2020 Reflection: Undertale

 

Undertale was written in September 2015 by Toby Fox. The game is a set in a world after a war between humanity and monsters, where monsters were sealed underground by humanity. The game follows Frisk, a human child, who follows into the underground and must go through it, meeting a bunch of monsters to get home, finding that the monsters are far more affable then might be believed. It is the latest of my favorite series. Undertale is pretty interesting because of how quickly and massively it boomed as a phemonema. For a game made by one guy, to explode in popularity to be one of the biggest original IPs of the 2010s is quite impressive, and I think speaks to how universal it's appeal is, more so then Toby Fox probably imagined, and to it's staying power.

3 Reasons I love it:

0th Reason is that it makes legit magical girl references beyond the most obvious or stereotypical things you can imagine.

1: One of the best things I can say about a work is that it's meaningful and one of the worst things I can say is that it feels meaningless or arbitrary. I really like when works have the sense that everything in them is there for a reason and UT is a game whose goal seems to have been to put meaning in where there is usually none; I know this point is perhaps a bit overplayed these days, but Undertale took a genre where you are just expected to kill legions of faceless nameless monsters and gave the monsters likeable personalities and made it so you didn't have to kill them to make you ask yourself what you are doing and why. I very much appreciate how much of UT feels like it's trying to get you to think about the meaning behind your actions.

2: Undertale makes better usage of it's medium then any game I've ever seen. Plenty of games make a fourth wall break as a joke here and there, but Undertale is a game whose plot is inextricably interwoven with it's nature as a joke. The User Interface, usually something that is tried to make as unintrusive as possible is instead used as a form of narrative. Instead of the game trying to make you forget it's a game, it instead tells a story that explicitly uses it's nature as a game to directy address and comment towards the player.

3: I really like the cast of Undertale, and while I'm worse at describing why I like characters as opposed to other reasons I will do my best. The characters in Undertale are very distinctive and very evocative, helped by each having their own musical track to compliment their personality. While some characters have a greater presence then others, none of them have poor presence and this applies as well to versaility and compelling, all the characters lack any weakness in characterization and feel very filled in as characters as well as having specialties like Papyrus and Undyne having high presence, Toriel and Alphys having high compelling and sans and Asgore having high versatility. 

3 Flaws:

1: I am not very fond of the actual bullet hell gameplay. I have poor reactions and the bullet hell style game is not particularly fun of mine. I like Undertale despite the gameplay, not for it. Apparently I'm not alone on this complaint as many play for the story with the gameplay viewed as incidental.

2: The dialogue in the game can get very blunt at times with characters just outright saying what they feel, what you should feel, and what the lesson is. Flowey in particular is written very bluntly after his malevolence is revealed and Chara's speech at the end of the Genocide route lacks much subtlety. In general the game lacks subtlety.

3: The game suffers from some pacing problems. Ruins, Hotlands, and arguably Waterfall have a lot of just walking around, not helped by lack of a run functon or any way to easily increase the speed which you go through the area, while Core arguably has the opposite problem, having too many encounters. 

My Favorite Part:

Get ready for a big surprise, because it's the only part that everyone loves that being sans surprise fight at the end of Genocide route. Absolutely amazing in every way, with creative usage of powers and metafictional narrative, deep rich symbolism and characterization for sans, and emotionally complex. This is probably the most liked moment in the game, and with good reason.

2020 Reflection: Over the Garden Wall

 

Over the Garden Wall was written in November 2014 by Patrick McHale. The series is about two young boys Wirt and Greg becoming lost in the forest called the Unknown and must find their way back, with revealations later on that the Unknown is not just a normal forest. I've stated before that Commedia is the least flawed work of fiction, Yu Yu Hakusho is the least flawed Battle Shonen and Princess Tutu is the least flawed Magical Girl series If that's the case I think Over the Garden Wall is probably the least bad cartoon I've seen, it has the least flaws of any series I've seen and mixed with the references to Commedia, I was clearly going to like it from the start. Going into it in more detail though

3 Reasons I love it:

1: The series I think does an amazing job at evoking atmosphere, creating a timeless nigh-universal sense appeal through deliberate usage of archetypes and folklore, while also feeling incredibly grounded in a time and place. The series feels grounded while also having that ethereal otherworldly feeling I really like by mystifying the forests and making the supernatural elements very light but omnipresent so it feels like there is a pinch of magic behind every tree. This series was meant to be a modern fairy tale and evokes the idea beautifully, with the same flow and internal symbolic logic of one. Does it make sense that a bird can talk? Not literally no, but the bird was once human and humans can talk.

2: There's a great duality in most of the series whether it be in the visuals of light and dark or in the optimistic Greg and the cynical Wirt. This is where a lot of the humor and the drama of the series comes from, when Greg and Wirt get the same information but interpret it in entirely different ways. Greg's way may seem a bit naive but it's actually usually the correct way as hoping and attempting to press forward is pretty much always better then giving up completely, even if you have no idea which way to go. Conversely Wirt is essentially a child Byronic Hero, and in being so he's got a romantic intellectual air that's prone to despair and over-rationalizing and needs Greg's optimism to inspire his intellect to guide them. 

3: The series does the thing that I search for in series, the thing I am constantly wanting series to do especially ones that have the supernatural which is to use the supernatural to make the text and the meaning the same, align the meaning with what is being expressed. In this case, the series takes place after Greg and Wirt get frozen and their mental journey in the Unknown is a metaphor for the fight for survival. As their hope dims or their life starts to give out for Wirt and Greg respectively they start to become trapped forever and it's in Wirt coming to awareness again that he is able to bring himself and Greg out of the danger of the icy waters, because the reinvigoration of his hope is both the theme and the literal text. 

3 Flaws:

Every series has flaws, and despite being the least flawed cartoon I've ever seen, I can think of a few things that aren't as good about OTGW

1: OTGW sometimes just spells out the lesson or explains to the audience what it wants them to take from this. This is the part where I think more then anything it could better evoke fairy tales, fairy tales are often stories told generation to generation and you might think that would make them lose all details until they are just stating a moral lesson, but the reason they persist is because they're applicable to several different morals all of which can be read as a valid interpretation of the text and is useful. I know it's a cartoon for children but fairy tales were also used to teach children lessons without explaining the lessons to them explicitly.

2: Some of the episodes feel kind of disconnected. The episodes definitely share motifs and recurring elements, but especially the closer you get to the middle, the less Divine Comedy it feels, and the more Alice in Wonderland. I personally prefer works to be as unified as possible, as a general rule of thumb. 

3: One could argue that most of the characters outside Wirt are quite simplistic. On the one hand, this is used to feed into the fairy tale archetypal feel of the story. A character like Greg for instance is a figure of hope and cheer and is a naive but optimistic figure and never shows any doubt or more complexity then that but that's what makes him so important...makes him so important to Wirt's journey. Interestingly I think this is a criticism you could also apply to the Commedia, which was obviously an inspiration to OTGW. Many of the characters in both serve moreso to be symbols in the journey of the pilgrim, but Dante was limited by terza rima and the limit of poetry while OTGW's characters are only limited by being in 10 minute long cartoons.

My Favorite Part:

The climax of the series. The entire series the Beast is built up as an unstoppable force of nature, representing the deadliness of the unknown and later we learn the bleakness of Wirt ande Greg's situation, unconcious in cold water slowly dying. As such Wirt's decision to reject the Beast's offer because he's not going to just wander around in the wood forever, symbolically regaining his hope after he had lost it prior and nearly died made him completely above the Beast, casually threatening him even after the Beast tried his best to intimidate him. This is the best usage of the trope of "seemingly unstoppable villain is easily beaten" because in reality the Beast WAS still almost unstoppable, the power of despair, but the power Wirt found physically, psychologically and spiritiually was the power that beat him, the power of hope. 

2020 Reflection: Yuki Yuna is a Hero

 

Yuki Yuna is a Hero was written in October 2014 by Makoto Uezu and Takahiro. The series takes place in a world under the protection of the guidance of the Divine Tree, the Shinju. Monsters called Vertexes appear to attack the roots of the Shinju, and to protect itself the Shinju gives a small group of schoolgirls the ability to turn into a group of magical girls called "Heroes" to protect the world. In the boon of "dark" magical girl series that came in the wake of Madoka, Yuki Yuna is a Hero was arguably the most succesful and definitely the one I liked most. The series is oddly controversial, like if you go look at MAL reviews what you see is 9, 2, 10, 4, 9, 3... so why do I personally love it

3 Reasons I love it:

1: The thing that I think Yuki Yuna did to stand out from the dark magical girl crowd is that it's relatively idealistic for one. Yuki Yuna is a more traditional magical girl anime-y form of the "dark" magical girl serieses with happy endings, idealistic heroes with power of friendship, clear good guys and bad guys etc. The idealistic and cynical interplay is one of the core appeals of Yuki Yuna in my opinion, the fact that the series has a goofy gag episode that perfectly fits my style of comedy right before a dramatic sad episode where one of them commits a heroic sacrifice, or the fact that there's dark setting but the characters are still trying to be traditional idealistic magical girls and don't just outright fail. There's some idealism that the series allows despite it's dark setting which makes it feel more "fair."

2: Yuki Yuna is a hero is a good series with ambition to be amazing. While most of the series is enjoyable enough for me, there are parts of the series that are absolutely amazing. While the series visuals aren't as trippy as I think the people making it wanted it to seem, they serve the point of creating a sense of alien-ness, especially combined with the sound track that imbues everything with a sense of otherworldy importance, especially the battle music. There are moments in Yuki Yuna that I think are absolutely amazing, better then I would expect from the series' average.

3: The characters of Yuki Yuna is a Hero are a lot more human then a lot of characters in the genre. There's a lot of magical girls that are basically just their archetype and the enjoyment comes from watching their archetype act in response to things however Yuki Yuna really wants you to enjoy just spending time with the main cast so their personalities are toned down a bit, made less archetypal so they can feel more realistic.

3 Flaws:

A lot of people really don't like the ending of season 1. I personally am ok with it, for the same reason that I'm ok with the ending of season 1 of the 90s Sailor Moon anime, it's a thing that by itself seems to invalidate what we just watched but is rectified immediatly after. For SM this was because the characters all got their memories back within the next 2 episodes outside Mamoru who gets it back in like a dozen episodes, and for Yuki Yuna this is because the consquences are actually addressed in season 2. With that said, I do completely if you don't like season 1's ending because of it but I'm not using it as a point. 

1: The series is rather slow at the beginning, in particular the first half dozen episodes of season 1 are slice of life-ish stories with smaller emotional stakes. While these are fine they don't generally rise to the greatest the series can be when it wants too. I get that Yuki Yuna is using the slow start to build it's character, but as a result it takes a while to get into. This is why the series wanted you to be so comfortable with just enjoying the main cast because there's an entire episode of just slice of life with them and many more scenes besides. 

2: The series does not really have "villains." The series has obstacles and set pieces that the series pretends are villains. But the "other gods" that sent that vertexes have nothing said about them whatsoever and the vertex seem basically personality-less and even lack very interesting powers; they're just big scary thing that needs to be sealed away. 

3: On a related note, Yuki Yuna feels kind of simple. It's conflict and it's application of themes are quite direct and to the point almost all the time. The moral conflict of the series at the end of both seasons is not super deep, and the big moral question that hands over the series, whether it's right for young girls to become Heroes and basically throw their lives away to save everyone, is never addressed. The villains are basically non-characters and almost there's also almost no character outside the main cast. Just as the world of Yuki Yuna is reduced to an island protected by Shinju, the main cast exists in an island where the other people are just there to namelessly cause a ripple that they have to deal with. 

My Favorite Part:

I really adore the part near the end of season 1 where Karin goes Mankai numerous times over and over to stop the vertex swarm. It's a moment that is at the same time horrifically tearjerking, awesome, and heartwarming; especially how she yells out the Hero Club Tenets as she does it. A childish mundane code like that is what she yells as she purposefully cripples her body to stop the enemy, reflecting how this world of childish ideals is what allows us to face the horrific things of the world. I don't think any scene really captures emotionally the central drive of the series to me like this one does. 

2020 Reflection: Wander over Yonder

 

Wander over Yonder was written in August 2013 by Craig McCracken. The series is about Wander, a small orange-fured humamnoid alien and Sylvia, his blue horselike alien friend as they travel the Yonder Galaxy helping people and sometimes stopping threats to the galaxy; most often Lord Hater, a magical skeleton supervillain  overlord, or Lord Dominator a lava (and later ice) wielding galactic destroyer. 

3 Reasons I love it:

1: If Cardcaptor Sakura is my wholesome series of the 90s and Pretty Cure is my wholesome of the 00s, then Wander over Yonder is definitely my wholesome series of the 10s. The series has a positive optimistic energy that feeds into everything about the series from the bouncy colorful animation, to the main character's seemingly endless good will and generous spirit towards others, to the series overall themes about optimism in the face of despair and the utility and value of compassion to others. It's generally just pleasent to watch.

2: Despite the fact that the series defacto is really fast-paced and I would almost describe as a "loud" series, a series of contant actions and energy and things happening, the series actually takes some time every now and again to do something slower and quieter and more completaive and instead of feeling cheesy, these come across in contrast to everything as the most memorable and meaningful moments of the series; moments like the death of Beep Boop, Sylvia helping the young scared Wander, and my favorite moment of the series.

3: WOY has an infectious creative energy to it. The series takes place in another galaxy where many of the planets and peoples are strange and have odd forms and rules. This gives the series nearly infinite room to play around with what they want to do and the series really takes advantage of it, often taking on bizarre concepts for an episode just for the fun of it such as an episode spent on parodying other cartoons with Lord Hater demanding his watchdogs make propoganda about him, a species of aliens that regularly has to migrate from planet to planet due to a cosmic dog mistaking their planets for balls to play with, or an episode dealing with the attachment issues of a living planet. The series is full of creative ideas and an energy of discovery with each episode. Despite my tendency to prefer serialization, this is one of the series I think probably works better in an episodic format just so that it can have complete free reign to do what it wants each ep.

3 Flaws:

1: I personally think the series is not operating as well as it can until the second season when Lord Dominator shows up. WOY is a series that thrives on having as much possibility as it can, and the inclusion of a more serious villain allowed for more possibilities in the storytelling. While Hater can be threatening and he does have the more serious Commander Peepers by his side, Wander can stop him so consistently that it doesn't have the proper level of menance. Plus the relations of Wander and Dominator or Hater and Dominator also add good dynamics to the series.

2: Sometimes the level of threat in the series is kind of ambigious. I'm not saying the series needs to say "Lord Dominator comitted genocide" or anything, that would definitely hurt the series by going way against it's general tone and I think the series went as dark as it could without breaking tone with the Death of Beep Boop. That said because the series is primarily a light-hearted comedy, it makes it kind of hard to tell at times in season 2 how big a threat Dominator is until the very end where they say in clear terms "this is the last stand, this is important." Other times it's unclear how actually serious we're supposed to take the threat. This is also true of the other supervillains in the series, where sometimes they're goofs that essentially play off one joke each and literally try to conquer the galaxy for a leaderboard, and other times they're meant to be taken as serious threats.

3: One of the downsides of WOY's episodic nature is that many times a concept that is really cool will be introduced, lore you want to see in later episodes, and then it never returns save as a cameo. I was kind of hoping that the grand finale would be everyone in the galaxy Wander has helped comes back and teams up to stop Dominator, which kind of happens but I thought could have been bigger. I would have liked Major Threat to telekinetically hold her ship, Dr Screwball Jones to cause her side a laughing attack, Buster to throw planets like balls in Fetch at her etc. I also would have liked to learn more about the Star Nomads, which sadly does not really show up. 

My Favorite Part:

My favorite part is the episode titled "The Flower", an episode that I think beautifully encaptures the idea that while we suffer sometimes for seemingly no reason in this life, our efforts make a better world we will never see for those that come after us, that a small flower's life of suffering causes the entire galaxy to bloom again from oblivion. 

2020 Reflection: The Stanley Parable

 

The Stanley Parable was written in July 2011 by Davey Wreden and William Pugh based on a mod developed by Davey Wreden earlier. The plot of the Stanley Parable is that you play as Stanley, a man who works a nondescript job at an office pressing buttons when you find all your co-workers have mysteriously disappeared. The Narrator attempts to guide and narrate Stanley's adventure finding out what happens however the real fun is that the player can deviate from the Narrator's narration, exploring numerous game paths in a metafictional analysis and tug of war between narrator and player. I find it really hard to comment on the Stanley Parable, even just describing it like I did. This is partly because of it's metafictional nature, partly because it's divided into nearly 20 different routes ranging in time from seconds to several minutes with one lasting four hours, and partly because it's actually really minimalist. I said that Shamanic Princess was "likely" the shortest of my favorite series because I don't even know how long this game is. To get a single ending can take literally seconds by just closing the starting room's door. To 100% complete the game takes over 5 hours, but 4 of which are just pressing 2 buttons in a room until an arbitrary 4 hour timer is up. I'm not even sure it is a "video game". That said I'll do my best to commentate on this hard to comment on this... "game".

3 Reasons I love it:

1: Before anything else, the Stanley Parable remains a fun engaging often quite witty experience throughout regardless of the path you chose, outside the deliberate 4 hour path that is meant more as a secret then anything. If the Stanley Parable was a lesser made game it could have come across as the most pretentious piece of nonsense laughing at the player for daring to want to make choices in a video game and telling them it was all meaningless. While the Stanley Parable does mock the insane human desire to mindlessly rebel for no reason, it also mocks mindless obediance and mocks itself and other tropes. Really it's a game about exploration and rewards the player's exploration with fun narration.

2: On a related note, while the Stanley Parable is not a "large" game, it is a game where every corner is filled with things to explore. The game has a shockingly large variety of things it allows you to do and rewards it regardless. Two seperate endings are gotten from managing to clip outside a window, something that in almost any other game would just be a bug. You CAN beat the Stanley Parable in seconds, but you want to keep playing just to see what other things you can find in it somewhere.

3:  While TSP makes fun of this, it's commentary on video game tropes are actually fairly insightful and useful. Specifically, it comments on what we percieve as choice in a game, and whether is actually matters. Choice and Determinism are central themes of the game, how much are choices predetermined and how much do they matter. While TSP doesn't give any conclusions to it, that's actually probably smarter in the long run given how these are questions that go back millennia, and instead it presents a perspective on them that is fun and gets you thinking.

3 Flaws:

1: I don't know if this is something that TSP is really to be blamed for, but it's a game that came out in a particularly bad time for it's type of content. That might sound insane given all the awards it's gotten but I don't mean commercially. Games, especially very narrative-based games like TSP are regularly watched rather then played. People watch people let's play on YT a lot and spoilers really hurt TSP because it doesn't have any gameplay to speak off outside trying to find things. This let's play spoiler-y world means that a lot of players will already know what's happening and what each path will lead to the first time they play the Stanley Parable which dramatically changes how they experience it. The reason it can be completed in a few hours is because you're not supposed to know where to go, you're supposed to spend signifigant time exploring.

2: The game's structure leads it to feeling a bit unsatisfying in some way because it never builds to anything. The game proudly declares that it has no end, and maybe that's true but there's a reason most stories have an end, it's beacause people enjoy the feeling of clouse and resolution. It's probably smarter to not make any big statement about choice and determinism, but it also leads to a lack of feeling any resolution. There are many paths to take and while you could see it as they all have their own ending, I don't feel like I see any bigger picture after seeing all of them (although if you've played Davey Wreden's follow-up The Beginner's Guide you could probably argue that is due to my expectations but I do still feel like having an ending is usually better then not)

3: The Stanley Parable has 1 real character, that being the Narrator, and the Narrator's character changes between each route, not so much that he's unidentifiable, but enough. The game is not a character focused game at all and while I can live with that, if you're the type of person whose really interested in characterization, this game has basically 1 character. Technically there are more people in this universe however no one is given any large amount of characterization besides the Narrator.

My Favorite Part:

Did u get the broom closet ending? Theb room closet ending was my favrite! XD More seriously, this might be an odd choice but I really like the Art Ending. To me it's a great example of why I like the Stanley Parable that they would take into account people being crazy enough to actually play the Baby Game for 4 hours and make an ending around it, plus that ending really hones in on my type of humor, where it's like somewhat ironic, somewhat not and exaggerating things past reason and using abstract imagery.

2020 Reflection: Magicka

 

Magicka was written in January 2011 by Arrowhead Game Studios. By odd coincedence it's part of the only pair of series on my favorite series list to come out in the same month and it happens to be with a series containing the word "Magica" in the title that being "Puella Magi Madoka Magica". The game is set in a world that is a parody of Medieval Fantasy worlds, where up to 4 Wizards, the players must go on comical adventures to stop various villains threatening the lands, usually villains that seem to want to impose order to try and create some peace in the incredibly chaotic land of Midgard but do so via some form of tyranny or species based oppression. The game is well regarded in gaming circles for it's innovative and chaotic gameplay which is infamous for it's random bouts of team-killing, crazy out of control elemental combinations, and general clownfoolery.

3 Reasons I love it:

1: Magicka's gameplay system really speaks to me. The game gives you 8 elements and you can combine up to 5 of them to create effects that are the intuitive combination of your elements, which also interact with enemies as you might expect. Use water to wet an opponent then use lightning to have the lightning chain to them and do lots of damage for instance. The game doesn't have a mana system, you can cast spells basically as fast as your fingers can move but in exchange you are a very squishy wizard that can die from enemies or your own spells very quickly. My reflexes are quite poor, however Magicka isn't really a reaction game because you honestly can't react fast enough to deal with the game's intuitive style. Instead when you get good at Magicka it feels more like what I've heard expert fighting game players describe what high level fighting games are like; it's much more a sense of strategy and inutiting what your opponent will do next, as both players reactions are going to be comparable. Magicka combat when it gets hard is not about concious thought, it's about intuiting the elements effects and letting it just sort of flow. One of the strongest combinations in the game is the steam beam with arcane, lightning and steam in a particular proportion. I don't consciously think when I want to use it however and I don't even feel myself pressing the buttons, the game just becomes an extension of the flow in my brain. It both works with how my brain works and is also weirdly relaxing. 

2: This game is so funny. Granted playing it wasn't like I was ever rolling on the flood laughing, but like I was kept amused throughout and that was only in single player. The world just has an infectatious energy, an energy made of goofy references, running gags, and over the top-ness. It's like playing a video game form of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  And in multiplayer, it's famous for constant shenanigans and antics of accidental or intentional team-killing and funny magic interactions. I would go so far as to say Magicka is probably the series I consider most consistently funny on my favorites list. There are other comedic series and these even often have funnier heights, but Magicka is just so consistently engaging. Its humor is also endearingly dated. It's full of references to memes from the 00s to early 10s, like a more innocent age of the internet. There's references to things like "It's Over 9000!", "THIS. IS. SPARTA!" and "KHANNNNNNNNNN". It gives me such nostalgia.

3:  I've seen some people actually downplay the story and lore of Magicka as basically irrelevant. Indeed the trailer poked fun at it being generic fantasy and Totalbiscuit in his WTF is on the video said facetiously "Not that we really care about the story elements, I certainly don't. If you do I think you might be doing it wrong." That said I think the story for Magicka is kind of ingenius. I'm the type of person that likes things to be neat and orderly and I would say Magicka's story on a basic level is trying to make an argument for the usefulness of chaos; or more particularly that chaos/nature, represented by the wizards, is a force for discovery, fun and possibility. The antagonists in Magicka are generally presented as being more serious or more orderly or both then the wizards, complete "stick in the mud" as it were. In real life chaos is dangerous, the potential of chaos leads to possible negative outcomes, but it's neccesary for growth. I think this is woven in both the story and the gameplay, a gameplay which priortizes letting go of one's sense of safety and security by sticking to what is known and what is conscious thought, things which will make the game very hard to play. Instead one must be willing to embrace chaos as much as possible to flow with the game. 

3 Flaws:

1: Magicka 1 was infamous for it's glitches. The Magicka fandom has become almost endeared with Magicka's glitches, but it can be relatively debillitating to play. Now the game is currently is relatively stable in single-player, although there are still glitches in multiplayer that can completely stop progress in the game like game crashes or enemies needed to progress simply not showing up.

2: Magicka 2 I consider a fairly disappointing follow up to the original Magicka. While the story was quite good and followed the first and the events of Wizard Wars well, but the gameplay felt signifigantly worse. In an objective sense the second game's gameplay is far more balanced. One can't instantly gib more enemies, and it's vastly harder for a team of 4 players to die, to the point that even a group of 4 complete noobs messing around and engaging in RDM will very rarely get a complete party kill. That said the chaos of Magicka's gameplay system was actually a very strong thematic element to it's world. The ability to die or kill quickly is what led to the game feeling so intuitive and smooth to play. In my opinion, it's somewhat against the central theme of both games, the embracing of chaos, if the gameplay is so much slower and priotizing actively thinking about your options as opposed to needing to intuit the answer quickly.

3: Magicka lacks much in the way of characterization. Vlad and Grimnir are engaging enough characters, but many of the characters including the nameless player wizards have very little characterization save for being bad at socializing. This isn't really the point of the game so it's not like the creators tried something and it failed, and I don't even really need a series to have deep characterization to enjoy something, I am more of a plot person in general. That said it does limit the potential of the series as it keeps one from engaging strongly with the personalities in the game since most of them are limited to a few gags.

My Favorite Part:

My favorite part of Magicka is the fight against Grimnir. It's the best fight in the game. It's challenging but unlike some of the stuff in Chapter 11, it's challenging in a very fair way, and really gives the feeling of fighting a master wizard who can use the same 8 elements and mostly the same magicka as the player. The fight is hard enough that even the devs struggled against it, yet every move can be fairly and reasonably countered even by a single player if you are able to follow the cues and not try to go against the flow of the fight. Grimnir is also despite his extremely limited apperaence, a really good villain, and a good antagonist for the game.

2020 Reflection: Puella Magi Madoka Magica

 

Puella Magi Madoka Magica was written in January 2011 by Gen Urobuchi. By a rather odd coincedence, PMMM is one of the only pair of series on my favorites list to come out in the same month and it happens to be a series with the word "Magicka" in the title that being the video game series "Magicka". Puella Magi Madoka Magicka is about middle schoolers Madoka Kaname and Sayaka Miki finding an odd catlike creature called Kyubey and becoming aware of the secret existence of witches and magical girls. The two are offered the chance to get a wish in exchange for agreeing to becoming magical girls and fighting witches, who threaten humanity. The series, and serious spoiler warning here, from this point on things will be very spoiler-y, is rather famous for the ensuing story being far darker then most magical girl anime, and subverting audience expectations dramatically. For the longest time in the magical girl fandom there were two really big magical girl series; Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura and while other magical girl series did get serious popularity, it was not until Madoka that a series would rise to the point that it could seriously challenge the other two in terms of global recognition. I have a particular chip on my shoulder for being called Madoka a magical girl deconstruction, especially when this is used to try and explain why it is good. To me this seems to be an insult to both the magical girl genre and to Madoka; to say that the magical girl genre is inherently so light and frivolous that to be good means one must be somehow different like a deconstruction or to say that Madoka is good only because it is different from other things is faint praise. While Madoka is relatively dark for a magical girl series, it's darkness is not unheard off in the genre. I don't think Madoka is good because it deconstructs magical girls, I think it is good because it is a very well written magical girl series. 

3 Reasons I love it:

As a long time fan of magical girls, my views on Madoka reflect how I've heard long time fans of Batman view the Nolan Batman Trilogy. That is to say it is a grittier and realistic take on the concept that I think is very well written and gives a really good example of the heights the genre can reach, and is the definitive modern example of the genre that is the main influence for other works in the genre within our time, save works deliberately trying to harken to a past time. 

1: Madoka is really good at utilizing elegance and conservation of detail to invoke the idea or spirit of something without being too specific or taking too much time. The original anime is a relatively short series, one that I've on multiple ocassions just watched all the way through, something I almost never do. It can do this because there is no filler or time wasted. The pacing is phenomenal with every scene serving to move the plot of that episode along, put in hidden information that will become important later, and usually add extra material that will only become apparent on a rewatch. That by itself would be hard but something other series could do, though it would be clunky. One of the things that makes Madoka special however is it's ability to all this with grace such that it feels wholly natural. It does this primarily via implication and by things that seem mysterious to the characters and first time audience, driving them, but give more meaning to someone whose seen it before.

2: The thing that I think gives Madoka such incredible emotional power, is that it's magic system's ambiguity is used so that the magic can act as a representation of the characters inner conflicts at a time, which is brilliantly realized. One scene I think does this exceptionally well for instance is the fight of Kyoko and Sayaka vs Elsa Maria. Due to the framing of the scene as well as Elsa Maria's dimension, almost everything in the scene is black and white, symbolizing Sayaka's black and white notions that is emotionally tormenting her inside. Elsa Maria stabs Sayaka over and over who laughs in a creepy manner stating she really doesn't have to feel anything, a reference to how she is pushing her through suffering, not healing herself by hunting witches, numbing her emotional pain at realizing she has consigned herself to fighting witches forever and the boy she loves will never even realize what she did for him so that she doesn't have to feel anything. This is just one example but the series is filled with what I really want series with magic to do; use the magic to reflect the psyche of the character so the world of the series can be used as a canvas to show an exaggerated form of the human condition. 

3:  I really adore the message of Madoka, and how it is conveyed. Madoka touches on many themes, but I believe it's central theme are conveyed by Madoka upon her ascension in the last episode. I was deeply moved by the line "Don't forget. Always, somewhere, someone is fighting for you." Loneliness has been a major difficulty I've struggled with and it's been something that has helped me to remember, that beyond this immediate empirical existence I know, there are those who care for me. I know this reason may not be the most universal, it's not talking about the series amazing visuals or music or foreshadowing or realism which I considered for this last point, but being honest with myself this was the point I cared about more then any. 

3 Flaws:

1: I'm not sure how fair this is, but I am not a big fan of a lot of the spin-offs to Madoka. I really adore the main series. While controversial I actually liked Rebellion and I really liked the Puella Magi Tart Magica manga. On the other hand a lot of the series I just feel kind of neutral about. There's a manga connecting the main anime to Rebellion that I honestly found kind of confusing. A lot of the spin off material are either about characters that weren't in the original anime that I don't feel as strong a connection too or alternate versions of the characters that feel off. I don't know how common a perception this is although I've found at least some people seem to agree.

2: While I really liked the Madoka cast, very often the point I came to really like their characters was right before we never got to see them again. My favorite character is Mami and I got really invested in her character and then she died. I started to get invested in Kyoko's character and she died. Homura's most interesting point for me was when she is showing her emotions more openly which only happened during the earlier timelines we see in one episode and at the end of t he series. You might think then that I should be really happy with the amount of material in the spin-offs, but it felt relatively off to me. One of the reasons I liked Rebellion as much as I did despite it's controversial ending was I was just really happy to see the main universe girls again, feeling as I remembered them just developed. 

3: Within the main story of Madoka they follow the trope where a bunch of bad things that happened didn't neccesarily have to happen if the characters had stopped and listened to each other and worked together. A lot of the character deaths were kind of unnecesary in-universe. This is partially because of the trope I don't really like where teenagers are portrayed as irrational and hormonal gits with Kyubey even saying that the emotions of teenage girls are the most potent energetic force in the universe (although I do like that particular line). Now yes, I remember being a teenager, being a weep-y, hormonal, irrational mess, however even at the time and even if Kyubey was manipulating me, I would think I would have enough good sense to band together for protection with other people if my life was in danger. Madoka in being realistic shows it's magical girls as being undeniably more flawed and suspectible to the pain and trauma of fighting monsters of the week, however I think it a bit too far to the other side. In real life, people do things like band together for security and can somewhat adapt to being put in horrific situations. Even granting that what is depicting is completely realistic, it's still somewhat frustrating to rewatch the series and see Homura not just say to the other magical girls "Hey I'm a Time Traveler, something I can legitimately prove by predicting the future and telling you secrets about yourself the other timeline yous told me. Don't trust Kyubey, Magical Girls always die, he just wants your energy!"

My Favorite Part:

Again, not at all a very unconventional pick, but my favorite part is the climax of the series and Madoka saving the souls of all the other magical girls. In both an intra-universal sense, and in a meta context, it always moves me to tears. To be a magical girl is suffering, contextualized in Madoka as being a girl with dreams that transcend the physical, with a desire for something beyond this empirical world, showing the girls of history who fell to tragic fates who nontheless dreamed of something greater. In a broader meta context magical girls are a representation of society's feminine ideal, a celebration of the loving heart and the willingness to embody the virtues of such regardless of the cruel we find ourselves born into. Madoka will not let them die alone and in pain, will not let their prayers fall to despair. We are never alone, always remember that there are those out there fighting for you. 

2020: Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt

 

Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt was written in October 2010 by Geek Fleet and Studio Gainax. Panty and Stocking is about the titular angels Panty and Stocking who are thrown out of Heaven for their sinful natures who must destroy the ghosts hauntings Daten City to collect Heaven coins and return to Heaven. The two angels are less then repentant however and much of the series is a comedy about the two's viceful nature. The series is well known for for having a large amount of western influences for an anime and for being a perverted adult comedy. Given my generally timid personality, it can cause some humorous reactions when I bring up this series but I do really like it.

3 Reasons I love it:

1: The series is just really funny. Given that the series is mostly a comedy with some cool action scenes, this point is probably the biggest in the grand scheme of things; but yeah I personally think the adult humor of P&S is really funny. While embarrasing for me in real life, I do have to admit that kind of humor is one I find really funny in general and Panty and Stocking is particularly good at using it, I think in part because of the second point I put below this but also because the adult humor is coming from someone you wouldn't expect. In most ecchi you expect the adult humor to star a perverted human male character whose relatively low in the social hierarchy whereas in P&S the adult humor mostly comes from Panty, a really pretty looking angelic woman whose stylized to look like a cartoon and acts as a de facto superheroine (if an amoral one) of Daten City; a list of things that are usually viewed as less sexual which makes the humor feel relatively novel and in a weird way more relatable.

2: Part of the reason it's humor works so well is another one of the series' strengths, that being it's versatility and tendency to do completely random assorted things the writers just felt like doing. Panty and Stocking incorporate numerous types of humor and even it's adult humor is used in a variety of things from innuendo, sexual insults, aberrant forms of sexuality etc. Likewise the series episodes have very little in common, sometimes not even having ghost fights and 1 episode barely even containing Panty and Stocking. The series has some episodes that are mostly serious, it has episodes that are just parodies of other series (in particular there is an episode that is a Transformers parody and one that is a bunch of western animation references), there one episode where every single line is an innuendo of some sort. Part of what makes the humor work is that it incorporates is the variety; it's not a similar type of joke often.

3: One of the things that apparently caused some surprise is that the series has sizable amount of female fans despite it being a raunchy echi comedy. There's numerous reasons for this but one reason it's unironically a good magical girl series, just with the magical girls acting more adult. The series is full of feminine iconography and while it's in a crude sense Panty uses and enjoys her femininity in terms of her sex appeal. For a lot of us, Panty and Stocking's viceful desires towards things like lust or gluttony are actually fairly relatable adult problems, even if obviously exaggerated and played comedically here. Panty and Stocking are the kind of friends I would want to have in real life because despite almost being cartoon characters and being completely they're just very affable and enjoyable to spend time with due to their endearing flaws.

3 Flaws:

Number 0 is obviously gonna be the fact that there's no season 2 and there never will be 😢

1: I mentioned P&S has a lot of sexual humor, but it also has a lot of gross-out humor and I definitely don't like that nearly as much. I don't like gross-out in general nor do I understand the appeal of it. While Panty and Stocking's doesn't make me feel disgusted because the art style is so abstracted, it's neither pleasent or funny.

2: This is a rather unpopular opinion for fans of P&S, but I actually am not that big a fan of Scanty and Kneesocks. In general I'm not fond of villains that are evil counterparts to the protagonists, but beyond that they just lack a certain malice. They were quite intimidating in their first episode and they were clearly menancing when Panty was by herself and without her powers, but Panty and Stocking beat them so thoroughly in every encounter that I didn't feel any sense of threat when they arrived and their affable evil shtick I didn't love, I thought was fine but I wasn't super in love with it like some people to be. The bigger reason I don't like them that much is I thought the biggest strength of P&S was it's versatility and ability to just do any nonsense it wanted and when Scanty and Kneesocks showed up the show got regular plot elements that limited what it could do that episode.

3: I know it's deliberate and all, and this is a taste thing but the world of Panty and Stocking is a bit too amoral for my tastes. Panty and Stocking are heroes in the loosest sense of the world who would screw over others for their own amusement, and the world they inhabit is a hormonal anarchic world of people screwing each over. I'm kind of saccharine in my tastes, if my other favorite series haven't demonstrated this already, and the world of P&S seems so chaotic that it disconnects from me at times.

My Favorite Part:

My Favorite ep is Ghost: The Phantom of Daten City. I thought it was a really sweet story about how love makes people want to better for their loved ones, and it was one of the few eps where Panty and Stocking try to tell a more serious story. I think it was really effective, especially as prior eps did set up that Panty and Stocking do care about each other as sisters. It's also the only time a ghost was beaten not by violence but just through showing compassion which was sweet.

2020 Reflection: Bayonetta

 

Bayonetta was written in October 2009 by Hideki Kamiya. The series is set in a world where Lumen Sages representing light and Umbran Witches representing dark maintained the balance of light and dark despite the war between angels and demons until the both sides were killed in part due to the birth of the forbidden child; Bayonetta, an Umbran Witch born of an Umbran Witch mother and a Lumen Sage father. Due to her parentage Bayonetta was born with nigh-unparalleled potential and was sealed away for centuries along with memories; the first game is about the restoration of her memories and the culimatinion in the centuries long conflict sparked by her birth, whereas Bayonetta 2 was about the reasons behind the events that kicked off the first game and the backstory of the divide between heaven and hell; angels and demons. The third game is as of now unreleased. Bayonetta is one of those series that I probably put off way too long. I heard from several sources I trust as credible that it was great and furthermore it sounded like something I would really enjoy and they were completely right, I thought it was great. You may notice with just how long the plot summary was this time that Bayonetta has a rather involved story and while I expect people to read these blogs after they've seen the series and am thus not worried about spoilers, some of the good things I talk about with Bayonetta I have to be somewhat more vague with just because it would take a while to explain all the plot points needed to understand the specifics of what I am saying.

3 Reasons I love it:

Bayonetta is very often renowned for it's really great fight system. I'm not very good at telling to be honest, and I won't pretend to be some expert in game design to use a point ;) I can tell you it felt good when I played but can't go too in detail. Just know if that's something you're interested in the series has what I am informed is a very well thought out combat system.

1: This series has a style that bleeds elegance and mysticism that I adore. I knew I would love the series from literally the first scene with Bayonetta and Witch Jeanne elegantly battling angels in the air. The series has a feminine mystical energy and a graceful elegancy in everything, even when it's being over the top sexual and action-y that makes it very appealing to my sensibilities. I would like to just watch the characters move just from how elegant they look doing anything and how much of a magical air is around it. Also this game references the Commedia, which is my favorite literary work and I thought was really cool. 

2: I really like the themes of the series; themes of light and dark, the chaos of the human soul, the nature of time and memory, sexuality, mysticism; like the series themes is just a list of the things that I'm personally interested in. I think the series tackles them all quite gracefully as well and they are just embodied in the protagonist Bayonetta. Every scene in Bayonetta seems to be talking about something I am personally interested or it's an action scene (which to be fair there's a LOT off), or both.

3: Bayonetta does an amazing job at mixing the feeling of being an overpowered confident and unstoppable force of witchcraft without ever making you feel like a mary sue. This is one of the few things I can say with clarity from combat where I felt both like a strong powerful witch who can tear through celestial powers and also like if I made a single mistake I'd be dead. Bayonetta is an amazing protagonist who has massive agency and confidence while also being vulnerable (particularly in the first game without her memories) and like she is the underdog in her singular war against Heaven. This is one of the advances I think of having a protagonist who is via sexuality, mysticism, and an attitude that can range form maternal to dominatrix so clearly feminine has. Women protagonist I think are given a lot more room to be more emotionally versatile I think due to more clear expectations towards men and more ambigious ones towards women.

3 Flaws:

One thing I've heard people say is a flaw that I don't agree with is the series is too over the top to take the story seriously. While the series definitely goes over the top, and in fact revels in doing so, I find that not only does it work pretty well, but I especially don't see how that would keep the story from being taken seriously when the most over the top parts are during the gameplay battles while the story is mostly in cutscenes. It's completely possible to mostly just watch the cutscenes if crazy spectacle fights are going to diminish your enjoyment for somereason. 

1: So while the cast of Bayonetta is very fun, a lot of them are quite simplistic outside of Bayonetta herself. This is a general thing spectacle fighters seem to struggle with in part because you're usually always with one character in particular so we don't get much time to learn the inner struggles of anyone but our lead, who to be fair is a fantastic lead. Some of the characters have more going on then they seem at first, however once you understand their goals; neither that or their personalities are very complex.

2: On a related note, I think the villains of Bayonnetta are kinda basic. The most interesting one by far turned out to be brainwashed unless you count Jeanne who wasn't even really a villain. The other villains are either stock celestial arrogant proud or stock demonic sinister and underhanded. It kinda seems like the villains are sometimes toys or set pieces for Bayo to destroy.

3: So this is something that might change in Bayo 3, but in general the heroine Bayonetta uses entirely dark powers which seems rather unfitting for the themes of the story. A major theme of the series is the balance of light and dark in the human soul, symbolically represented with how Bayonetta is child of light and dark...and she always uses dark powers. She summons demons and uses medevil torture devices as weapons, even when fighting against demons. I get that it fits her personality more but I am more partial to light and holy based powers then dark and unholy ones, and it seems to go against the theme that Bayonetta's powers seem no different to any of the other Umbran Witches save for being stronger. 

Favorite Part: 

My favorite part is probably the climax of Bayonetta 2 where she and her Lumen Sage father combine their powers to create Omne, a being of light and dark that defeats even the mad god Aesir, the creator of the trinity of realities. Despite Aesir transcending light and dark individually as the force that created both, Omne was able ot win because it was formed of the love that bound Bayonetta to her father, the love that binds darkness and light, and from their fusion creates something stronger then all of them, a perfect representation of the theme that the chaos of the human soul, made of light and darkness makes it greater then light or darkness alone would be. 

2020 Reflection: Hetalia: Axis Powers

 

Hetalia was written in July 2006 by Hidekaz Himaruya. The series is a comedy about history starring personifications of the countries of the world to to make jokes about human history and international relations. It most commonly features the axis powers during the time period of the second world war, hence the title. This is probably the most comedic of my favorite series, and it's also got a different format; not being a standard serialization and instead being a gag webcomic that got adapted into an anime whose episodes are only a few minutes long, sometimes several unrelated parts with each ep and don't neccesarily tie into each the prior ep or the ep after it. As such what would usually be a strength or a weakness of a series is differnet from a more serious serialized story.

3 Reasons I love it:

1: The jokes are about topics I find funny. Hetalia most often jokes about national stereotypes and history, two topics I think are really funny. Talking about comedy and why it works is famously the least funny topic but basically I think Hetalia's comedy works well for me is that the jokes are a nice mesh of a large variety of different types despite it's seeming simplicity; ranging from observational human (for instance the sketch about how the different countries act at the supermarket), to fun historical trivia that is amusing (like Russia breaking England's cursed chair) to characters being over the top with their personalities (like Prussia's constant declarations that he is the great and awesome Prussia) to just random nonsense, tied together by the theme of history and international relations.

2: Another facet of the series that I think makes the humor funny to me but also helps the series in a different sense is the fact that it's a very positive upbeat series compared to the few things in it's "genre". If you compare Hetalia to something like, say, Countryballs, Countryballs isn't made by a single person but in general it seems to be more cynical of the countries. In Hetalia all the countries are flawed for comedic purposes but they're usually made out to be generally pleasent people. In fact most people who like Hetalia say their favorite character is their representation of their own country, often because they get the jokes about that country more and they think it's a good representation. This also creates the sense that even countries and peoples we don't like or compete with in real life, are filled with real people who are probably doing their best too. You could really easily make something with Hetalia's premise very dark, or even easily make it a dark comedy, but instead it's kept fairly light-hearted.

3: I actually really like the shortness and segmented nature of Hetalia episodes. On one level it is perhaps just pragmatic adaptation of it's source material, however it very much fits with my ideal for comedy. I like my humor fast-paced, and really don't like when a joke or even a type of humor is done for too long.And if nothing, Hetalia eps are very fast paced due to their episode lengths.

3 Flaws:

1: Hetalia jumps around in space and time withour any rhyme or reason basically on the writer's whim. On the one hand it might be annoying if they started in caveman times and took years just to get to anything that someone today might be aware off. On the other hand it's just so...random about it. Countries that played huge roles in history haven't even shown up or showed up only the smallest amount as Himaruya plays clear favorites with what countries and time periods he's interested in.

2: This one is obviously massive your mileage may vary, but some of the characters don't really seem to represent their countries. I think Himaruya did a really good job with most of them, but there's some countries whose personalities or relationships seem really off. For me the biggest one and honeslty the strangest one given Himaruya's nationality is the way too pleasent relationship between China and Japan. These two have off and on again hated each other for millenia now, why are they so unantagonistic to each other?

3: The period of history that tends to interest me most is actually antiquity, ancient history which Hetalia despite having canonical characters for, spends almost no time in. The series jumps around in space and time yet the earliest chronological sketches get is usually maybe the late middles age (one quite funny sketch about China and Japan first meeting aside). If they're going to jump around so much, I wish the series would cover more time periods.

My Favorite Part:

My favorite part of Hetalia is the episode titled "Davie." America who at this point is young enough to be a child meets and befriends a human boy named Davie. The two become great friends but Davie grows up, while America, being the embodiment of a country, is still a child. Eventually Davie passes but America sees his descendant and mistakenly identifies him as Davie, quickly becoming his friend. I dearly wish there was more episodes like this. This is an episode that perfectly shows what the relationship between a person and a nation is and why we make relationships with the countries we live in. Countries are things that will outlast us, and will see us in our descendants and show them the love we show to our nation. We are part of a procession of people in constant dialogue and friendship with a concept bigger then us made of our ideals and our sense of greater community which we call a country.

2020 Reflection: Okami

 

Okami was written in April 2006 by Hideki Kamiya. When the demon serpent Orochi is released and darkness threatens the land of Nippon, the great Sun Goddess Amaterasu in the form of the white wolf Shiranui is called upon, who the player controls as she endeavors to restore light and life to Nippon. Okami is another game on this list that got massive critical acclaim but simply didn't very well sadly. Most of the people who have actually played it seem to agree though it's an amazing piece and a shining example of story and style in game form. I would have thought this would be because Okami's foreign sales wouldn't be very high given it's extreme focus on Japanese culture, but surprisingly that doesn't seem to be the case with it's foreign sales actually being pretty normal compared to it's domestic sales. 

3 Reasons I love it:

1: A lot of games, and almost all in this genre of narrative action game, have the player play what is essentially a destroyer. They kill and slash and blast whatever evil enemy is in front of them until they reach final boss they kill. Amaterasu however is not a warrior goddess, she is "the origin of all that is good, and a mother to us all". More then destruction, Amaterasu brings with her creation and life. Where she steps flowers blossom, nature is restored and the shining Sun is restored in the sky. Amaterasu's power has waned over the years due to people's lack of belief. Much of the game is Amaterasu simply helping the people of Nippon with their lives, restoring their faith. Wherever you go as the player, the world becomes brighter and more alive. It's a very pleasent and at times downright wonderful feelings to see how you restore the world to life. 

2: Okami is a series that does a really good job of balancing elegance and gravity. Very often the gravity of a series can make things clunky and unsophisticated. A character saying they're going to end the planet immediatly has a sense of urgency but lacks much subtlety. Okami does an amazing job at integrating the two, in part due to it's association with Shinto and Japanese folklore. Everything in the game is extremely stylized, down to the art style being inspired by Sumi-e, a form of traditional brushwork meant to capture the spirit and essence of the thing, and the primary defining mechanic of the game being usage of the celestial brush to paint things into being. This gives everything in the game a dignity, the dignity that comes from tradition and history. There is a tangible sense of the legacy in everything in Okami.

3: The worldbuilding in Okami is just so beautiful. Okami was originally a game made to make one appreciate nature and the beauty of the world. The art of the game is lovely, aided by it's Sumi-e art style, and the world is a lively world of interesting characters and scenery. This is a game where it's honestly sometimes as fun or more fun to feed the little animals as it is to fight demons.

3 Flaws:

1: If you are one of the people that don't like unskippable cutscenes, that want games to put you right into the action, that thinks games should be about gameplay first and deviate only when needed you might absolutely despise this game. Okami is full of long uninterrupted text sections to give the massive lore of the world and communicate the personalities of the characters. At some points it feels a lot more like watching an anime that requires you to pick a scene to go to next then it does playing a game. This is particularly annoying because very often the information is not even needed. EVERY time you pick up something the game explains to you what something is and Issun will sometimes just blatantly tell you what you're supposed to do, ruining the potential mystery of discovery.

2: Okami is actually really easy. I have really terrible reflexes and fairly poor hand-eye coordination and I had no problem beating the game. I mean, points for lore you are the great Sun Goddess Amaterasu and all but this is one of those times people probably would want the lore to not be so directly reflected in the gameplay. 

3: This might be a more minor point, but it bothers me because it's something I don't know why it's the case. The final boss of Okami comes out of nowhere with no build up. I don't know why Yami isn't at least foreshadowed at any prior point. I don't know if there was a purpose to the sudden surprise final boss, but for me it least it just seemed sudden and while it led to my favorite part of the game, I still kinda wish I knew what Yami's deal was.

My Favorite Part:

Favorite part is again not super original but it's the climax of the game. Amaterasu's powers have been destroyed by Yami and the heavens seem to be doomed to darkness. However Issun through his art spreads the word of the great Amaterasu, which on a meta level is what you are experiencing that moment, and everyone that you've helped across Nippon sends prayers to Amaterasu, refilling her power and making her stronger then ever with the Sun shining through the darkness.

2020 Reflection: God of War

 

God of War was written in March 2005 by Marianne Krawczyk, Alexander Stein, David Jaffe, and Keith Fay. God of War follows Kratos, the Greek Demigod who was manipulated by the God of War Ares into the unforgivable sin of murdering his own wife and daughter. In rage Kratos would vow vengeance on the God of War, leading to two completed story arcs of getting vengeance and a current ongoing story arc of Kratos in the Norse Mythological World trying to be a better father to his new son Atreus. One of the things I find frustrating talking about God of War is that people will talk about the new game with well deserved praise but then add it's good basically because it's not like the old games, when the original God of War games also had depth and a compelling story imo, and in fact when God of War 1 came out it was also given the same praise. It's also interesting to talk about because the series is not what you'd expect someone like me to like. I'm a pretty soft person who likes magical girls and series where elegant people talk cryptically about big things happening and it's all mysterious. God of War in contrast is a rather brutal action series with very violent deaths and a very blunt aggressive feel to it. With that said let me tell you why I love this series. 

3 Reasons I love it:

1: God of War is the best recreation of the original Greek Worldview I think I have seen in fiction. I don't know how common an opinion this is but one of the things I can't stand most in art is when the artist takes a culture or philosophy that is not their own, strip it of anything that offends their sensibilities and then present it with their own values instead, ESPECIALLY if this is used to try to create a sense of "well really all cultures/religions/philisophies want the same thing". God of War is absolutely not that, the original God of War especially (which is my favorite game in the God of War series) is a textbook perfect Aristolean Tragedy, right down to the fact that from the very beginning of the story we know that Kratos is doomed to failure with the introduction showing that he will mournfully attempt suicide by the end of the story. Kratos' actions seem amoral or downright evil to us, but the ancient greek mythological moral structure held that a demigod's might gave them the authority to do basically as they wished. Kratos like all tragic heroes is damned by his tragic flaw. For most of the Greek Demigods it is their pride, but for Kratos like the character who inspired him, Hercules, it is his wrath. Kratos is regularly blinded by anger which causes his problems. It's not a coincedence that Hercules killed his family in a rage caused by Hera and had to repent by laboring under the gods for 10 years and then Kratos killed his family in a raged caused by Ares and had to repent for a time said right near the start of God of War 1: "10 years! I have faithfully served the gods for 10 years!" Even that style of exposition near the beginning or the omnipresent chorus whose words underscore the importance of a scene are all ripped straight for a Greek Tragic Play. While in our Post-Stoicism world, manliness is associated with some level of composure and quietness which means most action heroes are quiet sometimes wise-cracking until the end where they have one big anger moment to show how cool they are. Kratos is not cut from this cloth and comes from an Ancient Greek Perspective on manliness, constantly emoting, full of emotion and not hiding it at all. I could go on, but this section could go on forever. God of War is immediatly intriguing to me as a fan of history and mythology for attempting more then anything else I've seen to accurately recreate the plot structure initially and the brutal worldview that existed in actual Greek Mythology.

2: On a related note, God of War captures something that I think is one of the fundamental parts of mythology; the relation of the human to the inhuman, something that is a really big interest of mine. Mythology was often about how humans interacted with the forces and concepts making up the universe, nature personfied as deities and God of War more then any other game captures the sense of things being beyond control. While there are many games that remove agency from the player or present them with big scary thing they can't fight to give them a sense of something they as a person or an individual human character can't beat, God of War is a series showcasing the interplay of forces that humanity as a whole is subject too. Kratos for all his power is a slave to his rage, chained to the objects of his hatred by his need for vengeance. It is only in releasing that rage will Kratos ever find peace, and why he becomes a changed man in God of War 4. In all the games, in my opinion especially in God of War 1, the world seems fatalistically stacked against Kratos, and Kratos' struggle is against not just the people he is angry with but with the broken world and his own fate within it. As the games progresses it moves more into Kratos being the unstoppable rage that consumes the world.

3: I love the myth cycle in the game about the cycle of patricide present in the gods and how it's incorporated. This was also a thing in the Greek Myths with Cronos overthrowing his father Uranus, Zeus overthrowing his father Cronos and Zeus torturing Prometheus to try and prevent himself from being overthrown. Mythologically this is a representation of how each generation surplants the last and is probably the closest thing the Greek Myths have to a central myth arc. The Fates control all, conflict is inevitable with the new destroying the old. Each generation will fall to time as their children take over. God of War takes this idea and incorporates it, doesn't shy from the idea but instead suggests a way that it can be averted. Kratos tries to first willingly sacrifice himself to give hope to humanity, ending the cycle of vengeance and patricide, but when that does not work tries to raise his son to be better. His goal in God of War 4 is to raise his son to better to end the cycle of patricide, such that instead of one generation killing the last, surplanting them, the generations can work together building something across time and in so maintians their spirit through the ages. It is a beautiful idea. 

3 Flaws:

1: Probably the one I think most people would notice thinking of my personality and this game's content. The world of God of War is a very hostile one. There's much killing and brutality, much destruction and hatred. It's not a very pleasent world to visit mentally, and truthfully that's not really my taste. Most of the series I like tend to be rather idealistic.

2: I don't think a lot of the God of War cast outside Kratos is that well developed. Granted a lot of spectacle fighters have this problem because you spend all your time with the main character. I love Kratos' character. I like Athena and Freya and I like Atreus well enough, though I don't know how much of that is actually Atreus' character and how much is his dynamic with Kratos, but a lot of the characters I just feel kind of eh about. A lot of the villains in the original God of War games were fairly similar feeling. Sure I can pick out the differences between Hades more sinister tone, Poseidon's more formal tone, and Zeus' more personal tone but they're all big tough arrogant guys who talk down to Kratos. It's sort of how I feel about a lot of Dragon Ball Z villains, which I know is also kind of an unpopular point. 

3: While God of War is a really good recreation of the ancient greek tragic structure and ethical worldview, it doesn't capture in either the Greek or Norse so far sagas, probably my favorite of a mythology, which is actually it's more spiritual or conceptual side. God of War has a physicality to everything. There's blood and guts and bones and such. My favorite parts of mythologies however are the metaphysical stuff. For instance my favorite Norse Myth is the myth where Thor and companions are tricked into competitions with concepts like Thor wrestling an old woman who turns out is old age herself. My favorite Greek Myths were usually ones that involved the gods being somewhat abstracted like when the God of Death Thanatos was captured and so nobody died. God of War will occasionally reference things like that, such as Persephone's absense from the Earth being the cause of Winter, but it doesn't feel like that during the main story because everything is made out very physical. 

My Favorite Part:

My favorite part in God of War is actually a very specific part. During God of War 4 Atreus falls ill and Kratos carries him back to Freya's house in his arms. During the trip Kratos has to wait on a rising platform. His son is dying in his arms, and Kratos nervously paces around the platform. I love moments of duality in characters and Kratos is no stranger to them, with many moments of being weak despite his strength or showing compassion despite his cruelty, and this is my favorite of those moments of his. Kratos is the one who can easily kill gods and can destroy anything in the world and here he's helpless to help his son, panicing and frantic and the scene is so moving to me. I don't want to get into it, but I have a personal connection to this scene and it always gets an emotional reaction out of me.