Category: A Thousand Words

Review: Ankoku Shinwa

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Ankoku Shinwa (Dark Myth)

From the pen of horror mangaka Morohoshi Daijiro came Ankoku Shinwa, a seven chapter manga from 1976 that was turned into a two episode OVA in 1990. In it, teenager Takeshi finds he is simply a force in a cosmic war of gods and feuding ancient families. Its art is good, especially the monsters. Nothing else is.

The fact that a seven chapter manga was shrunk to two episodes without missing much tells a lot. What you get is the following:

  • Good drawings/animations of monsters and mythical beings (again, the art has little complaint)
  • CONSTANT exposition on the jumble of Asian religions that make up the backstory/reason for the manga
  • Set pieces that only exist to provide the base for more exposition.
  • Human villains who do nothing except fall victim to the Indiana Jones Villain Fate where they try to use something supernatural with predictably poor results.
  • All of the above happens very, very slowly.

On one hand, the OVA is inevitably faster than the text manga. On the other, it has the production values of what you’d expect a low budget OVA to have. So… not really ideal either way. It’s a shame, the concept could have been done better.

A Thousand Words: The Punisher 1989

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The Punisher (1989)

Marvel in the 1980s did not have the resources DC had when it came to movie adaptations. So while Superman and Batman got massive, well produced, praised movies with all star casts, Marvel got stuff like… the 1989 Punisher. Where the biggest star was Dolph Lundgren, and getting Louis Gossett as another character probably took up most of the rest of the budget.

Thing is, this isn’t really that bad. Not because of the actual movie itself, which is a sleazy low budget action thriller. But rather because the Punisher is uniquely suited to sleazy low budget action thrillers in ways most other superheroes aren’t. So unlike say, the awful 1990 Captain America, this at least has a reach that doesn’t exceed its grasp. And there are worse things than sleazy low budget action thrillers.

A Thousand Words: Death Battle

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Everyone since the invention of fiction has wondered “who would win in a fight between ________ and __________ “? For over 15 years and 3 management changes, a web animation series called Death Battle has attempted to ‘answer’ just that. The characters are introduced, quantified, and then an animation plays depicting the fight. The outcome is then explained.

While vs. debaters online can take themselves way too seriously, Death Battle does not. Besides the good and growing quality of the animations, the best part is that the showrunners view it as entertainment and not a “how many Saiyans can dance on the head of a pin” philosophical argument.

If I had to list one current weakness of Death Battle, it’s becoming a victim of its own success. Because it’s gone through most of the obvious pop culture clashes, they either have to do fanservice-y repeats or increasingly obscure characters. The quantification has also gone from “Blastoise’s Hydro Pump is the equivalent of an industrial water cutter in terms of PSI” to a physics lecture. That said, even 2-3 weeks I look forward to seeing each episode.

A Thousand Words: Nitro Ball

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Nitro Ball

Nitro Ball is a 1992 Data East arcade game based on Midway’s legendary Smash TV, keeping the same basic gameplay and “game show of death” style. While a lot of their games are “we have ____ at home” in terms of quality (to the point where one brought about lawsuits ), this builds on the formula instead of copying it. The “Ball” in the title refers to pinball stages where the contestant can indulge his inner Sonic the Hedgehog, rolling around for bonus points.

The game looks great for the time and starts off in the self proclaimed “Strange Football Field”, full of garish NFL Americana and an amazing music track. Sadly the rest of the game’s style doesn’t match that great start, but it is still a fun and overlooked gem.

A Thousand Words: Pokemon Crystal

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With Pokemon Day almost upon us, it’s time to look at the second third installment of Pokemon. Starting with Yellow, Pokemon began releasing a third version of each generation’s game up until Gen 4, at which point it turned into intra-gen sequels and then DLC. But I digress.

Anyway, Crystal has the first female playable protagonist and many other additions, from beautiful animated sprites (not seen again until Gen 5), and the first Battle Tower (a neutralized level location with high risks and reward). It still has the same strengths (large world, very dynamic feel) and weaknesses (terrible level scaling) as the rest of Gen II.

By this time the GBC was old hat and Gen 3 on more powerful hardware awaited. But that’s another story…

A Thousand Words: Friday The 13th Part 5

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Friday The 13th Part 5

Friday The 13th Part 5 is a very strange horror movie mixed amidst the conventional genre-making slashers that proceeded and followed it. See, Jason Voorhees had died in the previous film, subtitled “The Final Chapter.” So this was subbed “A New Beginning” and it tried to keep him dead.

The movie takes place at a group home for troubled youth, one of whom, a loser named Joey Burns is murdered by an especially troubled youth. This makes Joey’s father Roy, a paramedic, snap and become a Jason copycat, cementing his ‘fame’ as the Dimitri Medvedev of horror movies.

As far as the actual film itself goes, it’s a delightful mess. The director only knew “DO THE THING” so there’s one scene of murder or sleaze (or both of course) at a very fast pace. It’s not very technically good, but you probably weren’t expecting Citizen Kane from the 5th installment of a horror franchise anyway.

A Thousand Words: Death By Lightning

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Death By Lightning

The Netflix historical drama Death by Lightning is a four-part look at the presidency of James Garfield. An obscure piece of national history that’s even referenced in the intro when workers nearly a hundred years later find Charles Guiteau’s brain and don’t know who it was, this depiction is an excellent melodramatic epic.

First off, there are numerous inaccuracies and dramatic exaggerations here. One must adhere to the maxim of Death of Stalin director Armando Iannuci: “It’s not a documentary”. That said, the characters judged in their own right are largely excellent. Largely. Garfield himself is a shallow, too-good plaster saint and his wife Lucretia is a little anachronistic “serious woman played by serious actress”, although in her case it’s made up for by one spectacular scene in the finale. Everyone else from brutish Chester A. Arthur to Clay Davis before Clay Davis Roscoe Conkling to, especially, Guiteau himself is wonderful. (Guiteau’s actor played a supervillain in a past role and it showed).

The series is very smooth flowing, and although most of the time it’s a madcap retelling of events, there’s some possibly unintended depth. Arthur’s recognition of himself as an underqualified person who fell upwards into power is a yin-yang contrast from Guiteau’s insane belief of himself as a transcendental genius. It doesn’t hurt that antagonists Conkling and Guiteau both fall into one of my favorite character archetypes: Schemers who are a lot less intelligent than they think they are.

So yes, don’t expect much realism, but this is an amazing show.

A Thousand Words: Backyard Wrestling

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Of no relation to the Backyard Sports baseball/soccer/etc… games, Backyard Wrestling: Don’t Try This At Home, and its sequel There Goes The Neighborhood is the distilled nadir of human culture in the most vile time of mankind’s cultural output: The early-mid 2000s. (Don’t argue this with me, I grew up then).

It’s a video game that awkwardly tries to shift traditional wrestling games, Tekken-style 3D fighters, and Smash Bros style “environmental fighters”. All while doing none of it very well and reeking of nu-metal. This is a time capsule. A very very bad time capsule.

A Thousand Words: Red Ape Family

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Red Ape Family

NFTs, or “Non-Fungible Tokens”, were one of the most shameless fads of all time. Unlike previous market bubbles like tulip bulbs or Death of Superman comic books, these offered no practical value. In fact, what they even are is hard to explain. The closest normal person equivalent is a receipt.

So normal cryptocurrencies are “fungible” in the sense that as long as they’re in circulation, one dollar bill is functionally the same as another. Non-fungible means distinct, like say, an explicit receipt. Why would you spend a million dollars on a receipt for a transaction of a picture of a badly drawn monkey? The answer is a combination of get-rich suckers and wash trading (despite the name, not directly money laundering).

But I digress. So Red Ape Family, about a family of bored red apes who steal a drive full of the most valuable NFTs and go to Mars, is…. to call it a toy commercial would be an insult to toy commercials. More like a get rich quick infomercial made by someone with no talent whose sense of humor was a single episode of later Family Guy.

The existence of this is more interesting than any of the “gags” itself.

A Thousand Words: NARC

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NARC

The 1988 Williams arcade game NARC is probably the most 1980s piece of interactive media developed. Playing as super-cops in biker helmets Max Force and Hit Man, you blast your way through a drug empire of hobos, dealers, weed-growing Rambos, prostitute-kidnapping clowns, henchmen who couldn’t decide if they wanted to dress like mobsters or construction workers, and attack dogs, ruled by a giant biomechanical head-worm. None of that is exaggerated or false.

There is nothing subtle or easy about this game. It’s meant to have you win solely by pushing in quarters. (Who’s the addiction inducing dealer now?) But it is fun and is well, incredibly 1980s.