Elves and Beasts and Lightsabers

  I lately saw these two comedy anime, both based off of manga. I found them really funny. Both shows have similarities and are also reminiscent of the anime Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, a series I am a big fan of, despite its unfortunate problematic elements (neither Gabriel Dropout nor Dropkick on My Devil have those kinds of elements). Both series are about they are about angels and demons coming over to the human world, in the slice-of-life genre. Both shows deal with folklore and mythos, which is always welcome. Gabriel Dropout follows two high-achieving angels who are sent to Earth via their student exchange program. Upon arrival, the main character Gabriel, almost immediately becomes addicted to gaming, losing her angelic disposition in favour of a misanthropic, slovenly, and lazy demeanour. The other angel, Raphiel, becomes a sadist. Then they meet two demons, Vignette and Satania. Vignette is a polite and kind person, ironically being more like an angel in behaviour rathe...

Darth Plagueis was a mysterious dark lord of the Sith, known for being the master of the formidable Emperor Palpatine and for his ongoing quest to seek immortality. He sought to master nature and the force itself through scientific and political power. Palpatine, his ever power-hungry apprentice, killed him in his sleep. This book details the long history of both figures, being the only Star Wars media to talk about Darth Plagueis in depth. It spans decades, following Hego Damask, a wealthy banker and the alter ego of Darth Plagueis, carrying on the Sith legacy. He seduces a young Palpatine and they continue their mission of eventually implanting Sith rule. I love this book. It’s so good at world-building, at expanding established lore. It has escapism with science-fiction with political intrigue. I really felt like this was history, history of another universe. While not whitewashing that both Plagueis and Palpatine are monsters, the book gives a lot of depth to both Palpatine and Pla...

In my opinion, Infinity Train is one of the best cartoons of the modern age.   Infinity Train is the long-awaited 2019 Cartoon Network series. The series started in 2019 and has three seasons. It was originally a short, but it was popular enough to be greenlit and made into a miniseries. The first season of Infinity Train follows Tulip, a young aspiring game programmer, her mercurial robotic sidekick, 1-1, and a talking Corgi, as she tries to navigate through this seemingly infinite train, each carriage carrying a different world with a puzzle to solve, and to get back home. She must also find out why there is a mysterious glowing number on her hand. After the original short, the show gained a fandom. An audience was drawn to the character potential and creative settings that the premise allows. The premise allows for a lot of magical and creative worlds for Tulip and her friends to venture and explore. It’s rife with potential, especially in regards to the mystery aspect of why Tu...

  The Owl House is an exceptionally fun and enjoyable show on Disney. This show follows Luz, an energetic fan of fantasy and magic genres, who is transported to another world. She finds herself, in the Boiling Isles, a dream come true despite the Isles’s horrors. She befriends the rebellious Witch Eda and her demon roommate King, and begins being trained as a witch by Eda. She meets some more people and goes to a magical school to further her learning. Hijinks occur. The show was created by Dana Terrace. Alex Hirsch works on the show, creator of and voice-actor for the acclaimed Gravity Falls Disney cartoon. It has similarities to that show, included feeling designed a bit for an older audience. It’s fair to say that the Owl House is a spiritual successor to Gravity Falls: an offbeat environment, and wacky characters juxtaposed against occasionally h o r r i f y i n g material. If one can get past the scary imagery in Gravity Falls and now the Owl House, they will be rewarded with ...

God I love this movie. I was just rewatching the movie and a wave of nostalgia flooded back and I remembered just how great it was. Going with bullet-points, because the points are too different from each other; miscellaneous thoughts. So many awesome moments! So many charming moments! So many funny moments! As many people say, the film is masterful in establishing the character of the robots without much dialogue. There’s so emotion in their expressions and movements. But also, the captain provides a good human contrast to our robot protagonists.   The malfunctioning robots that WALL-E first saves, and then return in the climax, are really fun (I had toys of most of them too, so I have an additional connection). There’s the perfume droid, the out-of-control massage droid, the fatal defibrillator droid, etc. And MO is just completely hilarious, probably the funniest character in the whole movie. I just love that this droid is so completely dedicated that it foll...

Ask anyone what the scariest animated film they've seen is and they'll probably respond with Coraline. With good reason. Coraline is a 2002 novel written by Neil Gaiman, adapted into the 2009 animated film directed by Henry Selick. It's about a girl who recently moved into a new home, with busy parents, who finds a portal into another seemingly-perfect version of her world and family. But paradise has skeletons. He wrote this story initially for one daughter, but then finished it for another. Both the book and movie are great and there's a lot to talk about (which I think is important when talking about quality of media). Coraline is a juxtaposition of fears; of the supernatural and of the more realistic, earthly case of predators. These two (in some way, opposite (in that one is natural and the other is supernatural, both serving as two distinct parts of a whole)) components fuse together to create that anxious unease that doesn't go away, even when the film e...

Pixar, specifically through the Toy Story films, Finding Nemo, UP, WALL-E, and Monsters Inc, have produced masterpieces. These are stories that pushed boundaries, both technologically and storytelling-wise. They ventured away from the traditional. Disney’s fixation on fantasy is replaced here by an unconventional look at suburban life. Voices are given to those who were previously unthought-of; toys, fish, robots, dogs, monsters, etc. Disney’s use of fantasy is the result of their stories being adaptations, as opposed to Pixar creating their own stories, being wholly original.   Pixar had integrity and weight to themselves, in that some of the themes were challenging; it is mature enough to balance out the emotional weight of certain scenes with the wonder of being a children’s movie. Their stories typically follow a formula in which the protagonist attempts to journey home, in which personal experiences and epiphanies are made along the way. They show the importance of relatio...

Horror and Enlightenment From Above A lot of this particular internet-based media is dependent on personal exposure to it. It's a spooky news channel. LOCAL 58 There's a lore to this channel and all the videos propose different puzzle pieces of an eternally unsolved mystery. I appreciate the passion put into them. Each are distinct, like different genres, and introduce questions, the likes of which raise disturbing implications. The audience has to work a bit to make sense of it. "Contingency" is a 'false' public service announcement commanding all Americans to commit suicide because America has been defeated. It's horrifying, because you don't realise what it means at the start. Then everything clicks together in one swift realization. The U.S. fell? To what/who? Are they human? "Law enforcement has been ordered to ensure your compliance?" "Infants and pets, the smallest patriots?" What the fuck? Why does the US want to kil...

LEGO Dimensions is a retired toys-to-life crossover LEGO video-game. Including such franchises as DC Comics Scooby-Doo Lord of the Rings Doctor Who Harry Potter Wizard of Oz Goonies BTTF ET Beetlejuice Powerpuff Girls Adventure Time Sonic Portal and even more As you can tell, that's a lot of properties and it's kind of surreal to see them interact under one LEGO umbrella. That factor is one of the major selling points of the game. LEGO Dimensions is a decent game, one that's acquired a following from LEGO fans and fans of these franchises, having also gained mild interest from the public I love this game. Though the remarkable fact of its existence must be recognized as extremely unlikely. Nobody could have predicted that LEGO would have been so impulsive to have made a game like this. It's fascinating to look at LEGO Dimensions as a game in itself, but also as a study in realising ambitious ideas, and the popularity of crossovers. The way ...

I found a few of my old reviews from my time on LEGO Flickr (I would build LEGO characters from the movie and post them with my review in the description. My first one was of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, but it has unfortunately been lost to time. INTERSTELLAR Spoiler Warning! I thought this film would turn out to be one of those films where a family is separated and then they reunite. This didn't go that way and this film showed the tragedy of this character missing out on his children's lives and developed the relationship he had with his children. It showed a future civilization that was realistic, talked about its problems and the effect they had on people. I also loved the robots, and their designs were very unique. Some people complain about the exposition, but I think the fact they were on a mission for the sake of humanity itself and wanted to be careful excuses that. The sound was very powerful when it stopped in several scenes and the music added to the e...