Charmin Ultra Soft Smooth Tear Product of the Year 2024 Not Review

As jaded as we've become by notions like "innovation" and "progress" in this late stage of our capitalism, one should take a step back once in a while and appreciate the good things.

Case in point:

Note the wave. Let me tell you, it is no lie, this thing tears so clean. Never again will I have lopsided, misshapen, uneven toilet paper. It's so satisfying, it reaches into the lizard brain like bubble wrap to tear this paper. And it is so ultra soft and smooth. It can be used a single leaf at a time, clean, smooth, effective.

You think I'm joking, I assure you I am not. This toilet paper will change your bathroom experience. It's like watching a movie in HD or listening to music in HiFi for the first time. If you are at all discerning, there will be no going back.

I would encourage you all to experience this toilet paper.

Dandy Dust Not-Review

I am not a fan of the "so bad it's good" mentality. I hate how people go to these campy movies with preconceived ideas about the experience they're going to have; who, when faced with something totally outside their frame of reference for consensus reality, choose to scoff and laugh and close their minds, not even considering to actually sit with their thoughts and truly experience what is being presented to them on its own terms.

If you're that person, skip this movie.

Watched this movie at my local indie theater last year, and then when they brought it back in January 2024 for their best of 2023 set I had to rewatch it even though I never rewatch things. I figured I might never get another chance.

This movie is pure awesomeness. It's weird, it's queer, it's campy, it's scifi. I am not expert enough in music to articulate fully, but it's got sounds like from the videogame series Wipeout, Lo-Fi Trip Hop at least a decade before that was much of a thing, electronica, disco, metal, Persona 5-style nu jazz, and all of it is amazing. It's a shame this movie doesn't have an available OST or track list.

It's super low budget but it does some really cool things visually, like semi-transparent overlays of the actors over exotic hand-crafted sets, paper cutouts of tanks over cars, puppets in isometric view engaging in war.

The dialogue and character expressions are all so strange. The voices sometimes seem dubbed over. It takes you totally outside your frame of reference for what people are, how they behave; it makes it feel more scifi, but also more queer (in multiple senses of the word). These are humans who operate in totally alien ways.

There is a story, but it's very surreal, I didn't necessarily understand it the first time but on second viewing it was easier to follow, but it's not really necessary to understand what's going on. It's not a movie that needs to be fully understood, just appreciated.

It's sexy, but in a way that is totally orthogonal to heteronormative sexuality. It deals with some mature themes, there's some very graphic scenes, but it never feels exploitative and it always handles it matter of factly.

There's a character named Spidercuntboy.

If you can get your hands on it, or better, if you can find it in an indie theater, I would strongly recommend checking it out if you're at all into weird stuff.

I would love to get a full-length track of Candle Man's theme, it is so good.

BONUS: Playdate Not-Review

I pre-ordered a Playdate a while back and it finally arrived a few days ago. It's an awesome little device, toyetic and whimsical in the way that videogame consoles used to be, yet still feeling premium. It's yellow, it has a beautiful lo-fi monochrome 1-bit un-backlit screen, clicky little A and B buttons and a responsive D-Pad, and a Crank. It uses wifi to download games and has an online store, a web account integration, and the ability to Sideload games which you can buy off itch.io or wherever else, or make your own, but it never lets those features get in the way of the simplicity of the device.

It's also very developer friendly and seems like an accessible way to learn some game development and programming, and I hope to tinker around with it eventually.

It's not going to replace my Steam Deck or PS5 or Switch, and it's nowhere near as expensive as any of those but for what it is it isn't cheap either, but I'm glad that I have it. It's kind of nostalgic, but it also has a kind of alternate universe, speculative, retro-futurist, anachronistic appeal to it, like the clam-shell phone from It Follows. What would a world look like where we had network technology but still only lo-fi displays? What would a world look like where the original Gameboy had a crank?

The first "season" of games unlock week over week. So far I only have the first two starting games, and two free games from the Catalog (their game store), and I'll probably buy one or two more games and Sideload sooner or later.

Whitewater Wipeout is an awesome game. It's tricky to get the hang of at first, it relies mostly on the Crank, and it doesn't do a whole lot to teach you how to play, so you have to be patient, but even though I still suck at it, it's super addicting and fun and a perfect demonstration of exactly what this console is about, Crank and all. I can see why they made it among the first games you receive.

Casual Birder is a cute, fun, funny, open-world bird photography adventure game. It's a little meatier than Whitewater Wipeout, but nothing too Epic. It's the kind of game I might not necessarily have played if it were on Steam or PSN, and I don't know if I'll actually finish it, but I'm enjoying my time with it.

The two free Catalog games I have not been as impressed with, but I still appreciate having a couple more options in my first week until more games unlock, without having to make additional purchases.

Recommendation Dog is basically a matching game. You work at a temp agency and have to match agents given descriptions by the employers. There's nothing wrong with it, I gave it a playthrough, but I dunno it didn't do much for me.

Reel Steal was an interesting and surprising premise, I wanted to like this game, but I just wasn't feeling it. You're modern-day Robin Hoods infiltrating buildings owned by billionaires and robbing them, Cranking your way up and down the facility. It's a cool idea, but ya in practice I just found it tedious.

Weird & Wonderful Wavelengths (Variety Show s1e3)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4jtIDaeaWI

It has been a while

Welcome back to this weird show

Beware the monsters

Somewhere between the blink of an eye and a dissociative episode, the Weird & Wonderful Wavelength oscillates backwards in time. Transposed along the imaginary plane, playing imaginary, we find ourselves in a peculiar black and green room. The striking contrast, jarring sometimes, the pain compels like poking a blister. A mild irritant, a bulging wallet in the back pocket as the waiter lights the absinthe and the green fire and black-burnt sugar drips into the glass. A pyrite spiral, a heckler aggressively ignored, a mild imperfection steals a degree of freedom from an otherwise perfectly composed show. A mildly amusing non-sequitur. 

Reruns

Episode 1

Episode 2

https://twitter.com/TuffGhostArt

A not even quite not-review of Russian Doll Season 2 in all of its amazingness.

Just finished Russian Doll season 2 <Editors Note: This was a while ago! Fortunately we have Spacetime Breaching Technology (TM)>, damn this was incredible. I can't believe more people aren't talking about how good this is. It's kind of uncanny how much it is my jam lol. Like without spoilers, it's got the unfinished corner, metro as metaphor and setting, exploration of self, magical realism, weird high concept scifi. Natasha Lyonne as Nadia is also just like the biggest fucking badass of all time. Like she just does not give a fuck in all the right ways, but also is unafraid to challenge herself. She's just the right amount of deranged, but also no matter how badly she fucks up or delusional she seems, she actually has her shit together and wins at life. And Allan is also this really healthy version of feminine masculinity not played as a joke. He's vulnerable and expressive and even though he's a neurotic wreck he ultimately knows how to take responsibility for himself, however he defines it. I'm not claiming it's as good as Season 1, but it was good in its own right.

Philosophical Soapbox

I was thinking about the nature of "evil", and Boltzmann Brains, and one possibility is that it's kind of like that. There are various evolutionary pressures both ways, and mostly they balance out to a degree of functionality. But given enough complexity i.e. time, improbable events occur and we behave in ways that are not truly rational, even if they maybe work in that myopic moment. That's a way of thinking about the nature of evil that's almost independent of any prescribed ethic.

https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.296781716.3978/flat,750x,075,f-pad,750x1000,f8f8f8.u6.jpg

Psychedelic Pedantry Pastime

P^3 (P-cube): Perpetual Psionic Process: A psionic process is of the mind. Mental processes are multiplicative; the activation of one memory coactivates related memories which reinforce each other; reliving the memory of a psionic process is itself an instantiation of a psionic process, and every other psionic process in memory; a lifetime of psionic processes coactivate as a product across consciousness*spacetime.

More plainly, the idea is that if a psionic process is, by definition, mental in nature, then there is not a meaningful distinction between physical reality and simulated reality- a memory- except that memories can be wrong, can change, and can violate physical assumptions.

When a psionicist reflects on their own thoughts and memories, or times they used their psionic powers, they aren't just remembering those events, they are recreating them, and possibly altering them. It plays into some ideas around quantum animism or consciousness as a set of dimensions alongside the dimensions of space and time.

Psionicists have to be conscious of their thoughts and memories, and how they perceive them. The less structured their mind, the more powerful they become, but it can recurse and multiply beyond their control. Whereas a psionicist with a very structured way of self reflection, and of how they relate their memories and their internal semantics, will not be as powerful, but much more controlled and precise in how they use their abilities.

Last Call

One more cup of coffee for the road, please. There's a kind of ennui, or horror in the mundane, haunting reminiscences, the tension of an unwitting voyeur catching an embarrassing faux pas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mto47BMT3yA

Rorschach Not-Review

I finally read Tom King's Rorschach and it's really good. I especially like the way he juxtaposed Rorschach's Rorschach with the smiley-face of The Comedian; or Frank Miller's "Dark" with the Silver Age's simplicity, of meaning vs. nothingness but also clarity vs. obfuscation.

I've talked a lot before about the idea of pareidolia, and of how the way perception imposes anthropomorphism onto things could be like a kind of animism, or a control mechanism, a cybernetic interface to the noosphere.

It would be interesting to have something like a pulp hero, a Rorschach type, with a pareidolic mask. A living symbol like Batman claims to be, a force churning through the system of human minds via human bodies like Frankenstein's monster.

Willed into being, something connected to the human experience, a reflection on meaning lacking any of its own.

Stop!! Hibari-Kun! Not-Review

 

I saw this anime (originally a manga but I watched the anime) recommended on a tiktok (unfortunately can't remember where specifically anymore). I'm not gonna lie, I went in with low expectations, expecting it to be a slog to get through at the very least, or extremely offensive at the worst, but I was actually pleasantly surprised on both counts. It certainly is of a time and place, but all things considered I thought it handled the issues surprisingly well (obviously I am hardly an authority on the matter though so take what I say with a grain of salt), but more importantly, it was just a really fun and enjoyable show, I liked it so much I ended up practically binging it.

So I've buried the lede, but Stop!! Hibari-Kun! is a 1980's animated sitcom about a "cross-dressing boy" (although in most regard she really seems to be transgender and I will use she/her pronouns), her yakuza family, and a boy, a friend of the family, who is living with them.

While many episodes do involve Hibari's gender at least in some way (much less so as the show goes on), Hibari herself is basically always in control of the situation, never in any real danger, always comes out on top, and it always feels like the audience is expected to be on her side- to the point that she will often wink and stick her tongue out to the audience in fourth wall breaking assurance. It has almost a Looney Tunes / Bugs Bunny kind of logic to it.

Her family largely doesn't understand her identity in critical ways and I can very much imagine that would be triggering for people, yet at the same time, despite being this traditionalist yakuza family obsessed with conventional masculinity, they ultimately are mostly accepting of her when it counts, on the occasions where they're kinda shitty to her it's usually about something else, and her grace in the matters feels more like a strength of her character than an implicit acceptance of those characters. There are subtle things, like how her youngest sister and one of the yakuza underbosses will refer to her with she/her pronouns and call her Hibari-chan instead of -kun. There is one episode where Hibari has a really sweet moment with her dad where he is more explicitly accepting of her and they bond; little nice things like that. Similarly, whenever characters treat Hibari poorly due to her gender identity, they are always painted as the butt of the joke or being in the wrong in the situation. Also, there are plenty of episodes, especially as it goes on, that have little to nothing to do with Hibari or her gender and are good on their own terms.

As for the situation of the sitcom; there's Hibari, her yakuza father, her three sisters (two older, one younger), and Kosaku who is Hibari's age, the friend of the family who is living with them because his mom died, and then various ancillary characters like school friends, bullies/rivals, yakuza henchmen, etc. Only her family, Kosaku, and the yakuza know that she is a "cross-dresser", at school she identifies as a girl and in fact she's the most popular girl in school. There are sometimes plotlines where her identity is threatened to be exposed, and I think it's handled about as well as could be hoped for what is not an ideal plot pivot point from a modern perspective, but ya at least imo it seemed to be mostly handled well. Also, that becomes much less focal as the show goes on.

Episodes often involve episodic or slightly-serialized romcom triangles or quadrangles, typical teen sitcom type stuff. There's a bit of a will they / won't they with Hibari and Kosaku. His inability to confront his own ideas about gender and sexuality, again, could be triggering, but I think the show does a good job of framing things in such a way that the audience is not meant to sympathize with his "struggle".

The later episodes are not quite as good, at a certain point they kinda jump the shark, and over time it becomes less focused on interesting character drama and more on wacky hijinks alone which fell a little flat for me. I do appreciate though that many episodes are focused more on the side characters than Hibari or Kosaku, and some of the best episodes are not really about them.

In typical not-review fashion I'm not explaining this show well, but I just find it really fun and delightful. Hibari is a strong character, she's funny, she has that larger than life cartoon logic to her; even the situation aside it's genuinely a fun show, and I also hope people find the character to be a powerful and suitable symbol and don't find it offensive or hurtful, or can enjoy it independent of that, just for what it is, a fun show.

Getter Robo Armageddon Not-Review

I'm moving in a couple of days, not very far, but still stressful, so in my procrastination on packing and prepping, here's another not-review of an obscure-ish Mecha anime.

Getter Robo Armageddon came out in the very late 90's, but like with Iczer-One, it has this beautiful hand-drawn art style that you just don't see anymore, which I've always really loved. This would have been the very tail-end of that style of animation.

My understanding is that the original Getter Robo, along with Mazinger Z*, were the two original and still most archetypal "Super Robot" Mecha anime, but Getter Robo Armageddon is more like a sequel or spiritual sequel to the original series, set after a Getter-related apocalyptic event. I haven't seen or read the original manga/anime so can't say for sure but that's the impression I get. I will also say, clearly I didn't feel like I needed to know more about the classics to enjoy this.

There have been a couple of anime adaptations of Getter Robo since this one, but honestly the other ones didn't look or sound as good as this one and this is the one that the Super Robot Wars videogames keep coming back to, so it's probably the best modern-ish adaptation.

* I have also watched some Mazinger anime adaptations, should maybe do a not-review of those some time as well but I don't have as much to say about them, but I did reference Mazinger in my MRD2 Campaign Setup. I guess I don't have much to say here either, but oh well...

Like with Iczer-One, this anime looks and sounds really good, and while it's 13 episodes, I don't think it overstays its welcome, and it has really excellent Mecha and Kaiju designs. Also like with Iczer-One, despite how well it's produced and how much setting is implied, I will say it doesn't feel like there's a lot of there there, which I think I also said about Iczer-One.

Unlike Iczer-One, it does at least at first seem like it's going to be about more, it feels like there's intended subtext, but by the end it kind of devolves into typical shonen-adjacent Mecha action anime stuff, which is a bit of a shame. That said, this would have been a great show for the classic Adult Swim anime Saturday night lineup back in the day, would have fit right in.

Superficially, especially at first, it feels actually a lot like Evangelion, despite it's more classic designs for some of the characters and Mecha, although it's just as likely that Evangelion was inspired by earlier Getter Robo than this series was inspired by Evangelion, but it seems plausible given when it came out that it went both ways. But whereas Evangelion is about something, is an exploration of real themes or dare I even say a deconstruction of those themes, I don't think Getter Robo Armageddon really capitalizes on what it sets up.

It seems like it's trying to explore nuclear or other human-made devastation a la Godzilla and plausibly also the classic Getter Robo, and maybe commenting on Japanese Imperialism or American Imperialism, but ya it never really goes anywhere as far as I could tell, but I still enjoyed it.

I don't have much more to say about it than that, but if you like good animation and great Mecha and Kaiju designs and want to know more about the history of Mecha, check it out.

I actually struggled to find great screenshots, but hopefully these have gotten the point across.

Fight! Iczer-1 Not-Review

I've previously discussed being a big fan of the Super Robot Wars videogames, and especially since MRD2 is partially Mecha-focused, I've been trying to expose myself to more obscure, or at least less popular in the US, Mecha anime and manga, especially those which have been featured in SRW. I saw this one among a list somewhere, and for whatever reason it called to me.

As is the case with most of the other not-reviews, I'm not giving you a plot synopsis really, just my general impressions.

Iczer-One seems like one of those anime that has been lost to time, and I do get why, but I also think it's a shame, because it's pretty cool. It's only three 30ish min episodes, or there's an OVA that's basically just the three episodes, I think maybe with some scenes rearranged. Tbh I'd recommend watching it as the OVA but I've watched both and it's good either way. The short length gives them little time to develop things and leaves you wanting more, but I think that works in its favor, and it also keeps it from being too decompressed.

I am a sucker for that late 80's-90's anime style, where it has that grainy hand-drawn look, a lot of painterly backgrounds and colors and details, a little more realistic, not so super-deformed, while still recognizably anime. This is a really gorgeous anime, has an amazing soundtrack, excellent character and creature designs, just oozes style. It's got this very of-a-moment style of citypop, cyberpunk, gonzo science fantasy. There's a creepy weird ominous vibe that permeates the whole thing.

I don't think all of these screenshots do it full justice; there was a lot of cool stuff that I'm struggling to find in screenshots.

There's lasersword fights in subspace dimensions, Mecha fights, body horror, and creepy monsters. I will say the Mecha designs are just ok and they don't get to do much, which I suspect non-trivially contributes to why it has not had much resonance over time. In general, there's just not a whole lot of "there" there, which is fine, it's only three episodes, and for someone like me, all the unknowns and open questions of what this is and what's going on actually just makes it better (as opposed to some uninteresting or trite background on this or that).

Big Gold is a creepy motherfucker, really left an impression on me. You really have to watch it to appreciate it. It makes this... groaning/whining sound. Also, what a name.

The anime was apparently based on a manga that was serialized in a hentai magazine, but I haven't been able to find many particulars on which issues, if they've been translated in English, etc. I will say that while the anime has some "ecchi" elements, like the pilots of the Mecha being shown naked inside the cockpit, but it didn't really come off to me as hentai, but maybe the manga is more graphic. Anyway, many of my favorite elements of the anime were the music, sound design, colors, and painterly backgrounds, so I would like to read the manga just to have that context, but I'm inclined to think I'd prefer the anime anyway.

Also, there were two "sequels", neither of which were great but not terrible, but I'll briefly comment on those too. There were also apparently some spinoff manga and audio dramas and stuff like that, but I'm not gonna bother with any of that.

Iczer Girl Iczelion was I think nominally connected to Iczer One, but it felt more like a spiritual sequel / retelling than an actual sequel. It takes a lot of the same core plot beats, but does it as more of like a magical girl thing, no mecha, and with a lighthearted tone compared to the weird, dark, ominous vibe of the original. It has a few clever ideas, and it's short (only two episodes) which also works in its favor, and it does have a style of its own, but I can't say it left as strong of an impression. Both in animation and in art design it feels much more 90's to me, with sort of a gothic science fantasy vibe that I do appreciate in itself but not as much as Iczer One's. I dunno, if you like Iczer One it's still worth checking out I guess.

Iczer Reborn / Adventure! Iczer-3 was easily my least favorite of the three. It's six episodes, which still isn't long, but even under that strain I think it struggles compared to the three and two episode runs of the preceding shows. It has an animation style closer to Iczelion, while merging the two art directions in a way that feels like neither more nor less than the sum of its parts. It's more so a sequel to the original, while also feeling weirdly like a retelling. It just... doesn't add anything. Most of the plot beats and even designs are taken almost directly from the original, but Neos Gold is a poor-man's substitute for Big Gold, and Iczer Three herself I found kind of annoying. It also has more of that goofy / lighthearted tone of Iczelion which to me clashes with the stylings of Iczer One. I didn't hate it, and it's only six episodes, so if you enjoyed Iczer One and Iczelion well enough, then go ahead and watch it, but don't expect anything more than more of the same. I dunno, thinking back on it, I could imagine a version of this that's more like Vampire Hunter D, if it brought more new ideas rather than feeling like a retread, but as-is there's no "there" there.

So ya, that's the Iczer series. It's a shame that there isn't more of it, particularly in the style of the original. I'm glad for the original as it is, bad or mediocre sequels don't take away from that, but it would be cool to see someone with a vision for the franchise revisit this.

Guardians of Justice Not-Review

 

I wanted to find more screenshots of the show to share but most of the screenshots I've seen fail to capture what makes this show so interesting, which is a shame, because it really is visually amazing. I will acknowledge that the acting is not always the best, you can tell it has a limited budget, and the writing is sometimes more corny than campy. I'm frontloading the negative, because that aside, it's a truly creative and brilliant show and I really appreciate it for what it is.

This is superhero pastiche done right. On the surface of it, it feels very rooted in Justice League and Marvel/DC-style superhero tropes, as well as the full gamut of Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, the 1980's, videogames, etc. Even so, as the sum of its parts, it feels unique, and that is in large part due to the excellent art and sound design. It does things I've never seen before in the way it blends live action and many, many, many kinds of animation.

Adi Shankar (showrunner of Netflix's Castlevania, among other fan favorites) does amazing work and I'll watch anything of his, but I also appreciate that he has on his youtube channel a series of mini-documentaries (a few minutes long each) explaining the various influences on the show. He discusses at one point how he had the idea for this show, and people told him it couldn't be done, and he wanted to challenge that notion, and as someone who also often veers into that territory, I get why this resonates with me, but unfortunately I think a lot of people will just write it off or not really give it a fair shake, which is a shame.

The story goes a few places I didn't expect while still following along the path. There are many twists that I won't spoil, and most of them are interesting and feel earned, some of them exceptionally so, and even the few that don't, or that muddle the subtext, don't ruin the experience. That said, the heart of this is definitely in the presentation. I'd love to see more works like this, that really challenge preconceived notions of different kinds of media and genre (even as they pay homage to them). My understanding is that it's getting a season 2, so that's cool at least.

My first not-review was for the underappreciated TTRPG Super Blood Harvest, and while this is focused on superheroes, this does have a very similar feel, so if you've liked my sensibilities up to this point, check out Guardians of Justice. This is a perfect show to not-review because there's really not much more I can say. Watch the first episode if this sounds at all intriguing, you'll probably know immediately whether you're into it or not.

Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time Not-Review

Reminder: Maximum Recursion Depth is now available on drivethrurpg and itch.io check it out so you can say you were into it before it was cool

Not sure when this will get posted but I watched the movie on 10/19/21 and drafted this blog post on 10/20/21. Also, note that there may be spoilers.

Probably unsurprising to read, but Neon Genesis Evangelion was formative to me creatively and personally growing up. It's one of those series where, as a child, you can rewatch it year-over-year, and get a completely different experience out of it, because it is by design exploration of the experience of childhood. I have been writing a lot about Mecha lately, and this movie is making me remember why this genre is so profound to me, what kinds of themes it can explore, and it may even be changing the direction in which I'm thinking of exploring this genre further. It is a deconstruction of the Mecha genre in the best sense, regardless of whether some people think that's an overrated term (I will run this bit into the ground I swear it!). It identifies the core themes of the genre, as well as the core superficial trappings, and it tells a story that uses those parts and is true to those themes, but all the parts are arranged in a totally different kind of way than anything before it.

This is not a not-review of the series, nor even of the Rebuild of Evangelion movies in their entirety, just of the final movie. But if it helps, I will give very brief thoughts on the previous movies. I watched these movies more or less as they came out, and they took around a decade to complete, so it's been an interesting experience in its own right and many details are now lost to me, and also I was a different person upon watching each of these and did not do a rewatch and likely will not do so ever, although it's not impossible.

First Movie: A mostly faithful retelling of the first handful of episodes of the show, but with a much bigger budget, and some general streamlining of the plot that worked in its favor.

Second Movie: Had some pacing issues, made some plot changes that I had mixed feelings about, but I respected that they tried to do something a little different with it. There were a few red flags, but on the whole, I enjoyed it enough.

Third Movie: I hated this movie with a passion. I won't elaborate too much, because the fourth movie actually retroactively makes me seriously question if I fundamentally misunderstood this one, or maybe I could not have known what Hideaki Anno was trying to do until the fourth. I thought it had betrayed the underlying themes of the series in a critical way (as opposed to the second movie which made relatively "harmless" changes), but I no longer think this is the case.

This brings us to the fourth movie.

I wish I could give these really beautiful, sweeping reviews of the things I experience like Patrick Stuart does. I'd like to think I've demonstrated on this blog that I know how to write, and yet something about trying to coalesce my memories into words in some specific, coherent way... it just doesn't have the same effect. That's why I do "not-reviews". But it's a shame because this movie deserves that kind of review and analysis, the kind that is like a piece of art unto itself, that makes you want to have that experience- that may very well be better than the experience per se.

In lieu of that, I'll just say the following things. First, because it's easy to start here, the movie is gorgeous. I don't just mean in a big-budget sense, although certainly that, but it is just very visually interesting. It wasn't quite as experimental as I might have liked, as a younger Hideaki Anno might have done, but it also doesn't fall prey to lack of constraint either, as is often the case when creators are given unlimited resources and nobody telling them No. It does some things I've never seen before; it felt like a big-budget Saruri-Man.

There are battleships and Mecha being puppeteered on strings, with gun-hands on a discus, being launched like missiles, on massive whirling planes of red and glowing colors; massive airships with cyborg parts on top of something like a whale carcass, weird dangling double-"headed" Mecha arm monsters...

But also, it explores THEMES. This fourth movie made clear to me, that these movies were really more of a spiritual sequel to the original series than a remake. Yes, it retells the story in broad strokes, but it's exploring something else, and that exploration is a satisfying evolution of the original series. The last time I watched the original series in its entirety was over ten years ago, probably shortly before the first movie. Even at the time, I remember feeling like I was aging out of the subtext. That's not to say I didn't still enjoy it or respect it, but it no longer felt like there was more for me to gain from it, which honestly was a little disheartening. For the first time in ten years, across all four movies of Rebuild, Evangelion challenged me again, felt true to my current experiences and development. I actually struggled a bit last night, evaluating where I am in life and what I'm doing and if it's getting me what I want... and admittedly that's pretty normal for me, but in this case, I guess it was in a more fresh or profound way, that unfortunately I can't better articulate, or maybe I just don't want to because it's a very personal experience.

The pilots themselves stopped aging for plot reasons, something which as of the third movie I thought betrayed the psycho-developmental subtext of the original series. But I realize now, that's the point. Shinji was in stasis- he's still the 13-year-old boy; the bridge, or point of reference between the two narratives, but also a reflection on our youth.

The "real" Rei (or one of them...) died at the end of the third and this new Rei is even more so a child- but actually, she's really more a lens for somebody discovering themselves and finding internal peace. She lives a simple life, finds appreciation in others, makes meaningful connections. All she wanted was normalcy, and she finds it and is happy.

Asuka is on the face of it just as angry and frustrated as before- if not more so, borderline psychotic, like a hermit. But it eventually becomes apparent that she did in fact grow up, in her own way, and that while she'll always be this anti-social and awkward person, she's discovered herself a bit. She has unresolved issues, some of which she may never figure out, but it feels like she has made growth and is continuing to grow. This movie did right by Asuka in a way that I deeply appreciated, as Asuka was always the character I most resonated with (for whatever that says about me...).

Then there's Mari. Prior to the fourth movie, I never understood why she was introduced. Why would you create a new character, in an already overstuffed narrative? And prior to this movie (or admittedly, even in this movie), there's not too much to her. She's got a bold personality, but she never felt quite like a real person. It becomes apparent in this movie, though, that really she's more of a cipher (if I'm using that term correctly...), and maybe one could argue that that's problematic, but I think it worked here.

In the end, Rei comes to terms with herself- her issues were always more personal than interpersonal. Asuka recognizes that she grew up and grew into a different kind of person than Shinji, and she moves on, but the break is amicable. Mari is the love you find later in life. You have Rei and Asuka, these proxies for Shinji's sexual and romantic development (who also as I just explained, very much have their own narratives as well); these are the childhood crushes you think will last forever and have permanent importance. Mari seemingly comes out of left field, but in the end, they develop their little quirks together (cute little hand over eyes games and such), and although we don't see the full development of their romance, I am convinced of its truth.

Every character gets a proper send-off, all of which feels deliberate and considered. The conversation that Shinji and Gendo have at the very end, especially, is such an evolution from the original series. Shinji grows into his own, not by becoming some badass tough guy who yells and screams and has his shonen moment, but because he is reflective and contemplative. He shows bravery and empathy. He doesn't want to just defeat Gendo, he wants to understand him, and come to terms with him.

Looking back, and I know others have said this not just me, one complaint I might have with the original series, is that it narrowly straddles the line between grimdark and bittersweet. This movie feels decidedly more positivist, with still an appropriate amount of bittersweetness. It feels more adult- it doesn't just identify problems, it tries to solve them.

Every moment of this admittedly rather long movie feels deliberate. It is clear that Hideaki Anno thought a lot about what kind of story he wanted to tell, how he wanted to reflect on his own life or life in general. I know that no matter how well told, no story is an accurate reflection of life, but if the original series is a reasonable metaphor for my own lived experience up to this point, and Rebuild is where I see myself currently, it is encouraging and inspiring to believe that maybe I can find that degree of growth and acceptance that the characters in Evangelion, that likely Hideaki Anno himself, have experienced.

MRD Campaign Retrospective up to Present

Although I've written plenty of Play Reports for my Maximum Recursion Depth campaign and they've actually been accruing more views than I expected, I've generally not been satisfied with my PRs. I like the approach I've landed on of doing these very brief summaries, and only expanding in cases where I'm basically sharing my GM Notes as like a Module template, but all the same, they feel more like very sloppy book report summaries than something engaging.

So to be clear, my MRD campaign is still ongoing and to the best of my knowledge, nobody has any intentions of ending at any specific time! But I thought it might be fun to do a retrospective, almost like my "not-review" series of posts. If I'm not prepared to rewrite the events of my campaign as engaging prose, I can instead do so as (hopefully) engaging analysis. This is less so a blow-by-blow of events than even my already summarized PRs, and more me just describing how things evolved over time, what I had intended vs. how things played out, what I think has worked or hasn't, etc.

Last side note, we are very very very close to being done with the MRD Book, and once it releases, I have some exciting news to hopefully coincide with it! But anyway...

Before I get into it, here's another index of the MRD PR posts:

MRD Play Report Index

PR 1: Doctor Loves-Me-Not's Halloween Party

PR 2-5: They Did a Mario Kart

PR 6-11: The Hostile Takeover of Anti-Sphinx

Anyone Can Wear the Mask with Jeff Stormer (MRD-adjacent)

PR 12-16: No clever name on this one...

MRD Module / GM Notes

The Court of Those Who Succumb Prematurely to Crippling Expectations (A significantly rewritten and expanded version of this will be the module in the book)

Doctor Loves-Me-Not's Halloween Party (GM Notes)

Off to the (Karmamare) Racetracks (GM Notes)

Not-Review Sessions 1-2 / Doctor Loves-Me-Not's Halloween Party

Even though the posts themselves are organized differently, the first two sessions correspond to the same "module", so I'll describe them this way.

Doctor Loves-Me-Not's Halloween Party was basically a murder mystery inspired loosely by the party scene at the beginning of the Russian Doll series on Netflix and Rocky Horror Picture Show, along with other stuff.

I was really happy with the overall scenario design and I think it had some of the modular Social Intrigue stuff which informed the Module in the book, but I definitely did not yet have this Design Pattern fully realized when I wrote this "module" and it shows. I included some sidebars in the Doctor Loves-Me-Not's Halloween Party GM Notes linked at the top, and I stand by those comments and would encourage you to give them a look if you're interested.

The second session ended in the equivalent of a TPK, but The Team was able to use their Reincarnation Rituals, so it worked out basically as intended. As is often the case with a new game, several of the players came and went between the first couple of sessions, but it was as of Session 3 that The Team as it has existed for nearly a year now has been pretty stable.

Unfortunately, because session 3 was effectively a new group, there were leads that developed in these first two sessions that are only just now getting re-integrated. In fact, there were I think 1-3 sessions (would have to double-check) even before these play reports with an entirely different group, which also set up leads that didn't come back until later (that group was in person and fell apart for covid and related logistical reasons).

Tl;Dr While flawed in some ways, these first two sessions / first "module" is a very good demonstration of what MRD is about, and I could easily imagine myself cleaning it up and turning it into something more like the Module in the book and being really happy with it!

Not-Review Sessions 3-6 / "They Did a Mario Kart"

Technically a fair bit happened in these sessions, but it wouldn't quite be accurate to call them a cohesive "module" in the way I referred to the Halloween Party in the last two sessions. However, it does encompass one "story arc" so I'll wrap them together.

While I posted the PRs as 3-5, in retrospect session 6 was when this "arc" wrapped up, but I guess that wasn't obvious until after the fact.

Session 3 was a fresh start with a new Poltergeist Investigation and in effect a new Team. In retrospect the way I designed it was terrible, but I think to the Players' credit we had a good time.

I basically gave them two or so options for Investigations, but they were both nearly identical- being only just different enough to require that my GM Notes accounted for each of them differently. From a software engineering perspective, we call this an Anti-Pattern, and it is something I have since tried to be better about not doing, and I'd like to believe mostly successfully.

It was a fun little adventure, and it set up some future NPCs and future plotlines. The players really liked Shining Ostrich which made me happy.

Session 4 was the "Mario Kart" part, where they went to The Court of Those Who Bet on the Wrong Horse. I was much happier with how I designed the scenario, although the "Mario Kart" part of it, while fun, probably could have been better fleshed out. It's not about going crunch-crazy, but I played it pretty fast and loose even by my standards and while it worked for me, as the writer, if I were to ever try to publish it, I would need to heavily rework it for those who cannot read my mind.

You can see the GM Notes for Off to the (Karmamare) Racetracks linked at the top, which actually includes the GM Notes for session 3 as well. If you do read it, you'll see the anti-pattern I was referring to, but for the actual Karmamare part, you can see how there was still some structure to it, but probably needed a little more structure.

Session 5 Was a bit of a sidetrack, admittedly of my own making. It definitely did set stuff up for the future such as by introducing or further developing certain NPCs, but in itself was more of a "filler episode" lol, not too much more to say about that.

Session 6 was the culmination of events from the prior sessions. To my mind, it was the most successful of the first six sessions in terms of the number of fun things I gave the players to interact with in the scenario and the degree to which they were developed. The actual scenario around sessions 1-2 may be more so to my tastes, but from a game perspective, I think this is where things started to gel.

There was also a really poignant moment at the end of session 6, within an otherwise rather absurdist scene, and at the very least I appreciated it, but I hope my players did as well.

I apparently never posted the GM Notes for the scenario in session 6, which is a shame because I think it was pretty good. Not sure why I didn't do it, maybe I need to do so retroactively, or maybe there was a reason why I did not...

Not-Review Sessions 7-11 / The Hostile Takeover of Anti-Sphinx

These sessions were a turning point for the campaign, and also where a lot of my thoughts about the setting and my approach to design started to coalesce. This was probably also facilitated by the fact that I was designing the book around this time.

Again, even though I posted them as 6-11, in retrospect, 6 should have been in the previous post and this post should have started with 7.

Prior to these sessions, the game had been set up in a more episodic approach to Poltergeist Investigation -> Court Crawl, and this batch starts that way but ends things in a way that completely changes the paradigm which I found very exciting, although I was admittedly uncomfortable with it at first (see the Session 10-11 not-review below).

Session 7-8 Got real weird and experimental, in a way that I loved but my players were a bit more mixed on at the time, although I believe have since come to appreciate. This was part of what I refer to in my post on Tabletop RPGs as Performance Art and must have been around the time those ideas were growing fully formed in my mind.

I did not at the time have as strong of an idea of where I was going as I should have, and I also in retrospect did not do a good enough job giving the players a good idea of what they could or should do. I can't help but look back on it fondly, but it was certainly flawed.

Partway through session 8 The Team developed a more concrete plan and executed it, and it gave the players an opportunity to flex a bit which worked out well. It was basically a heist, and I don't give this session enough mindshare but in retrospect, it was actually a really fun and well-executed heist that was mostly player-driven, couldn't ask for more from it. The session ends with them coming back to where they were in session 7, culminating in a cliffhanger of a big Conflict that was about to come.

Session 9 is the aforementioned Conflict. The Conflict was swift and brutal as any Into the Odd-adjacent game should be, with Fiona using her Reincarnation Ritual in order to help the other PCs escape what were otherwise seemingly insurmountable odds. The rest of the session was also pretty rapid-fire with some big reveals. I did some stuff that is either clever or deceitful depending on your perspective that paid off nearer to the end of this "arc", which I was happy with but which I know one of the players struggled with at first, and which amounted to something ultimately not within my original plans but ended up being significantly better anyway, as I discuss below.

Session 10-11 also were pretty rapid-fire, with The Team running a coup against The Underground Casino which had been plaguing them in the background for some time, only to learn that the Underground Casino was not quite what they thought it was.

I won't lie, I struggled a lot with these sessions. On the one hand, I had repeatedly signaled to the players that they needed to do more investigation, that there were important details they had not uncovered and that they were getting themselves in over their head, and they had been burned on things like that in the past, but they chose to commit to their course of action regardless.

I think, especially from an "OSR perspective", it would have been well within my "right" to be punitive about it and basically punish them in exactly the way one would expect if they knew those things that they had been encouraged to investigate. However, I really didn't feel good about doing that, and I wanted to find a better solution.

Ultimately, I gave them what they wanted, a successful coup of this organization, but I framed it within the context of a Parable, or just as well a Fable- it was ok that they did something implausible, because the Parable becomes something of greater metaphysical weight, greater than the material act of what they'd done. You could almost think of it like "The Law of Surprises", the metaphysical phenomenon that may or may not have real power within the setting of The Witcher and which ends up driving the narrative (as opposed to the short stories it started in).

On The Cauldron, we were discussing Jewish Fables, and I was raised Jewish, and I actually was in a very roundabout way inspired by Jewish fables with this session myself. I remembered this article that I had read around ten years ago, and recently rediscovered and reread and am glad to say it holds up to my memory. The writer discusses the scene in Coming to America, the Eddie Murphy movie of all things, where Eddie Murphy plays an old Jewish guy. You can read my explanation, or watch the clip on youtube.

Or embedded here (but embedded videos on blogger have not always been reliable for me...):

The old Jewish guy tells a story about going to a restaurant and ordering a soup, and the waiter brings the soup, and he asks the waiter to taste the soup, and the waiter refuses. He asks repeatedly, the waiter uncomfortably repeatedly denies, but when the old man does not relent, finally he does. Looking down at the soup and at the table, he then says "there's no spoon", to which the old Jewish guy says, "achaa!". I really like that anecdote.

So that was also part of what inspired this turn of events. Even though this game is nominally about Buddhism and the interplay between Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Chinese Mythology (really as just a metaphor or lens for modern issues), I try where possible to use my own lived experience as a person of Jewish descent or as an American or whatever to inform the game and setting, because my experience is not that of a Buddhist or Taoist in China circa the 16th Century when Journey to the West was written.

Anyway, so as a result, the game stops being about a ragtag group of Poltergeist Investigators, and instead is about a ragtag group of Poltergeist Investigators who overthrew a multi-national crime syndicate/information network/anti-fascist group that is now in a critically compromised state, in part due to their own actions, but also these factors were partially responsible for their success in the first place; capitalizing on Anti-Sphinx's moment of weakness without even realizing it.

Not-Review Sessions 12-16

Despite failing to come up with a name for this "arc", this was the first PR post that actually does reflect the arc as I see it- progress is being made lol. In all seriousness though, I do think this "arc" is where I really hit my stride, I would say I even "leveled up" as a designer. This is as much due to me designing the book at the same time and having to really think critically about how I do things, but all the same, this was awesome. Also by this point, the players have developed a good grasp of their characters and the setting and me as a GM, so they've been empowered to do more, and they've made some really clever and interesting decisions that have informed these sessions greatly.

Session 12 Is where The Team learns exactly how bad the situation with Anti-Sphinx is, but also meets the various agents within the organization and comes up with plans for how to fix things. I was worried at first again about possibly being too punitive, but it helped me to think of it within the context of the Parable, to treat this not as a punishment, not the end of the previous arc, but instead as the beginning of a new one, and that helped greatly.

I literally created a whole set of spreadsheets that are basically pivot tables, in order to map out the Social Intrigue / Domain-play scenario of it all; probably should have just made an actual SQL / relational database for it, but it's been working fine.

Session 13-14 was a bit of a diversion and got very goofy. It also involved me leveraging materials produced for The Module from the book but running it in a totally different context, which was fun to do. It also set up Emil McGinnley / Glass Maiden Pixie, which did move the "plot" forward for this "arc", and actually the "Excuse-Me-Sir!" Karmic malware also sets up the subsequent "arc" which is still ongoing and which I have not posted about yet.

Session 15-16 was a ton of fun. I didn't make a separate GM Notes post but I included the pertinent details in this PR. In terms of an "Action Conflict" this was hands down my favorite yet. It felt very video-gamey but in the best way. I would love to expand on this and turn it into something publishable. It wouldn't be worthwhile to reiterate it here but I would strongly encourage you to go back and read it if you have not already done so and are otherwise finding the rest of this interesting.

Final Comments

So wrapping it all up, I'm extremely happy with how this setting has developed, and this campaign, and this group. I've gotten to know my players well and feel lucky to have such a great group. It's encouraging to feel like the campaign is only getting better and that both my actual skills as a designer and my conscious understanding of design have both notably been improving, and it's also fascinating the ways that growth has been driven at least in part by having written the book. It goes to show the non-linear gains one can make by trying to do things in a more comprehensive, systematic way. Even though we're only a couple sessions into the current arc, the most recent session as of this posting was one of my favorites yet, a very emotional scene, my players probably know what I'm talking about if they're reading this. I genuinely believe that there are things that have occurred in this campaign that I will carry with me for a significant amount of time if not the rest of my life.

Saruri-Man: Midsummer Nights Adventures Not-Review

I was walking down one of those obscure alleys of the internet and saw something that grabbed my attention- a few episodes of some really obscure Mecha anime- I think it was a more recent show but it kind of went out of its way to look older. I can't even find much about it on the internet; maybe the name I found was a fan translation or maybe it's some obscure Japanese web show. But anyway, like many obscure things of its kind, I found it super fascinating and I wanted to give it a little not-review.

So it appears to be basically the world as we know it, with some anachronisms leaning into an 80's cyberpunk / Japanese City Soul aesthetic with other quirks here and there as well, so it feels kind of timeless. However, a core distinction is that a literal monkey ruling class somehow controls this world. Like, they aren't super-monkeys or alien-monkeys or genius-monkeys, just regular ol' monkeys. They're treated kind of like politicians or business executives or gang leaders, which is to say, there's a kind of religious reverence towards them, but the surrounding pomp and circumstance are toned down. It's not clear how or why this is the case, but that's part of the charm.

Oh ya and also, like monkeys banging on a typewriter until they create Shakespeare, these monkeys have inadvertently opened a portal to the Faerie Realm, and so all sorts of monsters and kaiju leak through, like the Pakku (I assume a translation of Puck from Midsummer Night's Dream). One of the Pakku is a kaiju-sized cross-section of a goat's eye in extremely graphic detail, like out of a medical textbook, and it's gruesome and amazing. Another one is a ball of diseased goat flesh and parasites and fur.

Kaiju are usually portrayed as either Bestial monsters, like Godzilla, or Uncanny monsters, like the Angels in Evangelion. Some of the monsters and kaiju fell more into the Bestial type, but the Pakku are more so in the Uncanny type. One thing that I found interesting about them though, is that they seemed curious, and somewhat playful, like toddlers or Dionysian drunks. They were causing damage, but they weren't necessarily trying to cause damage, and it made them pitiable, and it made the conflicts bittersweet.

I couldn't find any screenshots from the show, so enjoy this sheep's eye!

The art design in general is shockingly good. Even the monkeys themselves- it might have been tempting to make them kind of cutesy and lovable, but I think the show makes the right call in making them really uncanny. Again, they aren't monstrous, but they are scary and uncomfortable- both obscured in shadow, kind of like in Princess Mononoke, but where not obscured, uncomfortably detailed and graphic in their depiction.

The Mecha are also really wild. One of them looks like an emaciated humanoid body or skeleton with a tank for a head and is apparently the sexual bonding of a decapitated alien being of an unclear but non-carbon-based nature and an American military-industrial complex super-AI experimental tank that gained self-awareness and went on a journey through space.

Another is still Mecha-sized but looks kind of like Iron Man and is able to spontaneously summon weapons and mods out of energy, but then it turns out actually the whole thing is just a UFO-like craft and a series of drones with holographic projections and various weaponry to make it look like it's a cohesive thing but it's not.

There was one other one that I only got to see a little bit of in the episodes I saw, but it was like a typical humanoid Mecha, except four-dimensional, so when it moves, its three-dimensional representation tesselates, sometimes really elegantly like a Hindu god, other times grotesquely like a Lovecraftian extra-dimensional creature. As it moves, because it exists in four dimensions, sometimes parts of it appear inside-out, and the geometry of it bends in paradoxical ways like a Bethesda videogame.

The action choreography was interesting. While there are classics like Ninja Scroll that have excellent 2D, hand-drawn action, I get the impression that action in 2D animation is just really difficult and laborious to do compared to CG animation. I have generally not been a fan of many of the very low-quality Netflix CG anime, but the ones that had a sufficient budget really demonstrate the value of CG, in how fluid and un-"cut" it can be, compared to much 2D animated action which often necessarily relies on cuts, almost like a motion comic. While I'm reasonably confident that this show was 2D animated (again I actually have no idea when this was made...), I think it's using rotoscoping or something, there's something a little funky about it, but it has that fluidity that you otherwise rarely see in 2D animation. I'm surprised there haven't been other anime that used rotoscoping for their action, or maybe there have been and I am just not aware.

I don't know how exactly to describe what I saw i.e. a hyper-real dissected eye monster torrenting puss and macroscopic parasites onto a four-dimensional Mecha suplexing it through a pseudo-Mecha hologram landing onto and subsequently pierced and punctured by the tank cannon of an alien-AI-cyborg-demigod Mecha... But ya, it was very cool. I believe this show does have cool themes and subtext and whatnot, but if you just want bizarre and over-the-top action, it clearly has that as well, at least in the episodes that I saw.

Anyway, the pilots of the Mecha are all 20-30 something "salarymen"; male and female, but it's a Japanese term, and also the title of the show is a play on words which is a pretty typical anime thing (Saru is monkey in Japanese and the Japanese way to write Salaryman is Sarari-Man). They're all overworked, underpaid, some still have optimism for their future but most are pretty burnt out. There seems to be a bimodal distribution where half of them are just completely incompetent, and the other half are highly skilled and multifaceted and way overqualified for what they're doing, and the whole thing feels like commentary but that's definitely coming from an American perspective.

It's hard to talk about the characters too much further without going into spoilers, but I'll say they kind of reminded me of the anime Aggretsuko, or I guess similarly The Office, but whereas those shows I think fell too in love with their characters to their own detriment, there's more of an edge here, where they're not afraid to commit to these characters being more real and flawed. Granted I only saw a few episodes so who knows where it goes, but I got the impression that they know when to be goofy and quirky, and when to be serious, and I can respect that.

Anyway, ya I would really like to see the rest of this show, so if anyone knows anything about it, please let me know!!!!