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media diary - june 2024

THE SEGA BRAIN GOO

so i didn't immediately get this blog out for the start of july because i was busy at work with the sonic video, an exercise in understanding a side of games i've been exposed to plenty but never took the time to really look into until this year, somehow. part of this meant that for the start of june, a lot of my time was spent researching for the project, but i ended up sidetracked by an excellent documentary series on every american-released sega saturn game by pandamonium. the series, due to its incredible depth and consideration for an often undermined corner of game history, had me hooked and ended up being a big influence on how my own video turned out. give those videos a watch! at Least watch the sega rally and virtua cop videos -- they're the longest, and also the most extravagant, some of the best i've ever seen on youtube as a whole and i'm NOT kidding.

i spent a lot of time collecting footage for the video, the bulk of which was random sega saturn demo discs (for the sake of variety without consuming much time on my end) and that ended up being a really fun experience. i'm used to the playstation, so trying out games on a similar but far less recognised platform felt like a parallel dimension situation. this motivated my conclusion in the video that sonic is maybe one of the least interesting parts of SEGA's lineage, because the variety of their home consoles And arcade games is unmatched. this also got me to start playing SHENMUE II, which i'll talk about more next month.

otherwise, i was really busy this month, so i didn't really get round to checking out as much as i wanted to (i still haven't finished DUNGEON MESHI), so this month's lineup ended up a little mundane compared to the usual. and yet...!

[01/06/2024] WELCOME BACK MR. MCDONALD

i finally get a reason to write about this movie!!!

WELCOME BACK MR. MCDONALD is one of my favorite movies of all time, one i only saw for the first time a couple of years ago but immediately felt greatly attached to. so attached, in fact, that i went out of my way to discuss it in my first kingdom hearts video, associating its interpretation of the creative process with the reality that many people and many components and many decisions affected the outcome that is the original kingdom hearts, let alone basically every game ever made.

much more recently, around the end of may, a new subtitle translation was put up online, so i thought it would be a great opportunity to rewatch the movie AND show it to my friend -- clove, who also showed me wim wenders' PERFECT DAYS a couple months prior -- and we had a great time!! i loved rewatching it, but rewatching it WITH someone watching it for the first time was just so much fun. this is a god darn RIOT of a movie on top of its resonant themes of creativity and if you haven't seen it please watch it and also show all your friends and infect the world with mitani fever.

[03/06/2024] JIM HENSON: IDEA MAN

the same day as i saw the emotional gutpunch of AMERICAN UTOPIA, may 31st, this documentary about jim henson was put out and i just wasn't ready to watch it the same day. so i watched it a few days later!

i'm always a little unsettled by official biographical stuff, whether it's hollywood'd up biopics or secondhand documentaries like this one, and disney have been particularly weird about the muppets over the past decade. last year they put out an electric mayhem tv show that caught the franchise up with modern trends, and while much of its clunkiness put me off i felt optimistic for the fact they were doing Anything with the m- it got cancelled it was cancelled they didn't renew the show

i'll complain to no end about the state of TV and streaming sites, but despite the muppets as a franchise being in this precarious position i think a documentary about jim henson is probably a well-considered fit for streaming. i was hopeful, even, once i discovered that ron "live action grinch" howard was involved as director, because i mean come on. it's the live action grinch guy.

and the actual documentary itself is pretty good! it packs maybe too much info into a short ish run time but there's a strong amount of insight and sensitivity, necessary for how influential henson was and the tragedy of his early passing. it is immensely respectful, which meant i teared up a few times because the man's work is just too powerful. generally, i really liked this, but if you don't subscribe to disney+ (which you really really shouldn't, i leech off a family plan) i would recommend the defunctland documentary series on youtube that goes more in-depth.

[17/06/2024] LOST IN TRANSLATION

i'm gonna level with you - right here - right now - june was pretty rough for me. video work kept me going but i had to move out of my dorm this month, and rather than immediately moving into another house i'm staying with my family for the summer. my university town and my family's home town are vastly different from each other, so it was pretty jarring going from a place i really enjoy where i'm surrounded by friends i love to a place where i'm alienated and feel out of place (home town is full of old people, i'm young, you can imagine how it is).

totally unrelated to that, the first movie i watched upon getting here was about bill murray and scarlet johannsson being alienated in a country where they feel out of place.

this might come across a little out of place for me, but i assure you my reason for checking this out was ultra simple: i was working on the sonic video, in which i talk about the band HAPPY END, and through researching their whole deal and looking for footage, the one recurring thing that kept coming up was that their song "kaze wo atsumete" was made popular internationally by the sofia coppola movie "lost in translation". so naturally, i wanted to see how the song was featured here! (ain't the first time i've recently seen a movie for music reasons -- i watched the far-from-perfect LAST EMPEROR for its composers david byrne and ryuichi sakamoto).

having now seen the movie, the usage of happy end didn't have any central importance, being atmospheric background karaoke music and not some major emotional needle drop, but it is factually on the soundtrack so it's not like it wouldn't have received some kind of recognition there. i'm not so bummed out over it though, because the rest of the movie actually hit me for reasons i wasn't expecting?!?

the premise of the movie is maybe just "bill murray goes to japan" which wasn't really immediately getting me, but throughout there's a dissociative energy which quickly shows the point that it's going for. i was really, Really worried the movie would be xenophobic, and some scenes do come across that way, and according to a bunch of letterboxd reviews the movie is problematic for it, which i can sympathise with. pretty much every japanese character is just in the background or there for some awkward interaction and it Would've hindered my enjoyment if the movie wasn't literally named "lost in translation" -- any portrayed ignorance is pretty much just the protagonists' ignorance, since they're in an environment they're not accustomed to whatsoever, and i found that pretty relatable. i've felt a lot of disconnection from my surroundings lately, so i surprisingly resonated with this but definitely not because said surroundings are karaoke and arcade rhythm games.

what i didn't resonate with is the two main characters' relationship! why is someone so young falling in love with Bill God Darn Murray! that makes no sense! i thought it was just meant to be platonic and cute but then they fuckin kissed?! what?!?!? are you kidding me?!?!??!??!

[25/06/2024-] SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI V: VENGEANCE

in my new year's article i addressed that i played persona 5 a bunch last year after starting it in late 2022, but the more i played of that the less i liked it. it reached a point where the traits of each main character got repetitive and on my nerves and it just got really exhausting for something i played for 70 hours and was meant to play for another 70. it's not great!

however

the parent series, shin megami tensei, seems exceedingly more appealing. the only thing is that, uh, RPGs are long! there are so many of them, and deciding which one to sink time into can be tough, so i always need some kind of reason to justify such a time sink -- in the case of kingdom hearts, that's a video series i'm committed to, but that means it's becoming rare for a game to grab me while it isn't for a video project. but! earlier this year atlus announced SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI V VENGEANCE, an updated version of the latest entry in the SMT series that would release on every platform after the original was exclusive to switch. this is something i rarely get to partake in -- a new entry, in a series i'm interested in checking out, that doesn't rely on previous titles, which a whole lot of other people would check out at the same time because of its ports to other platforms.

and so, courtesy of my pal ASHLEY as a birthday gift (thank you!!!!), i got to check out a shin megami tensei game and thoroughly enjoy it in the moment. it feels exceptional just because i NEVER get new games, and if i do it's like the one major new release i get from that year (last year it was tears of the kingdom, the year prior it was splatoon 3, etc). on top of this, it is also a Very Very good game!!! the open-world RPGing it features is highly addictive, and everything is just challenging enough that to overcome a new enemy or boss is really satisfying. it feels like my dives into older styles of gameplay has paid off here, because the combat is very traditional for japanese role-playing standards but it's recontextualised for newer audiences, making for a really appealing combo of old and new. i'm assuming the mainline SMT games have a lineage of maintaining the original combat style, much like mainline dragon quest does, but even if V is radically different it still makes for possibly the most fun i've had with an "open world" game.

compared with persona it just feels so much more focused, set on giving the player an engaging combat/exploration/story loop that's tight as hell. i'm only 15 hours in as of writing, but the way this game's elements synchronize with each other is perfect and even just vibes-wise i fuck with it a whole ton. it's appropriately oppressive yet the demons you meet are so unabashedly Themselves that it almost feels like the queer alternative to persona 5's closeted teen physique. and, despite the series' reputation, SMTV is super accessible and the combat system is really easy to get into. if you're an RPG fan at all, Holy Shit Dude, Play This Game.

[29/06/2024] LET IT BE

another one out of left field, but about as recent as the jim henson documentary, is disney+'s other release from may that frustratingly caught my attention.

a few years ago they put out GET BACK, the documentary series made with the tons of footage of a specific period near the beatles' breakup that they put through a weird AI filter to make it look "HD" and ended up being like nine hours long in total. it's undeniably an important cultural document, bringing new context to a vital point in time for a persistently known-about band, but it's also kind of a redo of the documentary they used all that footage for at the time, and man i dont know why im saying all this its the god damn beatles

annoyingly, i like the beatles a lot, because i heard their music a ton as a kid and so it's pretty nostalgic for me. i'm interested in garbage like this because it's fascinating historically, but i kinda find it difficult to take enjoyment in this band as a group of people over just the music they produce. i have no empathy for any individual beatle, so watching a documentary that compiles footage with no narrative direction is maybe not really my thing. i saw it out of curiosity anyway, because the lord of the rings guy remastered it with marginally better visual AI tech, and on a technical level it's nice to see it be restored in this way but MAN it's just not really a good watch. i can't recommend it, especially if you don't even like the beatles. ended my month on a weird note.

july >>