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media diary - october 2024

[XX/10/2024] STUFF I STARTED

october was a long ass month, a lot of things happened and so this media diary entry is arriving late because i lost track of a lot of things. the good news is i ultimately feel better but it was a rough month for me and i came out the other side with not much to recite. between "real life" keeping me busy, the game i completed and released on itch.io, and the amount of leisure time being used up for video work, i just haven't played or watched or Consumed all that much.

along the way i lightly checked a few things out before losing the momentum to keep going, like the new science saru anime DANDADAN. it drew me in with its occult themes and character dynamics but i lost motivation to keep watching after the third episode. not that i disliked it, but as i said, i just got too busy. i also watched some of the new RANMA 1/2 remake and was planning to watch the UZUMAKI anime until episode 2 happened and everyone realised the show lacked a substantial production budget. for once, i was ready to try new anime and keep up with currently ongoing media (which is rare for me lol) but it just didn't work out. maybe i'll keep watching dandadan when i'm in the mood!

the whole month being a blur in my memory means i don't have much to talk about, though there's some seasonally appropriate spookster stuff:

[03/10/2024] HOUSE

HOUSE is immensely highly regarded and well-known in the film dweeb space. as someone who's ended up in love with a weirdly high number of japanese movies it's something i should've seen sooner, because this is, like, Freak Movie #1, in the best possible way. i'd been planning to actually finally check it out for a while, and as soon as october started i wanted to kick off halloween season with something i was confident would set the tone for the rest of my month. and it Sorta did!

this is not my first NOBUHIKO OBAYASHI movie, actually. earlier this year i watched BOUND FOR THE FIELDS, THE MOUNTAINS AND THE SEACOAST, a heartcrushing wartime movie that left me feeling hollow, in a good way. so i knew this director is capable of that kind of emotional devastation, but from the outside HOUSE looked more like a lighter, goofier party of a time. the scraps of visual fuckery i'd seen from this thing before watching made it look Fun, and it didn't disappoint.

this is one of very few movies i've seen where the editing is the highlight. the way visual techniques are used to blur the line between artificiality and reality, how the supernatural events that take place are represented in scrappy manipulation of film assets and how even ordinary scenes unaffected by the campy horror of the story are still presented in surreal and unconventional ways. soon before this movie came out obayashi was known for being a TV commercial director, and clearly that experience in eye-catching visuals intended for 15-30 second ads is carried over here. it's got that idealized commercial-style false reality energy the whole way through, even when characters are literally being killed.

overall i get why this is such a famous movie. if i was a film student and i saw this shit i'd wanna make them too, but for now i can deal with being a small-scale video producer still inspired by this sorta stuff. this ruled.

[16/10/2024] AO ONI

so i didn't play very many horror games this month, i was busy recording footage for upcoming video(s), but i did take a moment to check out AO ONI for the simple reason that it's gotten confusingly huge this year. like, in japan at least, AO ONI reached similar levels as those mascot horror franchises that infect malls and tourism spots with cheap plushies, except this one's cool because it was a 2008 RPG maker game. because of this weird explosion of ao oni stuff the game got a bit of a resurgence leading to me feeling like i should see what its deal is.

i feel pretty indifferently about AO ONI though, i'll be real. it's a survival horror done in the rpgmaker engine, with the puzzles and the monster thats comin to Get Ya, and said monster is a freaky little guy. like he's just a weird little freak. i think the appeal stems from how much of a little weirdo he is. other than that it's got a very real atmosphere but it's one i don't feel too strongly about, and i think a lot of my enjoyment was interrupted by the awkward trial and error of a lot of gameplay sequences. as a first time player i used a Lot of save scumming, and a guide every step of the way, resulting in a janky experience.

i don't wanna be mean to this game, it made me nostalgic for its era of freeware, but i think i just don't like this sort of thing in general. i appreciate the simultaneously childish and animalistic nature of the oni though. i feel the same way about super mario. weird little freak creatures.

[20/10/2024] THE GIRL WHO CONQUERED TIME

HOUSE was good enough that i wanted to keep watching more obayashi movies, and i was planning on doing a marathon before realising this guy has directed a LOT. i checked out a couple others from around the same time as house which i don't have as much to say about and his earlier student film EMOTION. EMOTION rules. and though i was planning to watch even more, i stopped here: THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME. or the girl who conquered time. letterboxd calls it "the little girl who conquered time". the japanese title is "toki o kakeru shojo". the original book is named "toki o kakeru shojo". it has been officially translated as "the girl who leapt through time" when the 2006 adaptation came out in english. if i was in charge i'd just call it TIME GIRL.

a fun fact about me is that the 2006 version was the first (non-ghibli) anime i watched; i haven't seen it since 2010 but i remember it being pretty different from how this 1983 obayashi adaptation does it. VERY different, because the rules in the anime version were clearly defined but the rules in this earlier version are nebulous and surreal, which would align pristinely with the collaged style from HOUSE, but obayashi's got range and was able to make TIME GIRL a beautifully cosy family movie. i say family movie, because this whole thing has the vibe of something you'd watch as a kid and remember fondly, like it'd be in the DVD shelf and you'd return to it and reminisce. i might feel that way because i already watched a different variation of the story, though it is also overwhelmingly felt in the setting of this movie. the town its set in feels like home.

and it also hits close to home -- TIME GIRL starts slow, but the last third of this thing is a series of emotions that culminate in a message that punched me hard, arriving to me at the perfect time for it to positively devastate me. it's helped a lot, at a time when i've felt particularly pessimistic about the circumstances of my lifestyle. so uh yeah oops! i love this one a lot!

[25/10/2024] IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN

i was waiting all year til the right season to watch this. if you'd believe it it was my first time watching this special!! funnily enough the simpsons parody of this special is a formative memory for me, so i was already vaguely familiar for it to *feel* homely and nostalgic. it's cute i liked it :)