• Tag Archives Science Fiction

  • I⊃:INVΛ⊃≡⊃ & Inception

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    ID: Invaded is a series in the vein of Psycho-Pass if Psycho-Pass readings resembled Inception‘s dream-diving. It’s far more of a mystery-thriller than an action series however and unfortunately gets weird in a manner similar to King of Thorn toward the end (the Akane stand-in being made even smaller is another oddity).

    Speaking of Inception, that happens to be a movie I’ve referenced a time or two in the past in relation to newer works… yet, I never actually saw the whole thing. I had only seen the trailer and read the Wikipedia summary.

    Having now watched it, it doesn’t appear I was missing much. It’s not as mind-bendy as you would think (Doctor Strange gets weirder than it does) and in effect just ends up a variation on the standard heist movie formula popularized by movies like Ocean’s Eleven and The Italian Job. Which doesn’t make it not worth watching… just that the description evokes something more innovative than the reality.

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    This entry was posted in 2020 - Winter Anime Related Movie & TV Related and tagged

  • Deus Ex: M△NKIND DIVIDED & Mary Skelter: NIGHTMARES

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    The sequel to Human Revolution, Mankind Divided got an extremely hostile reception upon its release. Mainly due to its monetization aspects and what at the time was considered an overly heavy-handed depiction of police vs. activists… neither of which appear to be particularly egregious in retrospect.

    Sure the existence of the Breach minigame and QR codes is immersion breaking, but it’s not like you have to play it or use them to progress. The in-game depiction of police in the face of a legitimate threat meanwhile is, if anything, too restrained when compared to the ongoing real-life police response to imagined threats. Greater issues than either of those are the general clunkiness of the character interactions/movement, and the incredibly annoying energy system. Everything needs energy and there’s apparently no way to recharge it (beyond the basic minimum ‘1-bar’ level) aside from limited consumable items.

    Unlike Dishonored 2, while you can use stealth to get past any obstacle here, you’re equally able to go in guns blazing and play it like a conventional cover-based FPS. That should be a good thing, but instead it ends up clashing a bit with the highly non-linear layout of the various maps; going from peaceful exploring to bullets flying everywhere causes enough whiplash to sort of force you into a stealth mindset in order to keep things consistent. It’s a weird combination and I didn’t end up getting very far before uninstalling out of disinterest.

    And now for something competently different:

    When I first saw Mary Skelter: Nightmares pop-up on GOG, for some reason I thought it was going to resemble the dungeon portions of Tokyo Xanadu. As it turns out, that was completely offbase. Instead it’s a dungeon-mapping game like Elminage & Labyrinth of Lost Souls with an FFT-like job/skill system and a few galge elements. There’s a lot going on here in terms of character/equipment customization, to the point that (at the start of Chapter 2) I’m really not sure learning the upgrade systems’ intricacies will be worth the effort… particularly since the character interactions are so frequently cringe-inducing.

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    This entry was posted in PC Video Game Related and tagged

  • Tejina Senpai & ITAI no wa IYA nano de BOUGYORYOKU ni KYOKUFURI Shitai to OMOIMASU.

    Posted on by Offkorn 1 Comment

    The half-length episode series Tejina Senpai starts out as an amusing enough version of Ueno-san, only to run out of steam partway through and lean ever more heavily on lewdness as a crutch. The joke variety is also lacking and the additional two members that eventually get added to the club don’t really help much in that department (unless you’re a fan of inexplicable pseudo-incest).

    Also a comedy, Bofuri takes the virtual fantasy land action-adventure aspects of Sword Art Online and combines them with a somewhat random style of reaction humor focusing on Mary Sue parody. Before the guild gets formed most of the amusement comes from the sharp contrast between Maple’s appearance/personality and fondness for unintentional brutality… and this part of the show works fantastically. Eventually however it leans too far into the ‘overpowered main character’ shtick to the point event developments become tiresome. Remarkably high-quality action scenes throughout though.

    That’s the danger of parody: You run the risk of becoming the very thing you’re trying to laugh at.

    Continue reading → Post ID 8368

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    This entry was posted in 2019 - Summer 2020 - Winter Anime Related and tagged

  • PROJECT POWER & JOHN WICK₃: PARABELLUM

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Seeing the description for Project Power immediately brought to mind The Boys, and there are a few aesthetic similarities there. Overall though I’d have to say it’s a very different type of show which relies much too heavily on gimmicks/tropes; once the almost buddy-cop dynamic between the kid and other two leads is formed the level of believability just falls straight through the floor. It does however have some pretty cool visual effects.

    The third John Wick movie picks up immediately from where the last left off and… ultimately doesn’t really go anywhere over the course of its runtime. If you’ve seen the two previous movies, and I suggest doing so, then know that this continues amping up the ridiculousness level of the gun/fist/knife fights. Meaning that if the prequel was bordering on too much then this’ll likely be unwatchable (many of the fights end up with a strange dichotomy of being both laughably cartoonish and disconcertingly gory).

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    This entry was posted in Movie & TV Related and tagged

  • PSYCHO-PASS | Sinners of the System & Season 3

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    The three Sinners of the System movies are a mixed bag. Being theoretically set a few months after the first Psycho-Pass movie, in practice only the third actually functions like a sequel.

    The first is a side-story that completely overhauls Mika’s personality (for the better) and feels like it should be a prequel to the second season. It’s also not very good. The second is mostly a prequel flashback to the first season (framed by a few ‘modern day’ scenes set before the previous movie) focused on one of the S2 enforcers. This movie is quite good. And then there’s the 3rd movie, which…. Well, it’s sort of required watching if you plan to follow-up with Season 3, yet it comes across nothing like a Psycho-Pass work.

    That third season begins after a multi-year timeskip, and quite a number of things have changed: Mika underwent another personality overhaul, Japan has relaxed its isolationist stance, Sibyl is gearing up to reveal its presence to the masses, Akane is off the team, and there are three new enforcers and two new inspectors. The old team is still around, just in a notably different role. It’s surprisingly good (clearly meant to be a return to Season 1 sensibilities) but suffers both from a number of unexplained developments and having Arata be so ludicrously overpowered. It also ends on a cliffhanger…

    …resolved by a ‘movie’ follow-up. This bloated conclusion takes the concept of “homage” far too far. It apparently wanted to recapture the magic of the mid-series Season 1 climax, but instead stumbles time and again with both questionable action scenes and by just flat-out dragging things out for too long.

    In the end it’s tough to recommend watching any of these besides the 2nd SS movie: The first is a pointless sidestory, the third lacks any Psycho-Pass sensibility, S3 requires having seen that third SS movie, and First Inspector is just plain tedious.

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    This entry was posted in 2019 - Autumn 2019 - Winter 2020 - Winter Anime Related and tagged

  • THE WITCHER & THE: MANDALORIAN

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    The Netflix Witcher TV series is strange. I first tried watching it back in March but just lost all interest after the first episode. Tried again now and didn’t get much farther. The production quality is perfectly fine aside from Geralt’s eyes not having a slit pupil (and the swordfighting choreography is fantastic), but there’s just an intangible emptiness of some sort there that makes it difficult to watch.

    The Mandalorian on the other hand has both high production values (for the most part… some sets are curiously empty) and relatively engaging developments. It very much feels like the new movies, but not quite as soulless thanks to both actual time being spent on developing its characters and more imaginative scenarios. I still wouldn’t call it good though… merely watchable if you have some time to kill.

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    This entry was posted in Movie & TV Related and tagged

  • PROMARE & Violet Evergarden Gaiden -Eien to Jidou Shuki Ningyou-

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Though Promare has a number of similarities to Gurren Lagann and Kill la Kill, it comes off more like an imitation than a celebration. It’s all style and no substance. The supporting Galo/Lio shorts are better, but there’s little point in watching them as stand-alones… and they don’t work well as prequels either.

    The first Violet Evergarden movie meanwhile is a side-story (split into two parts) which appears to take place at some point after the series’ conclusion. Indistinguishable from the TV episodes the movie won’t change anyone’s minds regarding the franchise, but it can be watched as a stand-alone for those on the fence about whether or not they want to watch the series.

    Personally, I’ve never been fond of the whole ‘proper lady, gilded cage’ setup/concept and the particular iteration featured here doesn’t do anything to change that opinion. Fortunately that’s only the theme for the movie’s first half; the second goes back to focusing on the delivery service. Unfortunately, it does so by heavily featuring a new child character who wants to join the office. So long as you don’t mind kids this works as a fitting conclusion. For me however it means pretty much the whole movie ends up a wash.

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    This entry was posted in 2019 - Spring 2019 - Summer Anime Related and tagged

  • Sparrow Hill Road & Laughter at the Academy

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    The first of Seanan McGuire’s Ghost Roads novels is a collection of related stories/songs which were repurposed into four ‘books’. Book 1 is very good, the follow-up is not. Book 3 fluctuates a bit, while the conclusion is abrupt/lacking. It’s interesting… but ends up too uneven to really care about whatever the sequel might contain.

    Laughter at the Academy is somewhat similar in that it’s a collection of stories, but here they’re all quite independent and run the gamut from Wayward Children to Newsflesh. You can see shades of those series, October Daye, the above mentioned Ghost Roads, Indexing, The Deep, and even Middlegame in the large assortment of mostly chapter-sized tales arrayed here.

    Being anthology bait as many of them are don’t expect a consistency of quality, ’cause there isn’t any, but they succeed quite brilliantly in showcasing the range of topics/foci found in the author’s full-sized works. Interestingly, pretty much all of them are ‘dark’ in some manner and one of the stories (The Tolling of Pavlov’s Bells) may as well have been written specifically for the current viral crisis. My only complaint would be that the intermittent/inconsistent introductory trigger warnings lifted from the fanfic community are aggravating to read.

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    This entry was posted in Book Related and tagged

  • THE LEGEND OF HEROES: Trails of Cold Steel III

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    It would’ve been easier had this game followed the lead of its predecessor down into the gutter. Yet it miraculously does not, instead ending up better than the first game in the series by combining elements from both prequels into a far more focused/streamlined product reminiscent of Xenosaga.

    This puts potential players in a bind, leaving them the choice of either starting the series here (effectively playing from Juna’s PoV and missing out on all the reunion content) or having to force their way through the first two games in order to see things from Rean’s perspective. After thinking about it a bit, I think the best course of action (if you haven’t played any Cold Steel games before) is to play the first normally, and then play through the second on the lowest difficulty while avoiding all side-content (make sure to pick up Mint, Alan, Hugo, Becky, Munk, and the twins though). You’ll still be in the dark on the Crossbell references of course… but since those games don’t have official translations there’s not much to be done on that front.

    Speaking of translations: That’s this game’s one weak point (aside from the cliffhanger ending). Similar to the second installment, the character interactions here more often resemble a rewrite than a translation. It’s thankfully not character assassination-level (looking at you Neptune), but it’s pretty noticeable if you’re playing with the original voice actors and I had hoped that using a different localization team would’ve resulted in a more faithful adaptation. Oh well.

    The DLC situation is the same as previous games, which is to say there’s little reason to buy it aside from supporting the developers, and the gameplay progression is quite smooth on normal difficulty. There’s no need for grinding, or going particularly out of the way to find all the sidequests if you simply want to beat the game; just kill the various monster spawns at least once and you’ll be fine.

    Now comes the long wait for the fourth and final Cold Steel game, which was announced for release sometime next year… but may end up delayed due to the whole global pandemic issue.

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    This entry was posted in DLC PC Video Game Related and tagged

  • ALTERED CARBON

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    The first season of this series starts off great, only to noticeably deteriorate about halfway through when it does that thing ‘prestige’ television seems so fond of: Pull out a plot twist that completely changes the show’s focus/themes. I’d still say it’s worth watching, lot of similarities to Bladerunner, The Expanse, and even a bit of Fifth Element (probably some Westworld there too… but I haven’t seen that), it’s just that it ends up merely watchable instead of a must see.

    Fitting in between the first and second seasons is an Anime movie. It’s a side story (meaning it can be watched as a stand alone or completely ignored) done in what appears to be a cell-shaded 3DCGI style, and I would not suggest watching it as an extension of the series since it reminds me of Souten no Ken Regenesis more than any sci-fi work (except perhaps GitS). What is it with shows featuring inexplicable ninja armies? Am I just unlucky?

    Then there’s the second season, which is quite a bit different from the first… and not only because the actor playing the MC has changed (one ‘benefit’ of having a setting centered on body swapping is the ability to shuffle performers at will). While that’s more of a conspiracy drama this instead focuses on an amnesia-themed and somewhat aimless personal quest, trading the police/detective elements for military/political ones. It comes across as pretty forced and lacks any of the pop present in the first season (though the finale’s pretty good).

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    This entry was posted in 2020 - Winter Anime Related Movie & TV Related and tagged