, Hephaestus.

Encountering the smith god, Kratos learns about the Flame of Olympus and is encouraged by the spirit of Athena to find it. After battling with Helios and taking his head (and blotting out the sun) Kratos comes across the labyrinth of Daedalus and more than once in this game. While here, the messenger of the gods, Hermes, taunts him as a challenge, despite the Spartan’s best efforts to ignore the little bugger.

For this, Hermes loses his legs and his death causes plague on Olympus. Traveling further, he comes across his stepmother Hera who would happily turn a blind eye to the death of her husband, but when Kratos asks for Pandora, whom Athena tells him is needed to reach her namesake box, she sicks his half brother Hercules on him.

Under the false promise of godhood over the ancillary nonsense from his labors, Hercules attempts to kill Kratos on Hera’s orders, but gets bludgeoned and robbed of his Nemean Cestus. The world now in ruins without the gods to control it, Kratos continues on in search of Pandora to defeat Zeus. This takes him back to Hephaestus who now turns on Kratos when he learns that Pandora is his new target of acquisition. He claims to need the Omphalos Stone to craft a fourth weapon, though Kratos deems it unnecessary considering the number on his hip already.

The stone turns out to be in Chronos’ stomach and is violently torn from his intestines. Kratos caught on to the double cross and once the electric Nemesis Whip is gifted to Kratos, Hephaestus follows through on his double cross and tries to kill him to protect his daughter.

He fails and Kratos continues on alone in search of the girl.

Along the way, he killed Hera for badmouthing Pandora and moved the cubes of Daedalus’ labyrinth causing his death as well. Pandora is found unconscious and when they return to the flame, she attempts to fulfill her fate. Then Zeus returns to stop Kratos from causing further chaos. In a final battle, Pandora attempts again to fulfill her destiny. At first Kratos prevents her but he was goaded by Zeus and let her go. The flame was extinguished and he learns that the box was empty. Now father and son end this rivalry once and for all while Gaia reveals she survived and isn’t happy to learn that her plan had destructive consequences. The battle continues inside the titaness and the two emerge, with the blade impaled in Zeus.

With the last of his might, he sentences Kratos to a nightmare world, but with the power of hope, he breaks free and beats Zeus to death for good this time. The cost of his revenge was the state of humanity, and when told by Athena to transfer his power to her, he takes his own life in defiance. Only Kratos is essentially unkillable and the post-credits scene reveals that he escaped to Midgard while Greece rebuilt likely under Roman supervision.

I omitted and reworked some stuff for this timeline to fit it all in chronological order since some games begin in medias res, but I think I did an okay job of mapping out the greek timeline. I say “timeline” when this is a recounting of the games’ chronology since calendar dates aren’t exactly shown. Mythologies may be based on a version of the truth, but with oral tradition birthing many different versions of the same story, it’s hard to put Kratos in the timeline in a way that doesn’t have him jumping back and forth between events.

Norse Kratos preceding Fimbulwinter makes more sense temporally as scholars and historians believe a real-life world changing event likely caused by a medieval volcanic eruption called the Volcanic Winter of 536 served as an inspiration for the Norse myth of Fimbulwinter. The Greek era prequels’ release order being what it is, one could believe erroneously that Kratos was in two places at once.

So the timeline is faulty, but keeping in mind that most myths are inconsistent, I’d say it tracks. Thankfully, next week, I know what I want to talk about and I have a better research method to use. I won’t reveal too much, but let this picture be a teaser:

Eagle-eyed readers know what to expect, but in case I need to provide a further hint, it’s about a series of video games.

For this week, my channel recommendation is iilluminaughtii, spelled as seen here.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpDmn2FfVYdPIDwRTcf5-OA

The channel, run by a woman named Blair, takes a hard look at companies and corporations and exposes their dirty laundry for all to see. Blair doesn’t give anyone the benefit of the doubt and dispels their friendly image, uncovers a dark history they thought they’d buried under history and legalese, criticizes them for a professed hypocritical message, or any combination of the three and then some. I don’t tune in to all of her videos. Some topics interest me, some don’t. The ones that do interest me, I can’t recommend them highly enough.

On her channel, her introductory video is an in-depth look at why we all hate PETA. Good stuff so far.

Before I leave, I’m gonna try something at the bottom:

Admittedly a censorship test. Sometimes I write these blog posts in public and if a reference image is NSFW/L, then the safer route is the most preferred, if it exists. The next time I bring up a mature series, the censor blocks will be used when I’m certain I won’t get in trouble for it. Some risks aren’t worth it.

Racing Games

TiberiusLeave a comment

“On Speed” by Lightning McQueen

This topic has been in my notes for a few weeks, and up until recently I thought about first talking about what I love most about the racing game genre before listing off my personal best through worst. I should admit, though, that the games chosen for this were chosen partly for nostalgic reasons but also to see how well they hold up. My appreciation for racing games goes back to an old collection of Hot Wheels toys, funny enough.

There was almost no escaping these little cars. While the cars could be found in most pharmacies and dollar stores and in the bargain bin at select department stores, toy stores held the associated sets and tracks and all of them were awesome. Most often, these were battery-powered loops that propel the cars on assembled tracks that go in multiple different directions. I don’t care what anyone says; no matter your opinions on the 2008 Speed Racer movie, toy manufacturers nailed it when they gave us toys and cars based on the movie. Still got nothing on the LEGO sets, though.

I didn’t own the above set, by the way. These things were huge.

To connect the toy cars to the digital cars I raced around in on the TV, these two ran concurrent with each other. I used to collect loads of toy cars and spend a lot of time with racing games, though not to the same extent as the fighting and adventure games. Still, I spent a lot of time with racing games and so for my best through worst:

Best: Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition Remix (2005)

Mid: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 (2002)

Worst: L.A. Rush (2005)

I think this post will get quite a bit long for each of these three, and before I expand on why I put these games where I put them in lieu of probably better options, this is a personal list that I know won’t walk the same stride as others’ personal lists, I have better memories with these games (emulated or otherwise), and for the game in the Worst category, there are objectively worse games like Crazy Bus or Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, but those were glorified tech demos that could be written off as a joke like Hong Kong 97. You’d have to put them on the same pedestal as actual games we celebrate or despise and that’s too much for those piles of crap. I don’t like to go for low-hanging fruit. Now for the list.

Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition Remix

This version of the game specifically is what I remember best as the game I finished 100% many times over, and as a personal achievement, I managed to do it on the PS2 emulator with just the keyboard. Thank god for long fingers!

The third in the Midnight Club series it follows up from its predecessors with longer races, more challenges, bigger cities, secrets and easter eggs and more. Customization options and an open world to explore let the player get creative during a race. More than once while driving through the cities, I came across these routes to find secrets or prepare to the best of my ability for a race that would most likely take a certain route.

The Dub Edition tagline for the regular and remix versions for the game stem from the game’s partnership with the car magazine Dub, who spruce up a prize car from a tournament in their style to include the Dodge Magnum, the 2006 Dodge Charger, the Chrysler 300C, the Cadillac Escalade EXT and others. The game has three scaled-down, fictionalized versions of the U.S. cities of San Diego, Atlanta, and Detroit, and the remix version includes the Tokyo Challenge. All three cities are headed by a mechanic and his auto parts garage:

San Diego’s mechanic, Oscar, heads the Six-One-Nine Customs;

Atlanta’s garage is Apone Team Racing run by the garage’s namesake,

And Vince’s garage is in Detroit. No fancy name unfortunately.

For Tokyo, Speedway is the garage there.

As you progress through the career mode, you’re told over a type of transceiver or cell phone that a new racer is in the city ready to challenge you. Racers driving a certain type of car denote a car club they belong to and upon their defeat, they send word of you to the club who invites you to partake in their races for a prize across the three cities. Additionally, tournaments can be entered for prize cars, customized by Dub or open for customization at the garage.

The customization options are quite extensive. Most likely riding the wave of the Fast and Furious franchise, nearly every car can have extensive body work done to it, essentially turning a station wagon into a supercar and earning you even more speeding tickets because none of the cars you have are street legal anymore. Imagine explaining that to the traffic cops…

The car classes and types matter mainly to the car clubs stateside, but in the remix version with Tokyo included, there are class and car type specific tournaments, and the kicker is that you don’t necessarily have to finish the American races first before flying to Japan. The first tournament you’re offered will require a vehicle class not available until you’re 4/5 done with Detroit, but the way you unlock tournaments in Tokyo is that instead of challenging individual racers, street races which are represented by red dots in the States are represented by purple diamonds, three of which unlock the next tournament. So theoretically, you can complete some races in the US, head to Japan and complete a tournament there, then come back to the US with the prize car, rinse and repeat.

Then, there’s the soundtrack, which couldn’t be anymore mid-2000s. Hip hop artists, post-grunge bands, techno bands, electro-pop; as I recall, select genres went hand-in-hand with the underground racing scene as depicted in media. I have no idea if this was representative of the lifestyle back then, but if so then that’s pretty cool. It makes the replays all the more enjoyable to watch.

The car clubs have an extra feature for certain cars. Specific types can gain one of three abilities: Zone, Agro, and Roar. Zone is a type of Max Payne-like slow motion ability that allows the Tuner cars, Exotic cars, Sports Bikes and select Luxury Sedans to weave through traffic in slow mo. This ability is earned by driving as clean as possible through the city. Agro is applicable to the rest of the Sedans and SUVs and is a type of boost that allows the driver to slam through traffic at a breakneck pace, breaking necks with all the wreckage caused by ramming other cars off the streets. Driving into other cars and causing general damage is how you earn this ability. Roar is exclusive to Muscle Cars and Choppers and it sends a blast of wind to scatter heavy traffic out of the way. Drifting and power sliding unlocks this ability. All three can be used a total of five times, and going by my playthrough of each ability, they’re not meant to be a one-size-fits-all solution when a race goes sideways. Zone helps you get through traffic, but it builds up as slow as its ability performs and a single crash can set the bar down as it accumulates. The draw of Agro ability is that you can send offending vehicles to the moon and the impact is literally diminished if you activate it on a free road. The same goes for Roar, but the consequences are doubly so if the vehicles don’t spread out how you hope. You have to think a bit more strategically before activating either of these three.

Lastly, there’s the secrets. The three U.S. cities have RockStar logos that net you extra customization options in the garage from more riders on bikes, to license plates to decals and more.

Above all, not only do I recommend it, I highly recommend you set up your controller if you go the emulation route. Contorting your fingers like miniature twister is better as a party trick than to play games. I write from experience.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2

My next words on this game specifically will surely sound a bit contradictory depending on how you see racing games. The customization options giving me a range of choices heavily influenced my rating of Midnight Club 3 despite me spending less time with it. Need for Speed has little in the way of customization, there’s no overarching plot to become a legendary racer in the underground street racing scene, and the options for cars and tracks is so limited that it’s nonexistent.

That being said, I’m still playing this game and the game modes on display do a lot to make up for what I thought was so perfect about MC3. Granted, NFS HP2 came out in Q4 2002 while MC3 was released around Spring 2005, so older racing games will feel like clean-picked skeletons compared to what would succeed them all, but judging games of this era by their own merits reveals that they’re less about style and more about substance. Midnight Club drips style, but Need for Speed before the EA corruption of the 2010s leaks substance.

Multiple game modes and challenges can be completed and the departure from other games is that there isn’t always an emphasis on getting perfect scores. Some challenges will still let you advance even if you finish in second place. As another divergent example from what’s expected of Midnight Club, transmission systems can be adjusted to suit the player depending on the car: automatic, manual, and semiautomatic transmission. The game is also designed more around skills than simply picking up and playing.

You know how Midnight Club has precise locations based on real-world cities, just scaled down massively from what residents of each would recognize of them (especially for 2005)? Well, the maps in Need for Speed are less precise and more like general amalgamations of a city in a given location. The Mediterranean coastline, the Pacific coast, Australia, the American Southwest, etc. The game also feels less like a smorgasbord of real-life cars and car concepts that with the benefit of hindsight didn’t always pan out.

This concept H3T, for instance, is different from what was sold in 2005 and ‘6, by the way. As a matter of fact, the car brands in NFS were less luxurious and well known and more specific to certain regions if not known to the wider car aficionado demographic. Opel, the now-defunct HSV, one of Ford’s foreign manufacturers, all feature in the game. The cars that you start off with tend to have a top speed of around 125 MPH with an average 0-60 acceleration rate of 5.3 seconds. The further down the line you advance, the top speed rounds to around 200 MPH with a shorter rate of acceleration. With the speeding cars comes new ways to maneuver around the tracks.

Speaking of the tracks, going back to a comment I made about the cars in MC3 losing street legality, they’d all be suited for a race track like how they’re all designed in this game. The tracks within NFS Hot Pursuit all have secret pathways and shortcuts to take but depending on the version you have it may be somewhat different. I emulated the PS2 version and pirated the PC version and the menu selection screens are all different; the PS2 version seemed to be the snazziest of all the available versions, whereas the PC, Xbox, and GameCube layouts are all the same.

Skills play a role in more than just driving and handling. The Hot Pursuit game modes where cops are placed at different points along the track can add an extra layer of difficulty to the challenge and you’ll normally only have that split-second to decide how to avoid them. NFS has a reset button for when you screw up during the race, but in my experience it there are less opportunities to use it during Hot Pursuit mode because the police will catch up to you and ticket you. So best to save those for when you’re out of sight of the police or outside Hot Pursuit mode.

The cops in this game are also aggressive. They’re not GTA-aggressive, but as I recall, in the PC version they’ll deploy helicopters the longer you resist. I know they also do that in the PS2 version though I rarely keep them around for that long to find out. This mode isn’t one sided though — there’s a mode to play as the cop and nab speeding racers as well.

I don’t know if this is true of all EA games from before or even now but their design philosophy, considering Medal of Honor, Need for Speed here, and Battlefield seemed to be based partly or wholly on gaining and refining skills than button-mashing throughout the whole play session. This isn’t a philosophy that’ll resonate with everyone and EA has since divorced themselves from this for darker desires in recent memory, but as I said with Midnight Club 3, find a way to play it and see the game for yourself. It might be too your taste if Midnight Club proves too flashy.

L.A. Rush:

This game is why this blog topic exists. It’s because I hate this game so much that I decided to write this week’s topic. Thing is, for years, I’d never had the words to illustrate my gripes with this game until recently. The YouTube channel BlueTag did the digging and the review on what this game has to offer because I knew damn well I wasn’t gonna put this tripe in my emulator, so here’s the corresponding video.

To spoil the video a bit, this game was developed by Midway Games’ British branch in Newcastle, the same Midway Games that flooded arcades from the 1980s until their 2010 bankruptcy, gave us Mortal Kombat and the subsequent ESRB rating system, and surprise sleepers like SpyHunter and Stranglehold. According to BlueTag, the finer details surrounding development are lost to history, but the game’s inner workings hint at a severe lack of communication between internal departments.

The physics engine is incredibly flimsy for a racing game let alone driving. Slip a finger on the accelerator and the car will hit the nearest wall at Mach 4, with reciprocal results. Forget tanks for cars that could take a beating; this game cinematically emphasizes the damage that comes with totaling the car when this happens.

Funny enough, the main protagonist is supposed to have a fleet of cars, but there’s only one that features prominently in the game at the beginning. L.A. Rush is another game sponsored by a major car promoter, this time MTV’s Pimp My Ride with Xzibit and Lil Jon in tow, but unlike Dub, Pimp My Ride doesn’t have much to offer. Or rather, the Dub team will let you win cars done by them where as PMR often upgrades your ride without you seeing the bodywork or messing around with it until it’s finished. You also stand to lose half your cash to a ride whose paintjob is a surprise until the end.

Speaking of money, you have to pay an entry fee to compete in a race and if you mess up and want to start over and do better, you can’t restart the race from the menu. You have to back out and come back in and pay the entry fee again. Like the other games, cops also play a role in this game but considering the consequences in the other games, this is simultaneously a worse and lax punishment at the same time: it’s lax because you bribe the cops to get them to back off, but it’s worse because you lose money on entry fees anyway so this is another way to lose your money.

Cutscenes meanwhile show the protagonist, whose name I never registered, I think his name was T or something, having already achieved street racer heaven. Then the bad guy shows up, promising to take your stuff which he does. After a few weeks, your cars are all confiscated including the jet black Hummer you rock up to the mansion in, leaving you with a suburban sedan that you have to use to get your cars back, often while under pursuit, and with the crappy physics and whatnot, this is more of a chore than anything.

As for the map, I’m not a native Angeleno, but I’ve heard from the Wikipedia article, that a section of L.A., namely the Valley was absent. Seems weird to put in, but in a racing game a map and layout can make or break a race if not the whole game and what I presume to be a notable location within the L.A. region was done a disservice by its omission. If this is the case, then whatever could’ve been done with the Valley may have killed further interest.

All things considered, if eight year old me was smart enough to see the problems with this back then it should be a warning to how unplayable a game could be, especially the PC port which I learned was worse off than the console version. If you have that Tibetan Buddhist level of patience, give it a go. If not, watch the gameplay and prepare yourself for outdated, cringey dialog, even for a game from the mid-2000s.

Before I move on to the YouTube recommendations, I want to mention a last minute game I also played on the PS2 back in the day, but have fewer moments with: Gran Turismo 4.

My memories with this are hazy as of now, but if I get the chance to emulate and play it, I’ll surely put my thoughts in, no questions asked.

Now for the channel recommendation: Rev says desu. This channel is a commentary channel on mostly anime and anime news and often features the wrong opinions to laugh at and lambast from some of the worst people to speak on a given matter on Twitter. Originally shortform in length, Rev has gotten around to longer videos for more to discuss. Wherever you start, if you like his content be sure to subscribe to him, he makes videos regularly.

https://www.youtube.com/@Revsaysdesu

The Elusive Samurai

Tiberius3 Comments

The life and times of Hojo Tokiyuki

Clawing out of the deep recesses like the happiest Spartan breaking free from Hades wasn’t without its few perks. To date, this is the third manga presented to me by Viz, so if it feels as though they’re sponsoring me, they aren’t. But I’d be open to covering the works they’re allowed to license to the west if the opportunity comes knocking especially now that two of those series are set for anime releases in the near future: this series and the one about the zombie or something. I don’t know…

But while Bad Luck Unkillable has a trailer with voice over and all that, Running from the Samurai in Medieval Japan only gave us a teaser trailer which works for me as I have as much time as I feel is appropriate to play catch-ups with the manga.

For research on this post, I’ve had to skim through and remind myself of who’s who, while also brushing up on this period of Japanese history, so wherever there’s a mistake, I’ll amend and correct it once I read up on both. The premise of The Elusive Samurai is thus: the Hojo clan, who held sway over the shogunate and sent most of their own members to work with the imperial family and court, is represented by their two members, current shikken (regent) Hojo Takatoki and his son and heir, Hojo Tokiyuki. Ambitious members of the Ashikaga samurai clan allied with the Emperor Go-Daigo in an attempt to return the imperial court to its seat of power, i.e. overthrow the Hojo-ruled Kamakura shogunate in favor of the emperor. During festivities, the Ashikaga launch their siege on Kamakura and nearly exterminate the Hojo clan. When the dust settles, the Ashikaga realize that the heir, now-shogun, Hojo Tokiyuki has survived and escaped. With the Ashikaga now in power, they use their resources to hunt down and exterminate the boy and every one of his allies.

Brief history lesson: on paper, the imperial court sat at the top of the pillar with the most power, followed by the shogunate, and while they were in power, the shikken. In reality, the Hojo clan shikkens were more powerful than both the shogunate and the imperial court combined. This was the result of the 12th century Genpei War that pitted the Taira and Minamoto clans against each other. Minamoto no Yoritomo won out and as part of the spoils of victory, the imperial court behaved as a figurehead, a position that Go-Daigo was clearly not happy with, hence the Kenmu Restoration’s goal of reversing these circumstances. Fun fact: Kublai Khan found this out the hard way in the lead up to military actions against the imperial court and shogunate when the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty attempted to add the Japanese islands to their list of possessions. Couldn’t go east in the long run so he went hard west.

And thus we learned from the Mongols why it pays to think very hard about an amphibious invasion. Back to the manga, over the course of the Kenmu Restoration period, Tokiyuki-sama embarks on a quest to gain allies and build a force of formidable warriors who can return the Hojo clan to their former glory. It might go in a different direction in the long run considering in real life, the Kenmu Restoration was short-lived and to my interpretation the Ashikaga turned on Go-Daigo and restored the shogunate long enough to stay in power until 1573. Interestingly, this created a split in the historicity of the Japanese emperor’s line of succession briefly with Japan holding two capitals until the Azuchi-Momoyama period.

Seriously, I’ve gotta stop jumping the gun here. Alright, so Tokiyuki isn’t completely alone in his quest. He starts out with a few retainers at his side and actually has support from the head of the nearby Suwa clan in the form of Suwa Yorishige who I believe is loosely inspired by the samurai of the same name, though the real life Suwa Yorishige succeeds the fictional one by two centuries. Also, manga Yorishige is reimagined as medieval Japanese Nostradamus with all his predictions about the future and funny enough common manga tropes. Makes me think of Koro-sensei though more self-aware of the manga he’s in.

Structurally, I see a bunch of references to JRPGs like Chrono Trigger or early Final Fantasy. Protagonist with a long term goal, comrades at his side, godlike guide, encroaching force of evil closing in from all sides; the comrades especially exhibit several archetypes in several RPGs, the thief, the brute, the mage, etc. If I was alive in the 1980s, I probably wouldn’t have imagined how many manga series became franchises with spin-offs and video games in tow, but if I had Yorishige’s level of foresight and I could see Dragon Ball getting video games and all that, then I think I can also see other manga following suit. Whether The Elusive Samurai follows suit remains to be seen, but even if it was a fan creation, I could see an Elusive Samurai RPG-style game soon. It’s also worth noting that the art style and writing will feel familiar to fans of Assassination Classroom and that’s because it’s from the same man: Yusei Matsui. Overall, by itself, it seems to be having fun with the historical setting and subject material. Taking the piss outta historical figures is a worldwide pastime, after all. In comparison with Kill School, the most comparable thing they have is the femboy protagonist. Not sure if that’s Matsui’s bread and butter, but these days that might be the case.

The YouTube channel recommendations are coming back for April. Also, Tomorrow being April Fool’s Day, I’ll cover Toonami and Adult Swim’s yearly tradition when those stars align. Look forward to that.

Boruto’s Contrast with Naruto

TiberiusLeave a comment

Three updates so soon

This was about to be last week’s post, but I didn’t think it fair to talk about the same thing thrice in such a short amount of time. I’d been meaning to move onto other manga/anime/entertainment, etc. and I don’t really want to be the Boruto guy. I take in as much of the series as I can when I can, but I don’t want to sound like it’s the only thing I take in; my previous posts suggest otherwise.

That being said, the above meme gets to the heart of what this post will be about and the fanfare from the release of the latest chapter on Sunday put so much of the community into a frenzy that there were more people who read Boruto than One Piece.

At one point, the Boruto fans claimed the last chapter alone trounced all of One Piece which isn’t so much a shot for the moon from the Earth as it’s a shot to the sun from Planet X. I liked the last chapter a lot, but I wouldn’t say it was that good.

As for the topic this week: Momoshiki’s prediction in like Volume 3 of the manga comes true in the most recent chapter. I’ll put links down below so that readers can see for themselves what he’s been talking about all along:

https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/boruto-chapter-79/chapter/26473

https://w2.boruto-online.com/manga/boruto-manga-chapter-79/

And for those of you who care little for spoilers, picking up from 77 and 78, after Kawaki comes to the conclusion that the life of a shinobi is not a pleasant one, he prefaces his plans to Naruto and Hinata by announcing first that in any other circumstance he would never wish harm against Boruto, but him being part Ohtsutsuki and a vessel for Momoshiki to boot has forced hand, literally as we see later. Distraught, neither the Seventh Hokage nor his wife take kindly to Kawaki’s plans and the boy, expecting this resistance, sends the pair to another dimension, hoping to complete his mission unimpeded by the Hidden Leaf Village’s most powerful ninja.

Catching up to Boruto and Sarada, Kawaki strikes, awarding Boruto his new scar only to be apprehended by Sasuke, Shikamaru, and Mitsuki. However, it’s established in an earlier chapter that when Boruto’s chakra reserves are diminished, Momoshiki takes control, as noted by the Jougan’s appearance in Boruto’s right eye. Kawaki breaks free and flees. Eida senses danger coming his way, and catches up to him. Unconsciously, she activates a shinjutsu or god technique known as Omnipotence that reverses Boruto’s and Kawaki’s roles: Kawaki is the one who’s now the son of Naruto Uzumaki and Hinata Hyuga, while Boruto is the nobody, the outcast vessel of Kara and Isshiki Ohtsutsuki while he controlled Jigen’s body.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Boruto anime, which airs on Sundays, released a new episode the same day as Chapter 79, so fans got a glimpse of what Momoshiki meant when he made his prophecy while also watching Kawaki try the first time to rid the world of Momoshiki’s presence. I know they’re not meant to be the highlight of Boruto anymore, but the OG Team 7 and the Sixth Hokage could simply tell Kawaki and the new Team 7 why killing an Ohtsutsuki is so tough. It’s like fighting a necromancer: if you kill the necromancer and it’s easy, you didn’t kill him. Am I right, Quan Chi?

So now that we have this set up, I want to try to make predictions. With the announcement a few weeks ago that Boruto’s Part 1 was ending soon, what we know so far is that Boruto lost everything. He’s his father’s son in appearance and often personality, but Naruto grew up a few years and change after the Third Shinobi War ended. Select shinobi who taught or de facto raised him like Kakashi and Jiraiya are war veterans themselves from that conflict or an earlier conflict; Kakashi himself was a child soldier from the Third War. Including teachers, the OG characters from Naruto are in some manner a victim of loss on either a wide or miniature scale.

Boruto doesn’t know that world and neither does his generation. Relatively speaking there’s peace all around, except for one or two bands of rogue ninja. Fifteen years after the devastation of the Fourth Shinobi War, and the peace that Nagato, Jiraiya, and everyone ever wanted has come to fruition thanks in no small part to the will of a knuckleheaded ninja. As a result, Boruto’s generation doesn’t need more shinobi to fill in a gap or because there’s a war on the horizon in need of some fresh meat; it’s mostly general security and escort missions or at least that’s how they always begin. A simple security mission can easily turn sour depending on several conditions. Remember the Mujina bandits?

Now that Boruto’s lost everything he’s ever had, the only route fans can see going forward is that Boruto follows the path of a rogue shinobi, like Sasuke did but with a significant point of divergence. Sasuke chose to acquire power from Orochimaru to get revenge on Itachi; Boruto had this move forced on him by an omnipotent power that honestly no one understands all that well. Another adverse effect of the Omnipotence shinjutsu is that Ohtsutsuki members and their vessels don’t succumb to Eida’s charm ability. Interestingly, Sumire and Sarada are also immune to this ability, which some on r/Boruto have theorized that since she treated these two as friends, they were spared that outcome.

Call it a miscalculation, but has anything good ever happened when children activate godly powers? In all seriousness, this would mean that one or both of them is likely to join up with Boruto for the foreseeable future while he plots to undo Kawaki’s crimes. Whether this extends to the remnants of the Ohtsutsuki remains to be seen. Sarada might go with Boruto, but if her father falls under the same charm as most people then he’ll likely fight her tooth and nail to keep her in the village. Sakura as well.

Sumire could also join Boruto’s quest since the anime gave her a burden of her own to deal with early on in the show’s run in the form of Nue and her father’s connection to the Foundation, the ANBU cell independent of the Hokage’s control. But this could also go wrong as the show rectified the rampage from that arc and allowed her to return to the life she’d gained in the Ninja Academy, even letting her work as an assistant to Dr. Katasuke Tohno in the manga.

These would be unlikely if they join Boruto in defiance of the Hidden Leaf Jonin. If it were a mission, since Boruto is now perceived as an enemy at the terrorist level, it would be an A-rank mission with S-rank potential and only the most advanced level shinobi would be selected for such a mission. It’s not like when Shikamaru’s rag-tag team fought off the Sound Ninja 4 to get Sasuke back. They village might choose to see it as potentially more dangerous, even for a Chunin like Sarada.

But if they see her potential and do what Hiruzen did with Itachi and make it an undercover/double agent mission like the Uchiha Clan Downfall, then I could see it happening… under Naruto and in response to what happened to his son. Assuming Shikamaru becomes interim Hokage or Kakashi or Tsunade return to their roles, they’d be under the influence of Omnipotence and Shikamaru has shown himself to be way more risk-averse as advisor to the Hokage. Just as he’d wanted to do to Kawaki, he probably won’t stop until Boruto is apprehended, however that comes about.

Also consider the reaction/response to come from the Hyuga clan when they find out their former heiress is missing, or whether the Omnipotence transcends dimensions. Hanabi and Hiashi are the only two Hyuga clan members to appear in the anime and I don’t think ever in the Boruto manga. Compared to the other Hidden Leaf clans, the Hyuga are still intact and kicking, especially with members of theirs amongst the regular Hidden Leaf Jonin in other aspects. A large pool of veteran shinobi to answer to this emergency should be expected.

In the meantime, with Himawari now technically an orphan, she might be taken into the Hyuga clan grounds for her protection and further training as an established academy student and aspiring shinobi. She does have the Byakugan unlike her brother and if they deem her ready, may induct her as a shinobi no different than the others who serve the Hidden Leaf Village.

If Omnipotence transcends dimensions, then that means Kawaki is safe in the short-term but screwed in the long-term. He advised Eida to report Naruto and Hinata (who are in another dimension remember) dead, so he and Eida could be in it if they find out that it’s a lie.

This all remains to be seen, though. We have until April 20 to see what happens, and I may have more material to write about. You know how I wrote up above that I didn’t really want to be seen as the Boruto guy? That might be in my future the more I bring it up. But again we’ll have to wait and see.

Akane-banashi

Tiberius1 Comment

Bringing rakugo to modern readers

I put this off last week to make way for the surprise announcement of Boruto’s Part 1 ending, but with that next chapter’s leaks following so close and a surprise twist at the end, I find myself pushing next week’s topic back again to make room for this because it’s too much to ignore. When Boruto Raiden or whatever Part 2 is gonna be called returns, I’ll probably devote a wider post to that, but until then here’s the gist of Masashi Kishimoto as of late: sporadic.

Now to something I was going to write about last week.

Sometime last year while browsing the Viz website, the debut chapter of a manga known as Akane-banashi was released. The series about the titular character, Akane Osaki, and her journey to become a rakugoka. Rakugo is a type of Japanese storytelling. Practitioners known as rakugoka tell long and ridiculous comedic stories in the seiza sitting position with a paper fan and different tones of voice to denote multiple characters in the story. It’s like standup comedy if you remove the standing.

From what I understand, these stories most often consist of old Japanese legends, myths and folktales, largely influenced by the culture that developed in Japan over the millennia. Quick research tells me that Akane-banashi isn’t the first manga to feature the art of rakugo, the others like Descending Stories were just geared toward older readers or were drawn decades ago and would thus be hard to find outside of an antique shop.

I don’t have a solid answer for how Akane-banashi took off the way it did a year and change later, but I have a few theories: the protagonist is a young woman just learning the ropes instead of a middle-aged or old man who’s already an expert/master; it runs concurrent with some other solid manga that debuted recently so there’s a healthy lineup to thumb through. These are my theories and I expect them to be wrong or inaccurate as I hadn’t taken an interest in rakugo until I stumbled upon Akane-banashi.

In a further demonstration of my limited exposure to rakugo manga (perhaps highlighted by how so few of them there are available for my research), the introductions to rakugo are lacking or brief. The manga explains the ranks of the rakugoka, select stories that a rakugoka is likely to tell (potentially first-time viewers have an idea of what to expect when they go see a performance in real life), and the different ways a story can be told in the rakugo form. This all sounds like a lot, but it’s all so brief by virtue of manga being a visual medium that all things considered Akane-banashi could be taken as a pick-up-and-read style manga. Part of me is curious if a kabuki manga would do the same thing.

Regarding the depiction of exceptionally niche topics in media, the shallow pool of practitioners within a given medium make it hard for outsiders looking in to judge the translation from real life to print, despite their best efforts to research it by any means. In the case of the wider performing arts, in the west and westernized countries with a healthy performing arts/entertainment industry, everyone and their grandmother at least knows one or a few people who’ve tried their hand at it from stage plays to big budget multimillion dollar silver screen productions to varying degrees of success. You don’t even need to be an A-list actor to know what it’s like or what to expect. Well-read individuals can educate themselves from true stories and popular rumors about what goes on in the film industry, especially in Hollywood where most of the movies are made, often to varying degrees of success. As a result, the lay person outside that world probably knows what obstacles a performer faces–but it takes sitting down with a performer or becoming one yourself to know about another layer that’s not as often exposed.

Consider this: actors don’t typically work a traditional 9-5 job. They would often be on-call and working with talent managers and/or companies who can help them land a role of some kind. For filming, almost anything goes. Filming at night? In traffic? On a mountain? With dangerous animals? Is the director denying you sleep for a certain scene? All of these may be extreme examples varying depending on the creativity of the actor or director, but all in all, circumstances like these would be seen as unnatural to those of us who aren’t performers, but largely run-of-the-mill shenanigans in the long run. Methodical madness and all that.

If Akane-banashi is even partly true to life, then accordingly, there’s no real wrong way to tell a story. A testament to a writer’s ability would be if historical events could be reworded to be even more interesting than what actually happened without resorting to exaggerations or outright lies. One such example that comes to mind for me would be Baz Luhrmann’s take on Romeo and Juliet. The original play was set in Renaissance Italy, but Luhrmann sets it in modern-day SoCal with the Montagues and Capulets being warring gangs instead of noble families.

Anything is possible.

Akane-banashi seems to be veering towards the direction of reinventing the wheel on rakugo as a whole and the stories that can be told in this style. All in all, it appears to be flipping the tradition of rakugo on its head, and while I’m slacking on the manga itself, whenever I get the chance I hope to be able to follow up on where it goes from here.

Boruto Manga/Anime Timeskip Prospects Update

TiberiusLeave a comment

I intended for this week’s post to be about the rakugo manga Akane-banashi, but I guess that’ll be saved for next week, which works for me as I still need to do my research on the manga. About a month ago, I made a post talking about what could be expected of a timeskip in the Boruto series. I said that after Boruto gets his scar from Kawaki in a misguided attempt to protect his new hero Naruto from the threat of the Ohtsutsuki, Kawaki will be closely monitored while Boruto gets more intensive training from Sasuke and most likely Kakashi who also suffered a similar fate: losing an eye while protecting an Uchiha and gaining a dojutsu afterwards. Kakashi got Obito’s Sharingan; Boruto got the Jougan, which is explained in the wiki as a combination between the Hyuga clan’s Byakugan and Naruto’s ability to detect malice, which explains why it was so prominent in the early episodes when Sumire’s summon, Nue, started eating chakra for power.

But when the threat was neutralized, Boruto’s Jougan fell dormant, occasionally glitching awake for the rest of the series for the eagle eyed fans to catch until the Ohtsutsuki threat reemerged to ruin the Chunin Exams as had happened in the movie and the manga.

Momoshiki Ohtsutsuki is the one who implants a Karma seal on Boruto’s palm. The Karma seal is a type of curse mark that enhances the abilities of the owner (Boruto, Kawaki, Jigen/Isshiki) while also holding the biological information of the Ohtsutsuki in question. If the holder of the Karma seal dies, their body undergoes an Ohtsutsukification which can rob them of their original identity while the Ohtsutsuki member takes over. In Jigen’s case, he was a monk who was possessed by Isshiki Ohtsutsuki; and when Kawaki tried to eliminate Momoshiki’s presence in Boruto, the process to Ohtsutsukification sped up rapidly that by technicality, Boruto’s not human anymore.

Additionally, when his chakra runs low, Momoshiki takes over his mind and his body goes on autopilot. The crux of the Boruto series is to show that the Ohtsutsuki threat wasn’t as absent as the shinobi of the previous generation thought. The OG Team 7 had difficulty fighting Kaguya, and now that for them a decade-and-a-half of peace have passed, while the Kage and S-level shinobi can still body major threats, but the Ohtsutsuki prove that, whether alone or in numbers, even the best shinobi would struggle.

The reason I bring Boruto up for a second time and so soon after the first one is because it was publicly announced that episode 293 of the anime is where Part 1 will end. Last month, we were given rumors and glimpses of a possible indefinite hiatus with not a lot of information following on why that was. The most popular reasons being to let the animators rest and also that TV Tokyo’s license to distribute series was ending this summer.

https://www.sportskeeda.com/anime/rumor-boruto-anime-rumoured-go-indefinite-hiatus-march-april#:~:text=So%20Boruto%20is%20rumored%20to,year%20too%20as%20per%20leaks.

But now we know that the Boruto Timeskip or Shippuden (or realistically Raiden if we note what it would look like in kanji characters) is on the horizon. The manga alluded to such when Kawaki sent Boruto’s parents away and gave Boruto himself the scar. I have to admit that I’m abysmally slow on the anime itself, but recent episodes have shown that the Eida and Daemon have been summoned by Code to track down Kawaki and Boruto for the purpose of becoming a real Ohtsutsuki while getting revenge on the Leaf for what happened to the Ohtsutsuki-led Kara organization and Isshiki.

Between Boruto getting scarred by Kawaki and the destruction of the Leaf as alluded to in the first episode, over the course of the series we’ve learned that Kawaki and Code aren’t working together. They both hate each other, surely, though there’s still no way to tell who or what destroys the Leaf village like that. Maybe the blame falls on one, both, or all three in the heat of battle, but again we’ll have to wait and see what comes up.

I know that my predictions for what might happen during a timeskip it focused only on Boruto and his training. Following up on that, there’s a few things I can expect while others can be said to be speculation.

Boruto’s teammates: During the Chunin exams, Sarada got the promotion and her vest, which makes the new Team 7 eligible for middling C-rank and low B-rank missions, with her as team captain. Mitsuki may follow suit and advance the difficulty of their missions, though this may leave Boruto in the dust as a Genin much like what happened to the previous generation of shinobi when Naruto was training with Jiraiya before his grand return to the village. The rest of Boruto’s graduating class with exceptions might also follow suit with some overachievers making it to Jonin or going on to be ANBU shinobi in the process, but with the boosts Boruto and characters like Sumire, Mitsuki, and Tsubaki all have, whether Boruto or other characters advance or not doesn’t really matter, when you don’t need a high rank to sleep your opponent with minimal movement. The main changes are responsibilities and pay, which is not dissimilar from real-life military ranks. The U.S. military for example expects the junior enlisted to do a lot of the heavy lifting while high-ranking sergeants and above are gradually put into administrative roles. Medal of Honor recipients and servicemembers awarded similarly high awards get a totally different treatment, rank notwithstanding. In similarity to the Naruto franchise, neither Naruto nor Sasuke made it to Chunin, but wound up being the most powerful shinobi in the lands.

Family: Naruto and Hinata are still missing at the time of writing this post and will likely be stuck there until Boruto brings them back or Kawaki is forced to return them to the real world from custody. Likewise, the anime also has an arc where Kawaki and Himawari are attending the Ninja Academy. Initially, I was given the impression that she wouldn’t have the mentality or drive to become a shinobi all her own, but the anime proves that notion incorrect. Not to mention, she’s the one who has the Byakugan and when she activates it, she exhibits the shinobi’s killing intent, and has done so several times in the series.

Furthermore, one of the more recent chapters (Spoilers) shows Daemon attempting to confront Himawari while she’s walking home with groceries in hand. Daemon was confused as to why she didn’t strike, as he sensed an untapped power coming from her. This could be the Byakugan, though it still remains to be seen what he saw in her specifically. What is known is that she is still an academy student and while her brother is off training, she most likely becomes a shinobi herself as well, becoming a Genin or Genin Promotable, not unlike the promotable positions of U.S. servicemembers who are scheduled to attend a promotion board. However, with the direction Kawaki has gone, she and the rest of the class will be one student short, which is also a parallel to that of the original Naruto series.

Deaths: The ninja world lives and dies by the sword. Before, during, and after the establishment of the ninja villages every shinobi was on the battlefield, including child soldiers like the young sons of the Senju and Uchiha clans. This many bodies on the field of battle brought the average life expectancy down to just 30 years with so many children dying in wars alongside their older veteran counterparts. The Third Shinobi War brought these dangers back as Kakashi, Obito, and Rin barely survived unscathed. Even in these relatively peaceful times, the life of the shinobi benefits from technological enhancements while also suffering the same kind of dangers from yesteryear. The more things change and all that. Shinobi dying on the field of battle or on a mission or by any other means is a fact of life that everyone expects to face, though specific character trajectories are left to some conjecture. I have no way to tell who will die or how; predictions aren’t 100%, and characters fans believed were marked for death wound up surviving, while the least likely death wound up happening. Reception to X character’s death/disappearance/etc. will depend on how well written they were. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that fan-favorite characters like Naruto or Sasuke might be one of the few on the chopping block, and fans would likely sooner see them incapacitated than dead, myself included. As for shinobi who preceded them but are now senior citizens in the Boruto era, they could also be up for death or incapacitation, though ideally it’s done in a way that doesn’t make a joke out of them. No promises, though.

Miscellaneous/Free space: Most of what I’ve said so far in this post might be suited for a light novel or an OVA in the future: Ino-Shika-Cho diverging even slightly from their respective parents; Team 15 having a more important role going forward; other ninja teams getting their time of day; the Hyuga clan’s response to Hinata’s and Naruto’s disappearance; and most likely Shikamaru behaving as the interim Hokage if Sasuke does go on to hasten Boruto’s training, after he likely gets healed by Sakura and/or Tsunade. All of this is up in the air, but at least with the short hiatus, I can play catch-ups.

Undead Unluck Anime Adaptation Confirmed?

Tiberius1 Comment

An obscure manga may be due for an obscure anime adaptation.

Currently on vacation so this might be a quick post with little detail. The end summary will make all the difference.

In January of 2020 whilst browsing the Shonen Jump section of viz.com, I was introduced to that month’s debut manga called Undead Unluck. It opens with our character Fuuko Izumo finishing a romance manga and then declaring to the public that she will end her own life. Dramatic? Yes, but she does have an explanation for this. When she physically interacts with people, the person who touched her suffers a proportional amount of misfortune depending on how long, how she was touched, and with what. Brushing up against someone while navigating a crowded train might delay service; prolonged skin-to-skin contact meanwhile means unimaginably bad luck from an injury to a life-altering injury to sometimes death. And it can range from coincidentally realistic to balls to deez nuts ridiculous.

During this confrontation, the second of the titular duo, named Andy, strikes up a conversation and is initially repelled by Fuuko with the same hostility she showed to the others in the vicinity. He falls onto an incoming train and his body cracks the window, but he legit walks it off. Yep. Remember in Naruto when the Leaf ninja were sent to dispose of Hidan, but were continually baffled by his refusal to keel over? It was kind of like that, only Andy hasn’t seen the light of Jashin yet.

And this is how the manga begins. Fuuko begins it wishing to end her life and so does Andy, but his problem is he’s basically Hidan or Deadpool with different rules. As the manga goes along, it’s revealed piecemeal that Andy has a lot of baggage from his life, and he hopes to reach his goal of sweet death by wooing Fuuko along the way. The proportionality is no joke. If intimate contact can topple a building without warning, then according to Andy, rounding third base especially with no condoms should bring about the intensity of Fimbulwinter. Basically, they’re both hoping to go out with a bang. No pun intended.

Fuuko’s and Andy’s abilities of misfortune and immortality surprisingly don’t make them all that special as there are others with similar supernatural abilities that are described as a single word but with the prefix Un- in front of it. Undead, unluck, unbreakable, unjust, untruth, unknown, that sort of thing. It’s a bizarre, indescribable manga that’s best experienced by reading it. I recall going to the Viz Media website to read a chapter weekly that year as the pandemic intensified. In the summer of 2021, this became unachievable as my brief experience with Army basic training by nature limited my access to technology, and keeping up with the outside world doesn’t happen during basic training. After returning from that experience, I found trouble keeping up with the manga as I’d missed so much. These days, I tune in a few times to see what’s going on. I’ll be missing context from one or five or an entire volume’s worth of chapters, but it’s still good reading and reading between the lines as well as a summary from the wiki can help.

Fast-forward to January of this year, and I learn that along the horizon, an anime adaptation is on the table.

Normally, when it comes to burgeoning manga that I lay my eyes on, I’m a historically terrible judge of character. Some manga I wanted to succeed get cancelled twenty chapters in, and others I don’t pay much attention to seem to blow up overnight. Everyone knows who Loid, Yor, and Anya all are because Spy x Family is a massive hit with a solid adaptation to boot, but I’m pretty sure only seven people will have ever heard of Black Torch or Time Paradox Ghostwriter, and I’m one of those seven.

It’s one thing to misjudge the success of something, but this one seems to be completely out of left field until you see what studio is said to be captaining the ship. It’s the same one that fixed with A.P.P.P. broke in the 1990s, the one that got a legendary underground manga to go mainstream for the first time in almost 25 years, the same one that copied Hokuto no Ken‘s homework. You know the one.

Yes, if things go as planned and Undead Unluck goes from print to animation cel to pirate streaming site, David Production will take full responsibility for converting more anime onlies to another underground manga. David Pro has a set standard for adaptations. JoJo’s shown above and Fire Force are the only two anime that I know they worked on, but the quality of both speaks for themselves. The adaptation of Part 6 Stone Ocean can be seen as controversial within the JoJo community over the amount of CG in select episodes coupled with Netflix’s outdated batch release formula that may or may not have influenced the direction of the adaptation. The same can be said about Fire Force’s fanservice, but above all, save for a few tweaks and changes from manga panel to animation cel is nearly 1 to 1. And there’s normally an explanation for a change anyway.

Actually, changes in continuity aren’t all that uncommon or interesting when it comes to an adaptation of anything. It mostly only matters if the adaptation and the source material are on different wavelengths. For Undead Unluck, I can expect the anime to be as faithful to the manga as possible with a few changes here and there. As of writing this, YouTube and Google feed me articles and teasers with short scenes and demos of the anime to come with no real word on the adaptation to speak of in any significant detail. This can be understandable or suspicious depending on several factors. In the gaming-sphere, all the scrutiny goes to the studio and its leadership if all their hard work is shown in a pre-rendered trailer that fakes the intensity of an upcoming video game.

But anime is more or less forgiven considering how dungeon-esque working conditions can look for animators, as well as studios being notoriously tightlipped about the quality of scenes who draws them all. It’s no secret that the folks at Wit, SHAFT, Aniplex, MAPPA, Pierrot, et al outsource some of their work to Good Korea, China, Thailand, and Vietnam, but whether your favorite arc is being drawn by Saigonese Gustav Klimt or the water buffalo filling in for him while he battles a case of ligma is up in the air. r/Boruto just found out why the anime’s been getting a glow up in recent episodes and it’s not just because Eida is a sexy she-devil. If what they say is true, then the Boruto anime might’ve been used for trainees from other studios.

But as I stated before, David Pro is on the case and living up to their goal of being like their biblical namesake, I don’t expect them to miss a beat. I’ll try my best to keep an eye out for more news on Unkillable + Unfortunate.

Under the Mayo and How NOT to Review Games

TiberiusLeave a comment

Hot takes taken to an absurd extreme

When it comes to video game reviewers and YouTubers, I bounce between creators for a time. One of the recommendations I made a few posts ago about Tactical Bacon Productions is one that I firmly believe is in his element enough to get the traffic he needs, even with YouTube jerking him and other YouTubers around with arbitrary strikes and claims due to a screw up that happened on their part. The channels I’ve been recommending for the month of February (and others to come in the future, especially at the end of this post), have been consistent to the best of their ability regarding content. They know what they’re talking about or what they’re doing and few of them have anything controversial surrounding them. The same can’t be said of the subject of today’s video: Under the Mayo.

I came across this channel while looking for content for God of War 4 last year and his controversial review on the game opened up Pandora’s box. Several other YouTubers had come to defend the new Norse era of God of War and call out Mayo for his contrarian viewpoints. And these viewpoints were very contrarian. The video below has a provocative title:

Controversy definitely sells and if it was just a hook to reel in viewers, I’d leave it alone. But viewpoints within the video sounded too ignorant, as if Mayo hadn’t payed any attention to the story of the previous games in the lead up to 2018. Gaming journalists tend to do that a fair amount with the countless number of know-nothings who’s exposure to the old God of War games is surface level or they just forgot. And to lend a straw to Mayo, this isn’t about him misunderstanding the difference between Greek Kratos and Norse Kratos. Hell, this post isn’t unique in what it has to say about him.

On YouTube and select Reddit posts, he’s taken hits for sounding like a hypocrite. Five minutes into a review he’ll praise an element of X and ten minutes in the same video he’ll critique it. Or he’ll highlight a feature of one game, wish for it to be taken out of an upcoming sequel if the game is successful enough and all of a sudden wish for it to come back; or conversely want something to be patched out and regret it when it has. You could argue that most people don’t always know what they want and that’s fair. Too much can be said about an indecisive populace making a generation-changing decision and that sentence alone probably gives you an idea from across the pond.

The point of divergence for Mayo comes in the harsh critique of most games in stark contrast to everything he has said about Doom and Doom: Eternal. Here’s where I admit that the rest of this post may jump into speculation. My exposure to Doom is also surface level, even though I played the original games on Steam and I have the 2016 DOOM on Xbox One that I haven’t touched in a while. I’ve got nothing against the franchise or id Software, my preferences lean more towards the action-adventure variety. I think Doom is an awesomely influential series that most games these days lend an oath of gratitude to, enough that first-person shooters needed a more appropriate genre name than just Doom clone that was the case for it in the 90s and beyond. That being said, if Doom went to court for something (and it probably did, video games that showcase or reference the Devil are gonna get theirs), Mayo is the type of guy that if he were an attorney, he’d drop everything and zoom on over to the courtroom with enough material to sway the jury after boring them to sleep for seven hours, and that’s because even the stenographer wants him to shut the hell up.

id Software’s flagship series has a permanent residence in his head and if his critics are to be believed, if Mayo hasn’t mentioned or shown footage of Doom or Doom: Eternal apropos of nothing, he’s liable to reference it in a review of another game. I’ve watched YouTubers take apart his God of War and Sifu reviews for the flip-flopping, backpedaling talking points, drawing on the conclusion that he says it without sincerity for contrarian’s sake.

Personally, I’ve ventured around this angle before on a few things I wasn’t all that serious about, but Mayo seems determined to die in a bunker with 60 years worth of provisions on his takes.

I hesitate to say that I’m 100% passionate about a singular thing these days, my tastes are subject to change and I could spend my money on things that actually help with survival, hobbies and pastimes coming second. Among Mayo’s critics, he’s come under fire as a hypocritical game reviewer with a singular thing on his mind. With what I know about his review style and what others have said, it seems as though he frames himself as the singular authority on what makes a good game based on only one game and that’s a bad lens to look through.

Speaking of God of War critiques, in GCN’s video on Everything Wrong with God of War 2018 in the style of CinemaSins, one of the criticisms lobbied was one I actually agreed with: games in this day and age need to let go of FromSoftware’s tenets and features of game design. Listing off a round of games that put style and substance front and center like Ninja Gaiden, Onimusha, God Hand, Devil May Cry and the original God of War series, the proof in the pudding there was that FromSoft’s Dark Souls franchise is not the be-all, end-all of game design. In a similar vein, Doom: Eternal isn’t close to revolutionary.

If I may get controversial for a bit, Doom 1993 was a phenomenal influence on the gaming industry. DOOM 2016 and Doom: Eternal are not special. Within the franchise and within the gaming industry, these FPS’s are always welcome to let players partake in the carnage they have to offer, but they don’t have anything new to offer that other games already have for better or worse. Fighting demons on Mars with high tech weaponry? Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Black Ops III all did it a year and change prior with sliding and jetpack mechanics for better and worse. Setting the story aside to focus on ramming a demon horn into said demon’s own throat? NetherRealm Mortal Kombat, Black Ops IV, and God of War either did one or both of these things before that.

For the record, I’m not saying that I think Call of Duty beats Doom; I’m saying that mechanically Doom doesn’t do much to make a difference anymore. The lack of weapon reloading gets back to the style of shooter that literally gave you a gun so you can blast away unimpeded, but beyond that Doom is just a more extreme, more based shooter. And you don’t need me to tell you this. Get the game or watch a Let’s Play and see demon limbs flood the next level in Viscera Cleanup Detail.

Don’t get the wrong idea from this. Everyone loves what they love and hates what they hate, but it’s never a good sign to go hard on one or the other, especially at the expense of the opposite. Mayo clearly has a boner for Doom et al, and he has the right to voice his opinions, but there’s better ways to do it. I don’t want to sound like the internet police and say being an asshole on the Internet is wrong when most people do it, ideally with little consequence to them in the real world (better pray no one knows where you live), but if you’re going to say something, have evidence, write down your thoughts, and if there’s a contradiction somewhere down the line, correct it and try again.

The last channel recommendation for the month of February 2023 is TheMythologyGuy.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheMythologyGuy1/featured

Since this post mentioned a product caked in mythology, it seemed fitting to mention a channel where that’s the specialty on display. TheMythologyGuy talks about various mythologies from Greece to Egypt to Japan to Norse just to name a few. Several of my favorite videos of his are about the mythical inaccuracies in the God of War games, followed close by movie reviews concerning other myths and franchises, notably that of the Percy Jackson variety. The link to his channel is up above and his about page will have links on where and how to support him.

This will be the last of the channel recommendations until April. Look forward to their return.

Boruto: Timeskip Prospects

TiberiusLeave a comment

The sequel series with a ginormous precedent to live up to

I was originally going to speculate on what the timeskip in the Boruto series would entail, but thanks to leaks provided by Twitter user @Abdul_S17, which have also been passed onto r/Boruto on reddit, this may be a brief post with not as much to say about what happens going forward, or rather, the unpredictable nature of the series makes this very hard, so I’ll try my best with the informaton given. Though I think there’s a few elephants to address regarding the Boruto series. In support of the sequel to Naruto, there’s loads of details that Naruto fans often forget or throw by the wayside. When the Boruto anime debuted in 2017, I recalled a detail that was mentioned in passing, but nonetheless mentioned the death of a major character, and so when it came to it, binging all of Naruto and Shippuden up until that point provided as much context as I could need to make sense of this seemingly unimportant line. This probably gives me the best understanding of the Narutoverse as a whole, the internal politics therein, etc., etc.

That being said, it’s not like Boruto doesn’t have it’s criticisms, and picking apart the worthless drivel from the valid points, Talk no Jutsu or not, if it was Naruto becoming Hokage instead of Konohamaru under the hood of a Transformation Jutsu, rest assured the Orange Hokage would’ve had a way more heartfelt ceremony. Also, regardless of all the money that comes with being affiliated with Naruto, if the Boruto manga was planned better, there probably would’ve been less filler even if the writers can magic it into the plot all the same. The showrunners seem to have fallen for one of the few things that can happen when a manga and anime run concurrent, as explained by a genius in the link below:

A problem inherited by Naruto and other anime adaptations beginning in the early to mid-2000s. And the worst case scenario would be what happened with the Fate franchise, but at least the Big Three have a consistent timeline.

Anyway, the Boruto manga’s next chapter is scheduled for release on February 20, and the leaks tell us how Boruto got the scar that his older self will have in the big brawl against Kawaki. All that’s missing now is the cloak and the sword. If you’ve been reading or watching or both, you know that Boruto has become Sasuke’s pupil and over time gets his old scratched headband as a memento. During the story, a mission to transport a Leaf village scientist to a research facility changes halfway and the new Team 7 is rerouted to assist with a zeppelin crash in the forest transporting autonomous puppets. As it turns out, this was the property of the dangerous group known as Kara and a couple members were sent to intercept.

A familiar face shows himself to keep the secrets from getting out. When that fails, Boruto, Sarada, and Mitsuki, learn that amongst the precious cargo was a boy known as Kawaki whom Kara planned on using as a vital tool. Now that he’s in Leaf Village hands, he’s under the sworn protection of the Hokage, and the troubled kid becomes utterly attached to Naruto, enough that the immediate threat of the Ohtsutsuki clan and its still living members is still felt even close to home.

Multiple attempts and failures to retrieve Kawaki become progressively destructive. Meanwhile, the karma seal on both Kawaki’s and Boruto’s palms begins to resonate and even strengthen at imprecise moments. The flashback in the beginning show that they can both activate it on command, but Boruto as a kid isn’t there yet. The more recent chapters show that whenever Boruto spends most of his chakra or loses control, his karma seal which has the memories of the Ohtsutsuki that Boruto defeated, Momoshiki, activates and Momo’s memories take over his body. Kawaki attempted to remedy this condition with entropy, but Momo, not content on losing his vessel, repairs Boruto’s body.

A cryptic message he gave to Hokage’s son about his blue eyes taking everything he cherished from him starts to come true. At the same time, one of Kara’s worst members, Code, is hellbent on living up to the Ohtsutsuki name by carrying on the will of its old leader Jigen, who was really the vessel of Isshiki Ohtsutsuki. So to summarize it: Code is in one corner hoping to become an Ohtsutsuki with all that comes with it, Kawaki seeks to destroy all Ohtsutsuki, and Boruto wants to get rid of the karma seal on his hand, and these goals all stand in the way of each other with progressively destructive consequences to boot.

I remember being floored by the destruction showcased in the first episode flashforward scene. Until we see the extent of the damage, it’s likely not on the same level as Pain’s Almighty Push.

Then again, them being the only two in the scene on the destroyed Hokage faces says quite a lot doesn’t it.

Now that the scene is set, I want to get a few predictions for what might happen. Spoiler for the leaks shared online, Kawaki gifts Boruto the scar, and is apprehended by Sasuke, Mitsuki, and Konohamaru. After that, I can expect Kakashi to come by as he too lost his eye in his youth and was given a teammate’s notorious Kekkei Genkai lost in the aftermath of the Fourth Ninja War.

In this case, the same may be true for Boruto as he has an ability known as the Jougan. It was originally meant to be the Byakugan, but Kishimoto forgot about that even though there’s a sketch of him with the Hyuga clan’s signature eyes. In the world of Naruto, when a nonmember of a specific clan’s Kekkei Genkai, it’s active for good. There’s no way to turn it off whatsoever, else Kakashi and Danzo wouldn’t have had to make use of eyepatches when they both had theirs.

The jougan activates immediately and the last page shows a glimpse of Momo taking another W for his predictions coming true. Going forward, extra training from Sasuke with some of Kakashi’s input can be expected as both do or used to live with only one normal functioning eye. One thing I didn’t mention was Kawaki trapping Naruto and Hinata in another dimension so that they don’t stand in his way when goes for Boruto again. Soon after being placed under the strictest detention possible, most likely at the behest of Shikamaru, the Leaf Village is gonna demand he release Naruto and Hinata and then keep him under wraps while they deal with Code, and two more Kara members, Eida and her brother Daemon.

As for Boruto, if Kawaki doesn’t comply, then it might fall on Boruto to do so and with less experience than his adoptive brother. The extra training might be signs of a timeskip, but with Kara showing off it’s most overpowered members and keeping them around for a fair bit, it might result in something different. Maybe another flashforward is in order, but again, can’t really tell all that well.

That aside, I recall that Boruto claimed he wanted to be a ninja like Sasuke is in the sense that he protects the village from afar while the Hokage spot goes to Sarada in the future. He seems to be turning into his idol though of course not precisely. Scarred headband, special eye jutsu, currently missing his parents, bearing a curse mark awarded by a pale-skinned enemy, and also under his possession at times, and set to gain a cloak and sword. Holy shit, Boruto is becoming his idol. Let’s have a look.

Of course, Boruto will still have both of his arms, but my point stands: Boruto, by accident or intent, is going to turn into Sasuke, a different type of Shippuden Sasuke. At least that’s what I see, and if it turns out to be true, then awesome. If not, then I’ll wait for Ikemoto and Kishimoto to keep going while I eat a bag of Ligma.

This week’s channel recommendation is TheAlmightyLoli. If you’re looking for a pop culture reviewer with a slice of edge coupled with a passioned understanding of the material at hand look no further. Loli’s style of reviewing and comedy can hit you in the mouth, and his style is an acquired taste, but for those who stick by, there’s never a dull moment. This channel dedicated hours of content to recounting Berserk in honor of Kentaro Miura who sadly died before he could finish the work, though one of his assistant’s, Koji Mori, is picking up where Miura left off at.

If you can sit through days’ worth of content on a single dark fantasy manga that continues to influence the industry to this day, sprinkled in with some other stuff, TheAlmightyLoli’s YouTube channel is linked down below along with the ways to support him on his about section.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheAlmightyLoli/featured

Forgotten GTA Games: Part II

TiberiusLeave a comment

Finishing off with the second round of underrated GTA games

Last week, I brought attention to the likes of GTA: Vice City Stories, one of two games that I think should receive a remake, flaws notwithstanding. Even a PC port if able, and I don’t mean by way of emulation as it’s been my only means of playing the game. By the way, I want to quickly update and say I found a mission that may be worse than Supply Lines in San Andreas. The second half of the mission Unfriendly Competition ramps up the difficulty right quick. The second half of this mission can fall off a bridge. Anyway, we’re moving onto Liberty City Stories.

Liberty City Stories is set in 1998, which is three years prior to the start of GTA III. So to outline the timeline of the 3D era: Vice City Stories starts in 1984; Vice City takes place two years later in the mid-spring of 1986; San Andreas begins in 1992; LCS takes place in March of 1998, and GTA III being set in the modern day at the time takes place in mid-Autumn of 2001, and the real-world politics of its real-world counterpart were felt during the development of the game with all the content that was cut.

As a side note, I want to make a post about the uncanny references to 9/11 prior to the actual 9/11. See for yourself, it’s unreal.

Anyway, LCS centers around the character of Antonio “Toni” Cipriani. After lying low for a few years on the orders of Don Salvatore Leone, Toni is called back to do more mob work and help the Leones put the city under mob influence, fighting gangsters, cartels, and the Sicilian Mob itself across the map.

If you ask me, forgetting this game and VCS doesn’t make a lot of sense. You could argue that since they both feature one-off characters and GTA III itself (whom Toni appears in) is the last game chronologically, the point remaking LCS and/or VCS wouldn’t be worth it. But I argue that one-off or not, Victor Vance from VCS and Toni Cipriani from LCS have both been influential even if it’s not all that felt in the games that they serve as prequels too.

No, no one really honors Toni in GTA III and Victor Vance doesn’t appear again, save for the intro to Vice City while other characters like Maria Latore and Phil Cassidy et al have more screen time and became mainstays, but this highlights further problems with prequels. The lack of foresight that can often accompany them. If RockStar thought ahead, they would’ve had Phil Cassidy age properly from gun nut (like his appearance in VC) to drunkard (as shown in VCS) to old man heavy weapons dealer (as seen in GTA III and LCS).

Further, LCS has inherited the water puddle death that made seafaring so nerve-wracking in GTA III and Vice City. The three cities repeatedly lampooned in the GTA series (LA, NYC, Miami) all have beaches, but if you splash a little bit of water on Claude, Tommy Vercetti, or Toni, straight to the hospital. Though, after 2002 and until IV in 2008, motorcycles would make a permanent appearance.

As a sidenote, RockStar got around the lack of motorcycles in GTA III by stating in-universe that a petition to get them off the streets of LC pulled through. So bikers were essentially outlawed. Personally, I grew up in the Bronx and having seen a fair share of bikers growing up, they don’t play a very large influence, but biker gangs in NYC would still show up from time to time.

Thankfully the absence is quickly remedied following 2002’s Vice City, though the 3D era games have showcased several design flaws of the time. In the case of Liberty City Stories, at first glance it was structurally similar to III and Vice City, just asset flipped and this time making use of the map in-game as opposed to hoping the player could memorize from the mini-map in III. But like those games, swimming was against the law. Bikes and bikers were given an appearance, but aircraft would still take a backseat until the pilotable helicopters after 2002.

But a move RockStar made that would change the face of GTA going forward would be non-silent protagonists. Claude in III literally nods and sets forward blasting. Without a single word of dialogue, Claude portrays himself to be one hell of a sociopath. Employers and allies who stay by his side are left alone, but give him a briefcase of cash and a target and he’ll pursue it to the ends of the earth. This serves as a vague spoiler, so those of you looking to emulate it should be on the lookout.

Speaking of III, Toni debuts as an employer in that game and trying my best not to spoil, the character models in both show a difference. Unlike what became of Phil Cassidy, more attention was at least paid to Toni’s model.

See the difference? I want to say RockStar doesn’t focus on progression all that much with characters from previous games quietly retiring or outright dying (Johnny Klebitz deserved better.), but within an established universe, and with the right amount of dedication, they can do good with a before and after. This isn’t related to anything plot wise between games, but at times in LCS Toni will be told that he’s remarkably, almost skeletally thin. In 1998, he was lightly mocked for being underweight, and over the next three years and change, he became overweight. A bit like Nikocado Avocado, except even with the extra pounds, Toni can still move around a lot faster.

Actually, if you’ve ever seen weightlifters, bodybuilders, or the most recent incarnation of Thor, packing on the weight helps plenty for those guys. Toni turned himself into an ox when you think about it. The way the GTA games are written gives away a sense of a Hollywood influence, and mobster movies get the most spotlight depending on the setting. Vice City combines aspects of shows like Miami Vice and any mobster movie set on the East Coast, and III and LCS both give me more New York Five Families vibes. Pick your favorite movie, but for me it’s Goodfellas, with a hint of Godfather, and maybe also Miller’s Crossing with these wise guys dedicating themselves to the mob from birth, the lot of them being mobster brats as kids.

That tends to be the case for both Tommy and Toni. For Toni, his mother doesn’t make a physical appearance, but more of a vocal appearance. Pushing him to step it up, bust his enemies’ teeth in, come back with at least five severed heads or don’t come back at all; admittedly, this feeds into stereotypes of both Sicilian parents and the Sicilian mob. I’m not Sicilian and I don’t know many Italians (save for the many pizzerias and Italian restaurants within walking distance of my apartment), so I can’t say how true to life this is for someone of Sicilian ancestry growing up. The Sicilian mob on the other hand gets a fair amount of media coverage in pop culture if not news outlets in and around Sicily and Southern Italy, and if Sicilian or Mediterranean-based journalists are worth their salt, the Sicilian mob isn’t one to trifled with.

Groups like Ndrangheta can and have done serious damage to people who’ve wronged them, and it’s far from pretty. Of course, works of fiction need to take liberties in case someone is dumb enough to imitate what happens in real life or for dramatic effect, but if RockStar pulled some stories from real-world headlines featuring the Sicilian mob in action, then perhaps it’s as close to accurate as can be short of interviewing an ex-mobster or watching an interview or documentary of such.

Toni Cipriani goes about doing much of what can be expected of a mobster with the strong-arming, enforcement, bribery, political meddling, malicious destruction and all that the mob was accused of doing or charged with. All this being said though, the asset taking and developing in the VC games and San Andreas are absent. On the one hand, it would fit with the narrative of the game, but it’s a bit unrealistic as several mobsters — real and fictional — operated front businesses to keep the police from sniffing around or at least bribe them with “get lost” money.

Grand Theft Auto is an ultimate in parody, but more realistic elements existed in movies and shows and funny enough JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind. Golden Wind takes place in 2001 in Naples and briefly explains that many capos and even the Don’s consigliere (advisor) may have a side business if not an umbrella’s worth of them, sometimes with evidence. Mr. Pericolo (pictured above) is an example of mobsters continually hiding their identities and getting one up on the law or their enemies.

Disguises and shell companies and whatnot don’t feature in LCS. This would probably take away from the video game aspect of the video game and probably feeds into a misconception that a mobster can’t have a side hustle, which I can’t really believe after what happened to Al Capone.

And if that were the case, then the misconception is broken by way of Tommy Vercetti himself gaining assets and collecting regular payments for the latter half of Vice City. Recall that he’s from Liberty City originally, and the game follows much of the plot of Scarface 1983.

For LCS, one of the hidden perks of being an asset flip of GTA III and Vice City is that some of the problems and mechanics in SA and VCS make a comeback. This being Liberty City, the radio stations from III are all intact, albeit with different music and radio shows to listen to (Chatterbox FM is a hidden gem), mobster characters from III show up along with a few one-off characters who don’t appear in III, this being post-VC, there’s more weapons variety and I think the game fixes a minor anachronism.

Gun nuts reading this will notice that ever since the M4A1 was made famous by the U.S. military overseas, RockStar put it in all the 3D games after III despite it not being manufactured until 1994 and probably being issued to the military a year and change after that. So it makes sense at least to have that as a rifle in a game set in 1998. The games set years prior to that should all have the M16, while III and LCS have the M4 model, though this being early 2000s internet, this is assuming the internet was fast 20 years ago.

Anyway, the dialogue doesn’t sound out of place for a piece of mobster media for the time, the characters’ are all felt (especially Mrs. Cipriani), Toni is an impactful protagonist despite the lack of muscle mass, and considering he’s one of two characters to show up in at least four games, it seems as though RockStar wasn’t ready to part ways with either Phil Cassidy or the character Donald Love until it was time to use that next-gen technology to make LC look more like NY than it did back then. Now, I know I said this was a two-parter, but there’s a third game that probably doesn’t receive as much attention that I also want to get around to. Whenever that’ll be, I’ll have to rewrite the schedule, but it’ll be covered down the line, so be on the lookout.

This week, I recommend a podcast. The Trash Taste podcast is hosted by three anitubers Garnt “Gigguk” Maneetapho, Joey “TheAnimeMan” Bizinger, and Connor “CDawgVA” Colquhoun. All three have their own YouTube and Twitch channels, but I’ll only link the podcast since it’ll have the links provided already. The Trash Taste Podcast markets itself as an anime podcast, but has overtime evolved to encompass more about life in Japan especially as a gaijin/non-Japanese. They also have an After Dark channel that livestreams on Twitch as well. The podcast has a Patreon page, and while the videos are recorded for the YouTube viewing audience, if you can’t find the time to sit down and watch, podcasting apps like Google Podcasts and Spotify have their episodes on audio only so there’s more than one way to support them.

https://www.youtube.com/@TrashTaste