Gamut of Reviews: Spring 2023
All of you never taking Ls in your lives: you dropped this [picks up crown]
In this format, I clear house on everything I've been into recently! Here’s the Winter edition — vitally important as today I’ll have a part two on one point on there. My spring can be divided to three sections: me trying to make sense of my novel draft; me working on the NCT 127 potpourri; One Piece. I turned 26 a week after the Winter edition Gamut; I had a bunch of mental breakdowns… so life’s good. It’s a good thing I have this planned for a Tuesday, because just the idea of having to talk about the antics happening the past week alone brings me a headache. (The Karma remix: bad optics, worse acoustics.)
In today’s Gamut of Reviews I’ll cover the following topics:
A follow-up to my journey into Berserk, and this time, we’re talking women, not fujoshi nonsense (content warning of rape and sexual assault);
What happens when (in the eternal words of ABBA) the winner takes it all and the loser stands small — with case studies of One Piece, Ping Pong, and Chain-Gang All Stars;
When a band is a story and what it means to people that write a story;
some thoughts / prayers on Hollow Knight, Metroid Prime, and oppressive atmospheres;
and then we’re going to discuss whatever Hiroko Utsumi cooked up this time. This is the fujoshi nonsense section.
(CW: rape, sexual assault) (Spoilers) Me in the afterlife asking Miura why the women in Berserk are all like that
The last time we talked about Berserk, the Eclipse hadn’t happened. The darkest event in the entire manga (bar none, and I’m currently 306 chapters in), the Eclipse is what happens when somebody pours blood on a Behelit (an ugly talisman) — and Griffith… actually, let’s skip all this. Griffith wants to become God, so he does through the sacrifice of his former troop, the Band of Hawks. There’s few survivors — at some point, it’s basically just Guts and Caska that got out of this alive. Anyway, the first thing that Griffith does when he stops being Griffith and becomes Femto is to rape a naked Caska repeatedly in front of Guts’ eyes. Caska’s mind is shattered by the constant abuse she suffers... no, like literally she becomes a child. Guts finds her at some point as she’s like sacrificed for some demon? and later when they’re united and she won’t be near him, abuses / assaults her. So that’s been very fun. Now (chapter 306) she’s become a side character that Farnese cares for. Farnese, you ask? She used to lead the Vatican army and had a really dark moment with a demon possessing her and making her almost rape Guts (…). Now she’s trying to learn magic from young magic apprentice Silke / Schierke and is basically mothering Caska. Also, she’s in love with Guts. She’s not fighting shit. That’s for the men.
Women are… just… caretakers… and…
Berserk is a foundational text and there’s a lot of moral quandaries about fate, life and death, the meaning of our struggle, and the pointlessness of war (at its best). Golden Age arc is truly one for the ages up until that rape section. I get that. Its art is outstanding. But why is Schierke the only female character thus far who isn’t sexually abused? Why did we have to get through female characters before that were abused, assaulted, and raped many times? Caska was kept alive, apparently, because the late Miura admitted that Guts needed something to keep going on. You can tell, and that part — them trying to get someplace — was rough to read. Femto coming back as Griffith had me roll my eyes. (On the other hand, Griffith whiskering Princess Charlotte [she gets assaulted by her father by the way LOL] away, literally on her bed, with a giant dragon was hilarious.) There is nothing that the sexual assault adds to the story besides a cursory addition to make the story grimdark or whatever. The worst thing that can happen to a woman is rape in Berserk’s world, and she can’t ever save herself from it. Maybe she defended herself from it in the past, but in the present, she forgets how to. A man saves her, and she is indebted to him (= falls in love). In fairness, Berserk hasn’t been total diminishing returns; Serpico, the calm bodyguard and secret half-brother to Farnese, has been a delight to read. Schierke inhabiting certain elements has been amazing to read about. It mends the bad stuff that permeated before. But like… c’mon. Can Caska’s mind please come back and also can she please get away from Guts?
After this is done I’ll read Moriarty the Patriot next. Sounds like fujoshi stuff but actually good. I’m excited.
On loser and winner narratives
There’s something about a loser. Are you familiar with Pixar’s Storytelling Rules? These ones here. Five of them are explicitly about the power of conquering the situation, the power of the struggle, despite terrible odds: identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write cool; honestly lends credibility; stack the odds against; coincidences to get them into trouble are great, but coincidences to get them out of it are not; and, the very first rule: you admire a character for trying, not for their successes. For Pixar, this makes inherent sense: there is a formula to their stories, and the foundation of that formula is lain with these soft rules. It must be said, it’s not like the underdog narrative is invented by them — but I still think that Pixar films, starting with 1995’s Toy Story, raised a generation of people that want their likeable and easily identifiable protagonists to raise against all odds. That no matter what happens, the protagonist learns how to defeat the evil at the end of the day. And it must also be said that this is one of the most formulaic ways to write a story. That’s not to say that it’s a useless formula; what works, works. A loser works because that’s the role we can most easily identify with. (All of you never taking Ls in your lives: you dropped this [picks up crown].) And it really works when the odds are stacked against the protagonist so much that they actually look like they’re dying, when they walk away much worse for wear than they did before.
Case in point: Usopp of One Piece isn’t a protagonist, but he likes to claim that he is. In his stories — the ones he tells when the Strawhats are safe — he’s the one who defeats the sea kings and the big baddies with his army of ten thousands by his side. When there’s actual danger, Usopp flees. He makes up deadly diseases he swears he has, notably “I can’t step onto an island disease”. (A real writer through and through.) Usopp is not someone whose first, second, or even third instinct is fighting unlike Luffy/Zoro (first), Sanji (second), and Chopper (third). He’s not as strong as them. His abilities lie… well, he can tell a story, that’s for sure. He tinkers with stuff. He’s a world class sharpshooter but only when his life is on the line. That’s it. Our understanding of Usopp in those early One Piece arcs is that this is the comic relief, and, secretly, the jobber, the first one to lose and be picked up by the stronger ones1. (In Miura’s world, he’d be a woman.) So I really liked the Alabasta arc and, in particular, Usopp and Chopper’s fight with Ms Merry Christmas and Mr 4. Usopp and Chopper take turns frantically hatching out plans, and everything he tries fails. Merry Christmas can turn to a mole, which is quite convenient when your arena is the literal desert. Mr 4 is a fantastic hitter, and his dog can shoot insanely fast baseballs. Usopp, at this point, is bloody, close to dying, and has his long nose broken several times. It’s looking dire, and that’s exactly how it feels watching him hatch one last plan — really less of a plan and more of a chance that can only work once. He takes it and it works. It’s satisfying and feels well-earned. Maybe it’s foolish of me to think that Usopp could’ve lost that one, considering that he’s a Strawhat, but early One Piece arcs were not shy about giving the Strawhats major injuries throughout, and Usopp (as well as Zoro) take the brunt of it. Such is the power of a loser as established in his loser ways as Usopp is: you root for him out of pity until you realize that even the biggest loser has potential they can mine at life-and-death moments. Zoro works extremely well as a character with this in mind too, in a meta sort of way: having lost once in his childhood, his fear of losing leads him to adopting a reckless attitude with his own body graver and graver injuries. His fear leads him to constantly work out come hell or high water (a not insignificant plot point in Drum Island Arc, the one preceeding Alabasta Arc). Out of all the Strawhats, his story is possibly the most that feels dramatic, almost tragic at points even. Usopp’s is inherently aspirational: look, this loser can succeed too. Our understanding of Zoro hinges on him already being good, so his fear of losing is more complex. Usopp doesn’t quite have this complexity. He’s a loser and he knows it, and he tries his best to work to his own strengths and rise up against all odds. It’s charming, and again, it works for a reason. In another story, he’d be the protagonist.2
What about the flipside: a winner? Surely that’s unrelatable to most of us (again, some of you who have never taken an L in life: you’re at home here!), no? And indeed the storytelling template wouldn’t really work here, unless you did some tinkering — the classic “fish out of the water” moment, something that Pixar has in their storytelling “rules” too. But what I’m trying to get that isn’t about turning every story to the inevitable loser narrative. It’s the more interesting question of: what happens to you when you get what you want? In the case of winning in a competitive environment, you get bored. Winning becomes breathing, and breathing is something you don’t think about. Winning turns less to a relief, and more of a terrifying cold. It’s a cold that Ping Pong’s Ryuichi “Dragon” Kazama has to contend with, and his way of coping is locking himself up in a closet. He does what he’s told, to be certain, and his sheer abilities at the game always bring him over the line. But already at 17 he’s lost the joy for the game. His high school is depicted as less a school and more of a factory from which bald boys learn to play perfect table tennis — an exact environment. Joy, though, is messy and unpredictable, and it’s something he learns as he unexpectedly loses against Peco. It’s the loss, the surrender, even, that has him regain the most vital aspect of the sport. Kazama can break out of his box through the hero that saves him from it. His is proof that in some ways, winners are losers, too.
Loretta Thurwar, the protagonist of Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s novel Chain-Gang All Stars, finds herself in a similar position. She doesn’t entertain a highly mediated circuit, and to survive in her competitive, lethal environment, she has to shut herself off. Hers, though, is much worse than the epic highs and lows of high school ping pong: if she loses, she dies. The game she’s in is essentially a modern gladiator deathmatch, consisting of prisoners that sign up to the CAPE (Criminal Action Penal Entertainment) program. To be penalized of your initial crime (Thurwar ends up here because she killed her ex-girlfriend’s new lover) you need a certain amount of wins and survive for three years. Thurwar is close to winning, and she’s not happy about it — because her last opponent will be her current lover and prison inmate Hurricane Staxxx… and it’s because of Staxxx that she’s able to peel back with the entertainment… meanwhile, Staxxx, who very much loves to play it up in front of an audience, suffers from debilitating anxiety outside of the circuit. And the final match — there’s a winner, but also, that winner is still a loser (in the literal sense of having lost someone). Lots to think about with this book, and I’m enarmored with all of it. Winner narratives feel fresh to me. Different, for certain, but there’s also a joy in witnessing a debilitating emptiness on screen. It’s hard to get it right, but the moment of filling the void — or not filling it, choosing to reject it — is more life-affirming to me than it is to watch a loser win. I don’t really prefer one over the other though. As always, it boils down to execution.
Rock Band or How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Love The Bomb
I don’t like musicians excessively engaged with antics. I mentioned this the last time we talked about musicians with antics (Matty Healy), but it’s annoying, especially if the music is actually solid — and outright a reason for me to quit following an artist if the newest music is mediocre (I’m debating doing this with Taylor Swift, but I know I won’t be able to, lol)3 If the music is great and the person is objectively shitty, that becomes… annoying in that the artist just doesn’t need to be the most insufferable person on the planet (e.g Azealia Banks, but her stuff has turned up diminishing returns for years now) but also hard to grapple with in that there’s always going to be an asterisk when you bring them up, and just the idea of bringing them up feels like you’re condoning what they do in social media, when you don’t and you just like the music4. Of course it depends on the antics in question, as it always does, but it becomes a tough call when the only response to be had to all these antics is to not talk about the artist, thus flattening the severity curve? Anyway, right now I’m listening to Oasis, a band famous for its antics (notably the neverending beef that the Gallagher brothers — Noel, the songwriter; Liam, the vocal — have going on) and the (What’s the Story) Morning Glory album sounds like a best of. In my experience, that’s usually what happens: the fighting doesn’t translate to the music per se. Some exceptions: Rumours by Fleetwood Mac and Zen Arcade by Hüsker Dü. Where I didn’t hear the fighting and antics and nonsense that made the band read like a juicy gossip drama blog: Dinosaur Jr. Their chapter in Our Band Could Be Your Life was one of the most entertaining. Imagine this: the leader who wants everything to sound his way (with no one else providing input whatsoever), and the other who says he got very passive-aggressive but really what he’s doing is fully lean into a martyr complex. Then when he gets a girlfriend, he starts having opinions, which pisses the leader off? Like he pisses the leader off so bad at a performance because he’s dicking around with his riff that the leader starts beating him up on stage. I was entertained! This is the type of shit I enjoy! More than that, I started to consider what that meant as a writer: the idea of, what happens when you all want the same thing (in this case, some degree of success), how do you meaningfully construct character arcs from it? I tend to struggle with that. More important, it’s just not something that people tell you is possible. Everyone is supposed to want something, and it’s usually meant to be something distinct from everyone else (One Piece, notably, has this with all Strawhats, and Zoro underscores its importance to Chopper in one episode of the Alabasta Arc by saying that it’s because they all want different things that they belieive in one another fully.) Then have everyone with their own arcs, and somehow also feature them as a group. One of my novel drafts (of which there are many) featured four characters as a group and that felt hard to juggle. In general, I struggle with a cast of characters beyond two that are very fleshed out. Four just seems like a colossal task! But it’s also about temperament, isn’t it? That someone is colder, the other more needy, and the clash of the two. And the wants become subtler, and people have different ideas as to how this band success is meant to look like, notably in its musical direction. Being unafraid to have my characters fight, I suppose, has been my big takeaway. Let them clash and let them agree on some things. It doesn’t have to be one fight. It can be minor quibbles throughout. I’m not sure how that will manifest in actual storytelling since I haven’t written stories in… uhh… a while. But man… Dinosaur Jr kind of disappointed me because I listened to one of their most streamed songs (Just Like Heaven) of the album (You’re Living All Over Me) that Michael Azerrad said was like really good, and that’s a cover of a The Cure song, and The Cure just sound better. If you have antics like that, please let the music be good! Or just do antics so I can laugh about them! But most preferably just have good music!
Hollow Knight Creeps Me Out
My brother doesn’t quite get it. He tells me, you spent all this money on a new laptop just to play a 2D game. I’ve heard this from a guy in a Discord server too. They don’t get it, Hollow Knight. Your character is a little dude (gender neutral) called The Knight who is half head with antlers, half cloth. Their nail is genuinely taller than they are, and they wield it. Their soul? A black void, unless they use it for battle, in which case it’s a white ball of power. The Knight arrives to the world Hallownest for some reason, and they set out to explore the areas that are underneath the surface town, Dirtmouth. It’s bleak out there. Bugs have become infected and now attack the Knight. The Knight has to figure out what happened, and we do over the course of various plates and character dialogues. Ask me if I remember that now — I don’t. I don’t really have to, I don’t think. The atmosphere and its incredible soundtrack is enough to understand the story here: one of a decaying world that has been long past its former glory, with people that are trying to make it somehow. The pleasant moments here are few and usually come in the form of benches and pools of soul. I’ve been chipping away at it for… a long time now, but honestly, what originally started as a game that was a little bit frustrating has become a world so engrossing and creepy that the more difficult aspects of the game simply do not register. In one of the most terrifying moments, you wander down a maze, seeing yourself (!) at the periphery of the screen — only for that counterpart to run away. So you follow that counterpart, while paths close off behind you… and then it turns out to be a giant spider. Or how about this one, in the same level/world: bugs you slay make a gross cracking sound and become spiders. I am not squeamish, and I find spiders in real life cute / harmless5, but just typing this up has me shiver all over. There’s so many things that are just so wrong in the game world. You know how there’s a fight or flight response in the face of danger? I’m definitely leaning towards the former most times during the game, and it’s absolutely a fear response at this point. I’ve left that level behind me sometime last week, and now I’m at The Hive… bees… wasps… great. I’m telling you, the horror never ends. It only intensifies.
It’s a different experience than Metroid Prime, the game I played last year / two years ago. In Metroid, you’re Samus Aran, a human who has a superpowered suit that can turn her to a machine and a ball at the same time if need be. In Prime, she intercepts a distress call from a pirate crew murdered by its own mutant aliens and chases main villain Ridley to Talon IV, a planet where once the birdlike Chozo have lived but were eventually killed off by the radioactive material Phazon. Now, the world is barren, a stark beauty of overgrown plants, stark ice, and desert-like worlds. But there’s still Ghosts of those Chozos around — violent, though. The only one who supports you here is yourself at all times. No communication, no minor community, no cities like in Hollow Knight. Though like with Hollow Knight, Tallon houses infested bugs and dragons and all sorts of little bugs, all quite hostile. That’s not to speak of the pirates around here, who will start aping your main weapon (the Beam), and their research — Metroids, these jelly-like aliens with a brain and fierce claws outside of them. (Good luck when they claw at your visor… whole screen glitching out… haha) But Metroid doesn’t creep out, not like that. It induces fear, especially with those ghosts and Metroids the first time around. But there’s no heightened horror in it. Though that being said… I did shoot at things sometimes just out of sheer fear/annoyance, as well. Mostly, Metroid Prime made me sad and lonely in a strange world, navigating an existence that is (thankfully) not mine. I didn’t play the boss fight because (*static noise suspiciously sounding like “skill issue”*) but I did watch a walkthrough of it and the ending wrecked me. Not spoiling it, but suffice to say that the loneliness ends up reflected by the game, too. I suppose that a first person POV of a game will make it more credible when you say that you felt loneliness from a game. With a 2D platform game… to say you’re engaged, creeped out, etc it all becomes a tough sell and hard to understand from an outside perspective. But why should it be? It’s a story, a world unto itself, and a damn good one.
Hiroko Utsumi Needs To Be Tried For Fujoshi Crimes Idc Idc Idc
I’m not sure if you were there when it happened, that one short trailer that went “viral” on Tumblr. It came with a splash, and that’s what it was about: four pretty boys who were either shirtless or took their shirts off, standing in front of a pool, with characters so distinct already that it was easy to immediately imprint personality on them: the fiery redhead, the happy blonde, the considerate brownhaired character with warm green eyes and the brooding blue-haired character. What I remember is how upset weebs were that their beloved anime studio Kyoto Animation (KyoAni for short) did something for girls and not for them. That did not stop when the anime Free Iwatobi Swim Club happened a couple months later. There was this myth that “whales” made this anime happen because they just couldn’t contain their panties about an ad, but honestly, KyoAni doing ads to soft launch their original anime isn’t exactly a new thing or a Free exclusive, plus Free came with light novels that it… uh… loosely adapted from (take character names). Instead, Free is about youth: what happens when you don’t want to let your friends down and also chase your dream. The push and pull of the dream and the fear of taking a step. The way Hiroko Utsumi, the director, went on about it, may have started out rough, but in later episodes revealed a sensitive, thoughtful vision of teenage anxieties as the episodes progressed. The reason why the initial episodes are rough is that the show was uncertain in what a tone it wanted to have: haha-lol funny or gay or serious. And when I say gay… yeah… yeah. Rin (remember the redhead?) is the angry homosexual. Haruka is the bluehaired sad/withdrawn homosexual. Makoto is the kind, caring homosexual. Nagisa is the happy one, etc. But Utsumi’s favorite character was Rin and she always let us know that in the text: the supersized attention on Rin being the person to be saved in season one; the way he brought Haruka to Australia in season two — them only having one bed… bullshit gay lines… And I know that she liked them much better than Haruka and Makoto’s eventual “endgame” of them studying together at Tokyo University (we’re not getting into the ship wars today) because the angsty homosexual and angry/excited homosexual duo is one she’s chased relentlessly since: Banana Fish, an adaptation that nevertheless works neatly in her template; and SK8, which is Fast and the Free-urious except with skateboards (the hair colors of protagonists Ran and Langa? I’ll let you guess. One of them is hotheaded… the other is sad and a bit angsty…). Where’s Makoto in these situations? There’s no Makoto. That guy is usually a female character now, or someone who ends up dead. What it boils down to is her main couple. Utsumi is not interested in kindness or understanding, at least not right away, with those two. She likes the opposites, the initial irreconcilable, the tension that slowly works down and finally to them sharing their deepest traumas. In short… that woman is a fujoshi. I recognize my own; no, she didn’t raise me, be for real. (I was sixteen though when Free first aired, and yes, that anime used to loom large in my own fiction writing.) So when I see the trailer to this new series of hers, slated for 2024 — BUCCHIGIRI!? — all I know is that she’s just going to do what she always does, but worse. That thumbnail: short guy with black hair… tall guy… brown hair… green eyes…. I don’t know why Middle Eastern aesthetics and Arabic are in it… there’s an Adam (that fucking creepy weirdo from Sk8)-like character… obligatory girl… male duos together in one shot so you can neatly ship them. Every author writes the same story over and over, I know. GdT wants to fuck monsters. Utsumi likes to smash Ken dolls with one another all the time. Okay. I’m tired. Also, that height difference. Girl. Does it get even more uke? (And I guess she’s not tired of Makoto and Haruka, considering that character design style? But I don’t trust her. The bullshit is always around the corner. I’m calling angsty flashback and fucked up love triangle.) Obviously I’m tuned in for that. I have to put a fellow fujoshi on trial here! Here’s some Arabic for her until then: ya rab.
No, we’re not talking about arcs after the timeskip yet, because it completely kneecapped just about every Strawhats’s character. I haven’t seen/read past Wholecake Island Arc yet so take that opinion with a grain of salt too.
Early arcs of My Hero Academia have protagonist Deku in the exact same position Usopp is, though he won’t lie about so-called “wins” after. The one taking from the Zoro template there is Bakugou.
And I really do mean antics in the literal sense of saying some bullshit. Sexual violence or aligning with rapists, etc is a hard no for me.
My personal belief is that music is the only place where you can separate art from artist convincingly without condoning what the artist is up to.
no, don’t bring up tarantulas, there’s none of those in my real life