Detritus of the Mind

Ever encounter a series that you've enjoyed every entry of, even the ones that seem to be a bit too different from the previous entries, until one comes along that just takes all of that goodwill and curb stomps it? Cuz that is exactly what I'm going through with Danganronpa right now. (Take warning now - to articulate what bothers me, I'm going to be spoiling a LOT, from the new anime to the games. So leave if you're afraid of being spoiled. This goes for the DR3 anime, at least through the 5th episodes of each arc; if I missed anything from there out, I stopped watching & can catch up via reviews/the wiki entry.) I loved the games. Even though the trials' rhythm game elements were infuriatingly tough for me (not a genre I'm good at) and Absolute Despair Girls  was a third-person shooter, their stories & characters sucked me into this weird, twisted universe. Even the worst of them likability-wise were at least entertaining, and thanks to after-g...

The last couple of seasons of Precure have been... rough.   Doki Doki  was a carnival of wasted ideas that were thrown out throughout the series (Cure Sword's world having a standing army of Precures to defend it, the existence of Cure Empress & her unnamed teammates spring most readily to mind), and it chose to focus on a main character in Mana who was dully infallible.  And while Happiness Charge started strong & has addressed many of the character problems with The Mana Show (along with giving fandom a gift on a silver platter as far as creating new fan Cures), one character & said character's impending story arc has more than soured me on watching the rest.  But then I encountered  this translated interview  and one quote in particular: ...Speaking of which, Pretty Cure is separated into three periods by which producer is doing the show.  First is the  Washio era,  starting from Futari wa to Yes! 5 GoGo. Second is the...

So I want to talk about MLP. I know, that way lies madness, especially since only the craziest parts of the fandom are online. Look, if I used that as my barometer, there'd be no blog, as the internet is Crazy Garden. But yeah, back to ponies. To be precise, I'm talking about the Equestria Girls spin-off that's due to appear. By all indications, it's a movie that will naturally be accompanied by toys and not a series. At least not yet. Right now, it's a whopping 90 second preview. And those 90 seconds are all it took for whole swathes of the internet, including otherwise respectable creators, to declare it the worst thing ever, the most ugly thing ever, and the most sexist thing ever. I think all of that is not only ridiculous but also incredibly hypocritical. First, let's address the worst thing ever charge. This is because of the perceived notion that the characters will be changed beyond recognition due to a change in appearance. The biggest selling point t...

So apparently NBC is yet again trying to reinvigorate their late night shows by swapping out Leno on The Tonight Show again. Mark my words, even with a good lead-in, this will play out just like the Leno/Conan switch did. And I don't think Jimmy Fallon has the cult following that Coco does to go with him if he too is forced to leave. In fact, if he does badly, NBC may be forced to give real thought to canceling The Tonight Show altogether. It won't be Fallon's fault, though -it will be the fault of a zombie TV genre. I am actually hard-pressed to find people my age who think the traditional monologue-music-and-guests late night format isn't tedious. I'm not the only one who DVRs Conan to breeze through the interviews or bands I don't care about, and the same goes for Craig Ferguson's show (who I personally find most interesting when he just decides to "get real" with his viewers). The big two late night shows are either nonentities (Leno...

There's a lot of stuff I want to write about: resuming the Omnicommentaries, some X-Nonsense stuff including an epic takedown of my personal least favorite X-run, and God knows what else.  But for now, I wanna do something immediate. I wanna talk about the Amethyst shorts that became the only thing worth watching most mornings on DC Nation (lone exception being the Thunder & Lightning shorts). These shorts were perfect - they told a set story, they managed to have likable characters with realistic growth, they made excellent use of their game theme, and they had an ending that doesn't preclude visiting this world again.  The designs were lovely, the writing sharp, the acting as well.  I watched each one and wished it was a series so I could see more of Amethyst & her world. But then I remembered this was Cartoon Network we're talking about and got mad again. Unless I hear that (a) this will have a sequel or (b) some of the other shorts will continue or sho...

So Cartoon Network released their newest schedule announcements, taking great pains to remind you that they're still "number one boys' network" so you don't need to worry about catching girl cooties from that PPG revival they have planned.  And allow me to join the disappointed chorus of voices regarding the unspoken but more or less verified changes to the DC Nation block. For the unaware, when CN's PR pieces mentioned DC Nation, they made a point to mention the Teen Titans revival and the new Batman show.  Not once anywhere were the two current shows on the block - or the shorts for that matter - mentioned.  Thus, many of us are working under the assumption that Green Lantern and Young Justice are coming to an early end.  This is very disappointing. My feelings on Young Justice are well known, but I commisserate with anyone who's a fan & is upset by the loss.  And while I don't generally care for TV CGI shows, the episodes of Green Lantern...

Because I've been thinking about a few things and hey, there's been a few of these already, so what's one more? Let's start with a traditional list of pros and cons, shall we? PROS of the New 52 The Commitment to Genre Diversity: Even when DC ends a title in a given genre, they try to replace it with a title in the same genre that will hopefully find an audience more than the earlier one.  As a fan of All-Star Western , I appreciate this conscious decision not to concentrate solely on the capes & tights. Using Earth-2 As Something Other Than an Acquired Properties Dumping Ground: Seriously, two of the books that I look forward to the most are World's Finest & Earth-2 .  This world, rebuilding & reclaiming heroism after being devastated by Darkseid, is compelling and answers questions that many modern readers might have (especially in the treatment of Terry Sloane, who I always thought was a narcissistic creep at his core).  Meanwhile, we see jus...

As anyone who's ever listened to me whine on the internet knows, I have a sort of abused girlfriend-y relationship with the Ben 10 franchise.  I keep going back, expecting it to live up to its potential, and it keeps slapping me across the face with a fish.  Seriously, it's a good concept (no, I don't care if it's a redux of Dial H for Hero ), it's a solid cast, it's had a history of hiring strong creators, and I absolutely LOVE the voice cast.  But I swear it goes out of its way to personally infuriorate me for the fun of it. Yes, I have some choice complaints about the "preview" that CN showed last night.  I feel absolutely terrible airing them - this might be the last project that the McDuffies got to write together before the Maestro died - but until I air them, they will drive me even more batshit than normal. Mistake #1: Hiring a designer who does amazing aliens but ridiculously ugly humans.  Seriously, did Grandpa Max catch Brock's Dise...

I'm doing this week's entry a little earlier than normal because I have a very busy weekend ahead of me.  So this one will be shorter than the rest. After writing up last week's entry and thinking again what a disappointment the game was, I started thinking of the Jobs/Crowns that initially made it seem like an innovative game and not a frustrating mire.  So I picked my top five of Jobs from The 4 Heroes of Light that I would like to see attempted in another, better Final Fantasy game (ideally, as part of a sequel to FFV). 5.) Merchant:   The whole point of the Merchant class is to get more gems; they have a slight boost to their stats, just enough to keep them from being ridiculous, but they really just serve to make your party richer.  Just convert the "gems" acquisition to gil & you're good to go.  This is not as greedy as it sounds, especially if you have any Jobs that use Gil Toss abilities. 4.) Alchemist:   If you're like me & you...

Right.  This is my epic declaration of war against wangst, against the Comedy Ghetto, and against the pomposity of Tom Batiuk in particular.  I'm particularly proud of it, as it sums up my complaints about everything from the fallacy of "true art is angsty" to the fetish-culture the media has built around cancer to why my favorite movie is what it is.  This was originally written on Livejournal on 9/16/2009.  Enjoy.  Oh, and for the record, let's all wait for Batiuk to try & get this blog shut down for somehow infringing on his copyrights by criticizing his work - that's his #1 tactic for dealing with negative feedback. This is a long, long piece of work. Consider its title to be the "too long, didn't read" version. Otherwise, please, press on. Let me start with a personal anecdote. My favorite movie is The Producers - the original version with Zero Mostel & Gene Wilder where Hitler was played by an overbaked hippie. I can quote whole ...

Look, I know I can be a spiteful, petty asshole sometimes, but this is something that has been driving me nuts for the past couple of years.  One particularly embarassing new example has made me realize what I hate about it. It is the practice comic books companies have started doing of sending out single-image teasers for a new series, with maybe a single cryptic line of dialogue to try and start some talking.  I'm sure someone somewhere finds it entertaining, but me?  I just find it rather onanistic. I first saw it with Marvel's titles.  They would run, say, a single picture of a character in silohuette and have the tagline "I am a Defender"; by doing so, they hoped to get some buzz going about who will be starring in the new book.  Or, with the whole "vampires versus X-Men" story, they had preview picks of various X-characters as vampires, leaving you to guess which ones actually would be turned in the course of the story.  They did it so much that i...

A while back, I wrote about three shows I wanted to see bomb this fall season.   One turned out to be simple, hokey fun, so I am okay with it.  One turned out to be the undeserved success I expected, managing even to pre-empt Fox's Animation Domination cash cow block of programming.  And the last one, regrettably, still hasn't been called on the carpet (except by the AV Club) for its naked plagiarism of Fables and the double-dealing back in 2008, and worst of all, has been considered a ratings success.  With the new fall season under way, I've learned that there is far worse.  Two of the worst of the far worse, The Playboy Club and the revamped Charlie's Angels , have already died deservedly quick deaths.  But there are more, just as bad, that need to go away. Terra Nova (Fox): To somehow keep our future from turning out like the love child of ZPG & Blade Runner, a family joins a colony that goes back in time to set up Terra Nova during the time of...