Return to Oz: A Summer Wars Retrospective

Summer Wars is a 2009 animated film from director Mamoru Hosoda. It was his third feature and a spiritual and personal remake of his earlier Digimon film, Our War Game, which made up the second segment of Saban’s Digimon: The Movie. What makes Summer Wars still so spectacular over ten years later? Read on as I return to this classic anime film.

REVIEW: Pikuniku

This is another game I picked up in itch.io's Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. I've heard about it before and regretted not getting it when it was on sale for $0.99 on the Switch, so I'm glad I was finally able to play it. But was it worth the wait?

Remembering Mineral Town

 

Harvest Moon is a JRPG series of farming simulators where the objective is to grow crops and tend to livestock instead of fighting monsters and exploring dungeons. Players also interact with the locals and build relationships with them, which usually concludes in a wedding. The franchise has had it's ups and downs over the years, but without a doubt the best Harvest Moon game was Friends of Mineral Town on the Game Boy Advance. 

Transforming heroes team up in Marcelo Biott’s InfraCity

No matter what we do, it seems as though tokusatsu is destined to remain underground in the west. Japanese superheroes, as cool as they are, make a leap toward the mainstream every few years, but never stick the landing. As with many things in this world: if you want something, you’ve got to do it yourself. This is the advice independent comic illustrator Marcelo Biott took when creating his tokusatsu-inspired epic webcomic: InfraCity.

REVIEW: Spiritfarer

Life simulators have been getting a nice renaissance lately. Indie games like Stardew Valley are outselling Triple A franchises, Animal Crossing has overtaken the internet, and the once mocked concepts of farming and dressing up a room have risen as one of the staples video gaming today. Spiritfarer is a very different take on the subgenre. It's not exactly a life simulator. It's actually an afterlife simulator.

Recasting the Children of Thanos

When Gamora and Nebula appeared in 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy, I was blown away by the idea that Thanos adopted a bunch of aliens, trained them to be killers, and pitted them against each other until rivalries formed among them. I was excited to hear that four more of his "children" would appear in Infinity War - imagine my disappointment when they ended up just being generic CGI characters who don't even really have names. I've never done a fancast before, certainly not one for a movie that came out 2 years ago, but that's not going to stop me from fixing this mess.

Could an American Version of Bakuman Work?

Bakuman is a manga series from Death Note creators Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata published in Weekly Shonen Jump that follows a pair of young manga creators. It's known for it's realistic and accurate portrayal of the highs and lows of the manga industry and for bringing Jump's behind the scenes operations into the public. It's also damn good. Every time I read it I ask myself the same question: could an American version of this work?