encounters of the 24th kind

Dec. 31, 2024 4:25 PM

alternative title: THE 24TH D (NOW WITH AN EXTRA D)

It might surprise many to know that I did not actually engage with a lot of art in 2024.

"But you produced Youtube videos?" Indeed. I did.

However, much of that time spent working on Youtube videos was the bulk of my free time - I regret that I have done very little else outside of the job search. I listened to an overwhelming amount of music this year, but to recall much of it in a written, or even spoken format, is the kind of skill I prefer to leave to actual critics, for I am very inadequate at articulating my thoughts on music composition besides the basic/core elements.

Nonetheless, I did engage with a few works of the non-musical variety this year, and I have thoughts on them as well. Let's talk about what I encountered for a bit. (not ordered for consistency's sake)

PICTURES THAT MOVE

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Gundam SEED [rewatch]

Against my better judgement, I find myself often regularly revisiting Gundam SEED. It's a guilty pleasure of mine, in part due to the fact most of my favourite Super Robot Wars games just happen to feature this branch of the franchise in some manner, but for what it's worth, there's... just a little bit of enjoyment to be had in the show.

The core aspects don't really hit for me the same way they would in the fabled UC Gundam shows of yore it regularly draws inspiration from (mainly because it dials pretty much every fathomable element of the war criticism factor up to eleven, and then hits you with the Oppenheimer epiphany) but the show itself isn't THAT bad a fair amount of the time. I think too many people insist on this strict criterium that a work HAS to be "good" or "bad" without any proper considerations for the entire body as a whole, which really hampers how I perceive the average person to understand art criticism as a template for discussion. Sure, I don't believe Gundam SEED is peak fiction or anything close to the sort, but I can at least turn my brain off and have some mild amusement when the goofy blonde geneticist war profiteer who shares a voice with Guy Shishioh and Link Zelda tells me test tubes are bad. I need him squealing as I grip his pinky fingers really tightly.

My only real motivation for rewatching Gundam SEED this year, compared to other years, was the news that the long-awaited Gundam SEED movie (which I also watched) was finally ready for human perception in theatres and public trackers near me. I can stomach watching SEED much more than I can SEED Destiny, a show even I fail to find much merit in beyond very charitable generalisations, and it seemed like a number of concepts from the original show were going to be re-explored in said film, so it was worth me refreshing my memory in the long run.

All in all, I did this because I want to see the Duel Gundam. He is my son. I love him so much.

As for why I haven't rewatched Gundam SEED Destiny as well - I also wish I could ask for my accidental purchases from the same store to just be a bulk order instead and save money on delivery, but you can't have everything in the world.

Gundam SEED Freedom

where do I even start with this film, oh man

This film is surreal. There's a number of ideas that really just Do Not Work At All, predominantly the amount of misogyny at play that made watching Destiny an immense chore, but wow oh wow they straight up made the villains wojaks huh

One aspect I will truthfully give SEED Freedom credit for, wild as it may sound, is that a significant portion of the film is animated quite well. Of course a company as massive as Bandai Namco would be unlikely to scrounge on the visuals for a Gundam film, especially one for a series as influential relative to the zeitgeist of "le nouveau millénaire" as SEED, but I was routinely blown away by how smooth the 3D movements tended to be on average. I had watched Girls Band Cry earlier in the year (more on that in a bit) and was already fairly used to 3D articulation in anime productions looking somewhat decent by this point, but to see that applied to a series I was intimately familiar with, and admittedly a tiny bit nostalgic for, was a lovely treat.

They made my son look so good. I love you, Duel Gundam. Now please never desire to learn how to play the piano, you'll live ever so much longer.

The rest of the film itself was effectively just eye candy, for the most part. I struggled to pay attention to the plot once it started retreading the "Ultimate Coordinator" thread for drama yet again, and to say I rolled my eyes upon seeing Yet Another GENESIS Re-Skin In The Flesh™ made it very difficult for me NOT to start laughing my arse off when the film tried attempting to be serious. The Archangel finally going down made me sad, and the sub-plot of Shinn finally starting to wise up juuuuuuust a little bit by listening to authority outside of matters where he'd probably be hot glue on a workshop bench made me very slightly warm up to him beyond the expansion he got in SRW Z, but whew this one did not spark much joy in me from a cinematic perspective. I can't even recommend this film, even as one of the few people that's objectively willing to give SEED a chance. You have to possess incredible psychosis for this one, and that's saying a lot coming from me.

also what's up with Agnes. why does she say like half the things she does in this film. you can't be talkin like that deutsch gurl wtf

Macross Plus (Movie Edition) [rewatch]

There's very little I can add to any thoughtful insight on this film that hasn't already been said by someone else either more passionate or intelligent than I, short of being an Ebert protégé themselves. A lot of the micro thoughts I have on the film from a thematic perspective have generally been expressed by others in detail, but that wasn't enough for me to say that I deeply enjoy this work a lot.

It may surprise many of you that I have little familiarity with the Macross franchise, outside of the smattering of knowledge I amassed through osmosis throughout years of SRW playthroughs. I have only a very basic understanding of the franchise, but I know just enough to know that music is equally important to the soul as any other art or expression.

Nonetheless, Macross Plus is equal parts captivating from a writing perspective and mesmerising from a cinematic view. So many shots are framed and coloured with a degree of love that I imagine stems from a place of love for the screen. My perspective on aspects like mise-en-scène in animation hardly bears repeating if you know how I talked about Revue Starlight, but there's a unique blend to how Macross unites the visual, audio, and physical together into a well-oiled machine that makes me blush at the seams. I can't turn away from the gripping interpersonal drama that underlines most of the film, no matter how uncomfortable it may be for some, and yet the stunning animation constantly reminds me of how the world is very much like how we see it through Macross Plus now.

While it may often be very cliché nowadays to say that "Macross Plus predicted the future" or whatever, there's a lot to think about with how the film was a trailblazer in many respects. I find myself revisiting it with the same kind of reverence most would reserve for an auteur like Hitchcock, but real recognises real. J'adore kinographie.

Girls Band Cry

Many people were hyping this show up.

I watched Bocchi The Rock last year because of this too.

Alright. You sold me. Another three trillion to age of girls band.

Girls Band Cry was neat. Considering how much I went through this year, and in general, that often requires I sit down, write down intensive notes on my thoughts to paper, and analyse every work I engage with until my brain goes comatose, it was nice to watch a show and just chill the fuck out for once. The show's a fun romp for the most part, and I enjoyed the melodrama enough to consider investing myself in how far these girls will lose the plot in the pursuit of jams. Good stuff.

My age of girls band stuff has long sailed, I posit. Bandori was cool when I was keeping up with it, but I have to confess that I don't really fuck with the music in these kinds of works that much for me to lock in like my peers. It's a difference of music taste - nothing against the composers of these tracks and how they frame 'em. Just ain't for me.

On another note, the show is incredibly fluid. I already mentioned how impressed I've been with 3D animation in anime over the last year or so, but seeing characters move with a kind of cleanliness to them that I haven't really encountered before was quite amusing. The show looks beautiful when it needs the set dressing to look the part, plus every character has their own individual charm that makes their actions speak just as loud as their words. Nothing will eclipse the gawk of awe I expressed seeing Nina waving around like a wacky inflatable tube you see outside a used car garage. it's so peam ...

I know many friends who enjoyed this, and I did too. If you liked bocchers, or banger dreams, or other similar girls band shows, you'll probably like this one too. I just hope Ave Mujica won't give you a Fibonacci psychosis.

murghrgl VIDEO GAME

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Blue Archive

Just over a year ago, I would probably have been more forgiving of Blue Archive for the cardinal sin of being a gacha game disguised as a visual novel. There's too much slop and guff in the market right now that people claim is written very well, and turns out to be someone who really should just be using their money to write a light novel instead. Blue Archive is legitimately very well-written, and to a large degree, still very much is.

Unfortunately, I don't think I can put in the time to wait several months for story beats to be dripfed down the pipeline for a game that somehow runs worse on most devices than 2023 Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel. And that's saying a lot.

Trip-Trap-Train was probably the last story beat of BA that I sat all the way through. Maybe it speaks volumes about how legitimately stupid I may actually be to find this more enjoyable than more recent story chapters, but I feel like this point in the game's lifespan was still quite enjoyable for me. The bizarre dynamic between Kasumi and Ichika had me going at several points throughout the story, and I appreciated that someone on the editorial staff, no matter how little pull they had in reality, was able to show off a little bit of Iori's cool side. She's still a massive jobber, though.

Even with an event as strong as this one, there's too many flaws with the game to keep me invested longer than I have now. The game STILL runs like dookie on most platforms, to the point where it takes longer to get to the main menu than it does for me to load up into a Diamond 5 game with Labrynth and set 5 pass. The endgame of "hyper-optimise for raids that you don't even have much control over" is just not appealing gameplay when the bosses in question are designed to make you hyper-optimise. The less I speak of what happened to the global audience for this game over this past year, the better.

It's a shame that I've bounced off this game as hard as I did in recent months, especially since multiple friends were the reason I got into it to begin with. Perhaps it's yet another sign that I am not one for the mobile game mines, after all. I pray that someone does a Girls Frontline or Symphogear XDU and ports all the story elements over to a browser reader - hard to recommend Blue Archive's story in its current state when the framework around it is frustrating to navigate, even for kusoge connoisseurs.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel

wow I grinded the fuck out of this game this year huh

I'll be brief on this one. 2024 YGO sucks. It's not good. It kind of blows. Going from Yubel dominance, to a brief period of Gimmick Puppet FTK, and then Tenpai Dragon being the TCG equivalent of Gandhi Ryu turning games into actual gacha dailies was... rough. Combine that with a whole year of Snake-Eye taking up the stage, and I can't believe I miss Tearlaments more than I already do.

Either way, getting to Master throughout September-November was a fun learning experience. I thought that I was actually bad at the game, but realising that I just gotta lock the fuck in and pay attention was reassuring.

[still got it]

Heaven Burns Red

Heaven Burns Red is a game I have seen being recommended before. Funny enough, I first saw praise for the game long before word of a global release was on the horizon, courtesy of the same initial friend who got me into Blue Archive! (and also helped me with gathering material for another work I've talked about in writing. It's amusing how the paths keep branching back.)

I fell into the trap of playing a gacha game disguised as a visual novel again. But unlike the other few times this has happened, this one actually has gameplay? That doesn't completely suck? And works to my sensibilities as an ojisan of sorts? Splendid.

Being mostly unfamiliar with Jun Maeda as a writer, yet having experienced enough out there in the world to have been unconsciously exposed to his particular style throughout the years, has made the character writing of this game a breath of fresh air for me. Seeing the characters react to quips in ways that I would have probably done, or written in such a manner, is an honest relief from the method of interactions where dialogue alternates between one-liners and very off-kilter snark. Don't get me wrong, I love a bit of speech with bite, but man, does it get exhausting when far too many writers do this. I would know - I do it too often myself!

That aside, Heaven Burns Red is a gacha game that I do feel comfortable enough with... well, referring to it as a game. It plays enough like many late-era PS3/early-mid PS4 RPG titles that I don't find much umbrage in the dungeon aspects (to a certain degree) while still maintaining a lot of charm that those games also have that sweetens the deal much more. Many have compared it to something like Blue Reflection? The comparison's definitely apt.

Though I mention that I don't mind the dungeons themselves, how they're interspersed throughout story beats is certainly a point of contention that does feel a bit drawn-out sometimes. Chapter 3 had me wondering whether I was re-enacting a segment of Yuru Camp with how much the 31-A crew was hiking up and down mountains, and the fact that chapter 4.1 purposefully has you fighting a myriad of enemies with damage resistance to the most common type of attack type (slash) reminds me that we lived in some truly fucked up times back in the day. This isn't enough to sour my experience with the game to an unrecoverable degree, hardly so. It does speak volumes to how much worse it is when you think about the gameplay of other gacha games, though.

The interactions in this game are something I would personally die for. It's hard for me to find fault in how some of the more surreal character groupings are bunched together, as there's a shocking degree of plausible commonality between most members of the cast that it doesn't feel too out of place in many cases. I'm a genuine sucker for seeing a cast gel together in a natural (or quirky) kind of way, but HBR has reminded me that there is just a bit of truth to the idea that gacha games can have good writing AND be good games. Good shit.

I love Fubuki.

ESSAYS WITH MOTION

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An experimental anime about weird girls [@maria_ilmutus]

I am a fan of experimental media. I am also a fan of people talking about experimental media. This video was a marvelous watch.

During my time working on the two videos I eventually released throughout this year, I went on a bit of a binge, partially as a detox from my own work, and partly serving as inspiration for my work. Youtube recommends me a ton of video essays from time to time because I both run on the edges of those circles and watch a ton of them, and this one was a nice viewing experience throughout.

There's a ton of really obscure works from the late 90s that just so happen to inspire, or serve as the groundwork for, a ton of eventually influential artists of different walks of life that I'm glad people are slowly uncovering and discussing in a variety of ways. It's remarkable to think that a good portion of the modern pop-culture impetus stems from ideas that people were drafting in that brief pre-Y2K period, since it feels incredibly recent relative to what we know of as subculture and modern art history. The video segment on Aoi Nanase and her art direction was a fascinating insight, since there's a lot you can gleam from someone's authorial choices (and how one discusses it) based on how they choose to express themselves. Real shame about the AI spiral, though...

Highly recommend watching this video. I'm a sucker for perspectives on isolated pockets of history framed through art analysis, and this ticked the right boxes for me. hell yeah/50

THE SILVER CASE: Killing the Past with Kusabi Tetsugoro [redux] [@mackerelphones]

A remarkable insight into a character from The Silver Case that many are likely to misinterpret in some form, and a fascinating overview of the circumstances, both real and fictional, that sculpted him into such.

Hardly anything to add on this one if you know anything about Suda51 and contemporary writers in the medium. There's a societal permanence to the writing of lesser-known 90s game novels that extends far beyond being a product of their time, and though the backdrop of The Silver Case in particular draws upon a very specific set of events in Japanese society to envision this fictional microcosm, I think you can understand why these works continue to find an audience over 20+ years later in their relevancy.

You should probably play The Silver Case, or at least know enough of Goichi Suda's work before watching this one. If you know enough to follow along, it's a video that I think you can appreciate in more ways than one.

Presenting: Eroge Girlpop [@IdolismJ]

It would be very, very easy for me to pick the Final Fantasy 6 video and say it is the best video that Mister J (said with the most esteemed of honours) has released to the public. It is a factually correct statement. That video "fucks heavy," as the youth would say. It is a love letter to what made this period of role-playing games the cultural touchstones that drive the lands today.

However, this video on visual novel openings was released at the perfect time for me specifically and I'll be damned if I don't finish the year without being its strongest soldier.

The title is as surreal as it is succinct. What the hell even IS "eroge girlpop" anyway? Whether the title makes you question things about naming conventions or not, the video is a legitimately remarkable look at an aspect of visual novels that I do feel gets overlooked far too often for it to be coincidence, that aspect being the musical side of things. Thinking about how the visual novel landscape influenced several different fields of the Japanese internet art culture movement in ways so separate, but mutually intertwined with each other, feels like the first step to some kind of anime enlightenment. Many could stand to learn a thing or two about the impact of music in this field - you'll be surprised how deep the history goes.

I took a lot of inspiration for how I framed the J-core video from this exact work. It was the most ideal framing imaginable, and I legitimately hope, in my heart, that more people take time to talk about music in niche fields of gaming subculture through a lens of this kind. eroge girlpop... it's so peak...

there's also some bangers in here tho, wtf. go peep the playlist if you haven't already

Let's Talk About Arcaea's Progression Design [@losermanwins4338]

If there was a video that explained pretty much everything I like about Arcaea... and what I don't like about Arcaea, this would be the video. It's quite difficult to talk about the problems that this genre has as a whole in terms of quality of life features, which isn't helped by how overwhelmingly young the modern audience tends to skew nowadays due to the advent of mobile rhythm games and short-form video culture.

Losermanwins is one of the few who's holding down the fort of talking about rhythm games in the video format, so I can't recommend his videos enough for the oldheads like me. His thoughts on Arcaea, especially with the unlock design's unfortunate balance between monetisation and reasonable plot pacing, highlight an uncomfortable truth that I am not particularly fond of mobile games needing to Pad Shit Out to keep the lights on. It's the same kind of grievance I have with Blue Archive (and most gacha games) but to the degree where I look at the game and think to myself "man I wish you weren't so obtuse at times so I could shill you to more people."

Looking at how rhythm games have evolved over the past 15 or so years to adapt to the post-Guitar Hero crash and Covid crisis, it's a miracle that this genre has managed to survive in the state it does today. I can't fault the kids of yonderdecade adapting the sensibilities they learned from listening to DM Ashura in high school to a game they have executive say over, because it admittedly amounts to a game that does indeed fuck.

Don't let this excuse me from saying that this video is good, though. It's good.

7SEEDS and Learning to Love Being Alive Again [@ruumantic]

Saw this one recommended thru the Bluesky timeline by a couple mutuals of mine, so I checked this one out. I like engaging with analyses on post-apocalyptic works, because it often speaks to a unique dichotomy of human nature with intellectual thought - how do you envision a reality that could very well likely happen, but hasn't yet done so in our lifetimes, no matter how possible that very well could be?

The extended discussion on how 7SEEDS is presented, both in terms of panelling and the multifaceted narrative style, was a nice meal for thought on how we as an audience rationalise the possibility of life after the end. Perhaps how the human mind views survival isn't too far off from how Yumi Tamura would present it in this work, but the constant referral to her thin, often spindly lineart in the presentation section answers that question rather neatly - life is like a thread, and how it's knitted can very well influence how it's perceived from eye to mind.

Seeing other small perspectives on works like these remind me that life is worth continuing to live for. We have to continue, if only for those that didn't, or couldn't. It's a fitting choice for many smaller artists to be enamoured by works like 7SEEDS. I will continue to watch these creators' works with great interest.

There are likely other video essays I watched this year, but cannot recount for one reason or another. I will endeavour to recall these to memory for the year to come.

alright wrap it up or somethin already man

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I genuinely can't remember a lot of the stuff I witnessed over the year. I can attribute much of that to having been very busy with a number of life events, and my own body of work, across that period, but some of this can also be blamed on my neglect to note what it was I engaged with on an attentive level. I think I expanded upon this in the 2024 retrospective I wrote as a creator rather than an audience member, but my inability to remember any of the details within even that leaves me with aftertastes I would prefer not to dwell on.

2024 was a rough year for many of us, it seems. Whether it appears to be the case or not, always remember that there is still a breadth of art, of many forms, out there that you have yet to bear witness too. I have formed connections with many creatives as this year ends - so be it that I watch upon their activity and hope to see them grow, just as others likewise choose for me in turn.

Don't be callin' it content, yo. That shit is art. Keep makin' it happen.