In which my criticism and appreciation for the Matrix Resurrections are expressed

The world had changed a lot in the time between 2003 and 2021. The Wachowskis had their gender resignments separately. Keanu Reeves had some highs and lows before he returned to the high of “being inseparable from a film franchise” with the John Wick flicks. Yours truly had turned from “chasing that ‘cutting edge’” to “go portable or go get bent” in terms of gaming. All in all, 18 years is a long time to release a sequel after. And Joel Silver was not producing this one.

Despite the Wachowskis’ statement that they would not make another Matrix sequel back in the aughts, Warner sure kept the franchise cooking, including a failed attempt to chase World of Warcraft. In fact, Matrix Online’s “shadow” remains until these days, or at least over this movie released in 2021.

Since the Matrix Resurrections were on Max the same day as the theatrical release, here in the city hosting miHoYo global headquarters the movie is watchable through you-know-how method (Same method I watched Dune Part 1). That was a freezing day in late December, 2021, a couple of days before Christmas and given the movie’s title, it is fittingly a very Christmas Movie, capital C and M, about miracles.

The Bad

2003’s Revolutions is not a whole Matrix movie on its own. It’s a direct continuation of Reloaded and it lacks the one key factor of Matrix opening: Trinity whacking dudes and running from Agents. Resurrections does open with Trinity whacking dudes as an homage to the 1999 original with both upgrade and downgrade. The dudes getting whacked are upgraded since they are fully kitted SWAT armed with full-automatic weapons. “Trinity” herself is the direct-to-video counterpart to the character played by Carrie-Anne Moss. The behind-the-scene material in the home media release call the cast member in this scene a stunt performance rather than an actor.

But direct-to-video Trinity is not point-of-view character here, a new lass named Bugs is. Introducing herself with “Bugs as in ‘Bunny’” is the first sign of this movie saying “Try not to take this one too seriously”. Bugs meets the lead Agent, a black man called Smith in a peaceful talk, gunpoint not withdrawn. This Black Smith says he is waiting for someone who can get him out and Bugs does so. Only it’s not out of the Matrix but a Modal, something closer to Construct in the previous movies in terms of its relatively small scale.

After this we got somewhere similar to the first act of the 1999 original: Keanu Reeves as Thomas Anderson unknowingly in the Matrix. But Anderson is no longer a low ranked employee but a combination of id’s 2 Johns with some Hideo Kojima dust on the top. The real Geoff Keighley even gave this movie a fake TGA trophy as prop, since Anderson won it in 1999 for a video game titled Matrix. Unlike in the 1999 original, he is not looking for Morpheus but pining for a married woman with kids played by Carrie-Anne Moss. Then, Thomas “Johns Kojima” Anderson was tasked to make Matrix the fourth as a video game, with all the brainstorming bullshit to follow.

After this dicking around, Black Smith, or Morpheus the machine, tries to get Anderson to remember about Neo and get him out of the Matrix in Anderson’s office. As it follows the 1999 original, Anderson simply cannot do it in his office while the second time is the charm. Plus, a woman has to ask Tommy Anderson nicely. Anderson at the end of history once again turns into Neo in the desert of real and sees Trinity, actually played by Moss here, in the pod close to him. Another “Stop trying to hit me and hit me” sparring against Morpheus the machine, Neo is finally back to the future.

Here in miHoYo’s country of origin and before Reeves flicks got banned for the actor’s statements regarding Tibet, the Matrix Resurrections were officially released with the subtitle “ju zhen chong qi”, meaning “matrix rebooted” literally. It’s a fitting title when this first act is concerned.

Personally, I think this Force Awakens bullshit is the bad part of this movie. A fan girl (Rey/Bugs) looking for the legend of old, assisted by a black actor who deserves a whole movie banked on his own (John Boyega/Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Then beat by beat, the classic tale unfolds as if it’s time of old. And the Merovingian’s guest appearance later is pure cringe. However, Lana Wachowski has a much better sense with science fiction than Abrams, and this new desert of real had more to offer than the so-called era of resistance.

The Good

Neo thinks wrongly that his effort in Revolutions mounts to little. As Neo recovers and starts to settle in Bugs’ much newer hovercraft (The more animal tail looking rear being the dead giveaway for audience), he starts to notice the machine crew members. Apparently the “men versus machines” binary is gone now.

Humanity has a new city called I/O and here they live a better life with the assistance of the machines who have “bleed hearts”. It’s no utopia but it’s gentler than Zion’s more militarized mentality. Niobe is the third face from the original trilogy here, though “Mrs. Will Smith” is unrecognizable under all that aging make-up. Here there is almost a retracking of Reloaded, another guided tour of another human city. There is fake sky that also serves a water and air filter. There is an orchard to grow fruits in. There is the memento for Morpheus, the one played by Lawrence Fishburne that is. Apparently, Matrix Online’s assassination of Morpheus is canon in this one. Guess Lana Wachowski can only undo her part for the franchise.

While the rest of this movie is about rescuing Trinity, it’s nice to be reminded where Neo where rescue her to. The final rescue mission lays out like a heist and ultimately Trinity does things the One does, namely flying and implied that she got administer access to the Matrix system like Neo after he got shot by Smith for the first time. Over all it’s a happy ending, but I cannot shock the feeling that it’s just the ending of that 1999 film.

The “Ugly”

Watching Resurrections within 24 hours after watching the 2003 sequels is seeing how much worse movies look compared to yesteryear. Despite the amount of digital effect in them, the 2003 movies were still largely shot on films. The 2021 movie looks like it’s taped rather than filmed. Those shots with Keanu Reeves in the sunlight do make the man look like a polygonal model, a very detailed one mind you but still a sense of fake, rather than a human being. Makes me wonder if is video game “rising” to the level of movie or is movie “lowering” itself to video game. After all, no polygonal photoreal game nails the “filmed” feel outside grains.

Lana Wachowski likes video games or so her IMDB page told me. One small aspect of Resurrections makes me believe it. It can be called flashbacks, with glimpses into the trilogy, usually after a plot point is referenced. Kind of like Guns of Patriots. And of course, the way Jonathan Groff’s Smith menaces Neo is quite like Liquid Ocelot menacing Old Snake.

And then there is the action. I think they are okay. Obviously cannot be compared to the first 2 movies. Since this 2021 one is more of a farce, Revolutions’ war scenes are not here either. But after seeing Reeves almost killed his fellow John Wick 4 cast member by saying that opening scene in the final fight of Revolutions took 95 takes, it’s only understandable why Lana Wachowski took a more laid-back approach for Resurrections.

The last of Triple A

Wachowskis seem to like naming the antagonists with A-words: Agent, Architect and, this is on Lana alone, Analyst. Agents are the only kind who trade blows with the good guys. Architect, aka an evil Santa Claus looking motherfucker, is the one who kept part of humanity alive, so no point for the One to punch him in the face. Then there is Neil Patrick Harris as the Analyst, one woman-hating program who control humanity through feeling. (Or is it “necessary fiction”?) Yours truly first saw Harris when he hosted Spike TV’s Video Game Award 2010, and seeing Trinity’s victory lap over his character in Resurrections feels good.

Compared to Smith and other Agents, Analyst is a more active warden of this digital prison. While Agents only enforce rules, this one make their own. They completely embrace the void left by state power and corporate interest by stepping into the lie for profit business. They are a clown fuck for sure, but at least they surpass Smith the virus on the insidious front.

Red, blue and “poison”

Four installment trilogy can be seen as the story of Keanu Reeves’ life. Or at least the part involves franchises. John Wick is another one starring him with humble beginning, robust middle and a long-awaited ending. Though John Wick 4 did well enough for Liongate to consider sequel, so Chan Stahelski will be ready with a metaphorical shovel and some myth can be made into cold hard fact. Lana Wachowski seems more lucky on that front, with a piece of fan fiction bringing back old favorites mainly for herself, and assholes like yours truly at least appreciate the motion. Warner can make its extraction shooter and call it Matrix Online 2, I would just jack out happy seeing Neo and Trinity doing their “Cyptonians on Earth” thing. At least until a Christmas day when I want to see something dumb fun.

(The End)

Double Feature: The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions

“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain.” Thank you, Mr. Jonathan Nolan, yours truly always have a fondness for your bullshit. Though I can only see the part after that comma applying to Hollywood. After the Matrix became a surprise hit in 1999, how would its benefactor Warner handle its sequel(s)? The budget skyrocketing was a given, more merchandising is not too unreasonable (Though I’m bias since the “first pair of sunglasses for ‘baby’” I wore got a sticker says “Terminator 2 Judgement Day” on it.).

The real villainy, however, laid in making the sequels into a multimedia extravaganza in 2003. Not only there were 2 feature length movies released within 6 months from each other, a CG short and a tie-in video game are also part of this long war. However, as the title said, this piece is only about a Mr. Cyberpunk’s part in it.

During the last big boy E3 back in 2019, Keanu Reeves was on the stage of Microsoft announcing his casting as Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077. As far as stunt casting goes, it is a fitting one since Reeves can be seen as Hollywood’s Mr. Cyberpunk. After all, he had gone through high (1999’s Matrix), low (1995’s Johnny Mnemonic, up to that point, and afterwards 2021’s Matrix Resurrections for many but not for me.) and something between.

This “something between” is where this piece comes in: 2003’s Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions. Despite a combined runtime of more than 5 hours, Last Flight of Osiris, live action cut scenes of Enter the Matrix and those 2 movies cover a much shorter period of time. 36 hours give or take, compared to the at least a week in the 1999 and the least a couple of days in Resurrections. The Machines decide that they are done with meat bags so they send an army to wipe humanity out. Morpheus is sure that it would be the Chosen One’s moment to shine and achieve salvation. He is right in conclusion but some zigzag is needed to get there, as the Wachowskis like to do with their Matrix stories. But first, translations.

The Matrix Reloaded was translated as “hei ke di guo er chong zhuang shang zhen” in my neck of wood. The “er” there is number 2 and the four characters after it do mean “Reloaded and ready to fight”. It is a fitting translation given the stop Nebuchadnezzar and her crew make at the city Zion. The hovercraft Morpheus, Neo and Trinity serve on needs to be recharged and the audience need to be shown the stack. Zion is booked as the last city for humanity in the 1999 original and the machines are gunning for it in the sequels.

The Matrix Revolutions was translated as “hei ke di guo san ju zhen ge ming” and I laughed my ass off at this one even as a thirteen-year-old. The “san” there is the number 3 as people who watched Netiflix’s “castrated” adaption of Three-body Problem would know (Oh, how the GOT duo managed to do the Woman Who Sold the World dirtier than Cersi Lannister!). Then the four characters after this number simply repeat Matrix Revolutions all over again. “Ju zhen” is simply how matrix the math jargoning is translated in Chinese.

This One fucks

Reloaded opens similarly enough to the 1999 original, with Trinity whacking dudes. The much bigger budget can be seen on the screen since she did so after causing an explosion with some motorbike stun. The “dudes” here are a downgrade though since they are security guards with batons rather than uniformed cops with guns. Then the time skipped a bit ahead and Trinity is running from an Agent. The bigger budget put to use again, she is dual wielding Uzis while falling down a building. The Agent falls in pursuit and manages to shoot her rather fatally in the torso. Shocker, the leading lady is killed merely minutes into the sequel. Or is she since this is just a dream of Neo played by Reeves.

1969’s Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert will be mentioned here since the Wachowskis and George Lucas were both shamelessly stealing from this book in the aughts. Neo’s blinding in Revolutions sure is from it so is Anakin Skywalker foreseeing Padme dies giving birth in Star War Episode 3. This business in Reloaded is bit more complicated.

Allow me to first let the cat out of the bag, the Chosen One in the Matrix story would not bring salvation for all humanity. Neo himself feels it. The Oracle, who is revealed to be a machine program in Reloaded, more or less confirms it. This is the merits of the 2003 movies, under the simple “men versus machine” premise, the machines do not march on locked in goosestep, they have different ideas about controlling humanity. Something the 2 running 3 Body Problem on Netflix had learned this.

After trading words and blows with some other rogue machine programs called Exiled, Neo meets the leading machine program called Architect. There the truth of Chosen One among humans is revealed: the major of humanity would be wiped out and the One would lead a tiny group of survivors to multiple yet again. It would be the seventh time in those movies. As Neo himself put it, it’s “another form of control” with the Oracle being part of this control. However, Neo does break this circle in Revolutions with the reason that he is the One who fucks.

Neo and Trinity can be seen sharing bunker and bed at the very beginning of Reloaded. As soon as the two are alone in a lift of Zion, they start to make out. All on-screen language to say that they are an item. It would be awkward if they are not after what Trinity said to a dying Neo in the first movie. During the orgy like dancing party (another thing lifted from Dune Messiah I might add), those 2 sneak out of the party and play horizontal tennis in the privacy of a bedroom. Happy time except Trinity’s expression for orgasm reminds Neo of seeing her die in his dream.

In Dune Messiah, the Chosen One Paul foresees the love of his life Chani dies giving birth. Reason on print is more acceptable than the bullshit in Star Wars: Chani takes fatally dangerous treatment involving Spices to bear twins. While Trinity is not confirmed to be pregnant in Matrix sequels, the situation is not too different. The One meeting the Architect requires elaborate plan. One phase goes pear-shaped with everyone involved there dies, so Trinity goes in to get that part of job done, leading to the whole opening shocker. The Architect gives Neo a binary choice, and with Neo having a more personal attachment to Trinity, he goes down the save one in risk of all path. It would have been more triumph had Trinity not died in Revolutions anyway. Then again, had Neo not been blinded she would not have to accompany him to the parlor with machines. Why couldn’t you just leave the blinding from Dune Messiah out, Wachowskis?

What the fuck had they done to you, Smithy?

Neo in many ways is in a “make love not war” mindset in the 2003 movies. He does not use guns for starters. He is not on the offense in any of his action scenes: first he has to knock out the 3 Agents so his friends can leg it; then Seraph, the Oracle’s bodyguard, has a sparring with him as identification; soon after that he meets the legions of Smiths and goes medieval on some rouge programs. Then there are the 2 fights against Smith in Revolutions, first to save Trinity in the meat space then for sake of machine and humanity alike in the Matrix.

All in all, Neo fights Smith 4 times across the 2 sequels. Except the one in meat space with very different style from Yuen crew’s wire works, those in the Matrix are underwhelming. The inherent vice being: why the fuck is Smith still around? The Wachowskis claimed that Neo learning about the machines and Smith learning about the humans run parallel, but in many ways, the siblings did not have the chop to put it off in a satisfying way. Smith is a clown fuck in the sequels, without the convincing menace he put up in the 1999 original. The lines are gibberish and repetitive. The action relied heavily on CGI in ways not even 2021’s Resurrections did. Audience had hoped for the Chosen One of humanity having a better peace offering to the machine than wiping out a self-multifil clown-like virus, but the siblings clearly wrote themselves into a corner. At least on this front.

Those who do have to fight this war

“The path of the One is made by the many” said the Oracle in either of the movies. It’s a line in Enter the Matrix’s live action cut scene shot after the role had to be recast. Yours truly had never played the game, however the cut scenes are included in Matrix Reloaded’s home media release, the blu-ray menu rather cheekily calls those “additional footage”. According to those, Enter the Matrix has a similarly cliffhanging ending and Revolutions serves as the conclusion to the video game as well. Lana Wachowski kept Niobe played by “Mrs. Will Smith” in the 2021 movie for good reason.

Despite how underwhelming the Chosen One’s part is in Revolutions, I personally prefer the fall release than Reloaded. The main reason being how Revolutions pulls off the heavily industrialized future warfare, CGI swarm not withdrawn. It’s properly bloody given those are R-rated movie. It has the Pyrrhic Victory vibe. A shot of human’s heavy machine gun malfunctions and severely injures the crew is a detail highlighting the whole endeavor. It’s almost if that science fiction franchise with “war” in its name should have died in shame compared to this.

Zion, it’s over.

Thanks to Abnormal Mapping, this meme stays vividly alive in my mind, as they put it out after they suffered through Mobile Suit Gundam Seed and SAG’s more bark than bite strike. And if this is a retrospective for the Matrix’ 20^th anniversary, Revolutions would have been the end. However, a new movie did come out in the 5 years between and I do consider it a more fitting trilogy coda while the 2003 movies serve more like a robust middle chapter.

I was only 13 years old when I saw them first. Reloaded not ending with a climatic action piece somehow dampened my enjoyment of it and its long-to-my-13-year-old-self explanations did not help either. But that little shit was yet to see real snoozefest such as Neon Gensis Evangelion and things branded “A Hideo Kojima Game”. Watched it as a 29-year-old and 34-year-old, yours truly just see Reloaded as a summer blockbuster that was rightfully well-received. That highway chase without Neo is the shit! I watched Revolutions with my maternal grandmother, who had not watched the 2 before. But she did enjoy the war scenes as much as I did. I of course found the tragedy bit too much to swallow, and apparently at least one of the Wachowskis thought so as well.

(To be concluded in Holiday Special)

Where 1999’s Matrix is discussed

Ready to feel old, my fellow millennials? The Matrix celebrates its 25^th anniversary on March, 31^st, 2024 as we almost get through the first quarter of the 21^st century. It felt as if yesterday when the 1999 movie was the new hotness mimicked by many. Back in 2019, this movie’s 20^th anniversary was celebrated more, in noticeable or otherwise ways. The most noticeable being that March’s trailer for John Wick 3 where Reeves repeated the immortal line “Guns. Lots of guns.” with more emphasis on the word “guns”. Less noticeable included the first season finale of Netflix’s animated Ultraman show where a fight was changed from the manga to look more like Neo’s victory lap over Smith.

Here in the year of 2024 common era, nothing marks the moment. There may be argument to made that Warner releasing Dune Part 2 in March, 2024 is celebrating the 25^th anniversary of Matrix, Dune by Frank Herbert is the grandfather of Chosen One narrative in science fiction after all. But we all know the delay is due to SAG’s more bark than bite strike last year, right? Still, that didn’t stop me from wanting to watch the Matrix again when I put up with people’s bad cinema manners watching Dune 2. Now I did the rewatch and had some thoughts.

What’s in names?

I first saw the Matrix in theatre on my 10^th birthday with my dad, who had been a Reeves fans since Speed (No, I am not sure about how he feels about John Wick flicks.). That was in January, 2000 so you can see that it took a long time for the movie to come out in my neck of the wood. Of course, that was wide release as the movie had some limited screenings in Shanghai in June, 1999 as part of the city’s international film festival. During those 2 releases, the Matrix was released under 2 different titles: first as “er shi er shi ji sha ren wang luo”(22^nd Century Killer Network) then as “hei ke di guo”(Hacker Empire). Neither came close, heh?

As an expansive Hollywood flick, the Matrix was of course sold on Names. Question is whose? The Wachowskis, “authors” of it were still nobody. While this was not their directorial debut, they were still too fresh faced to sell a blockbuster on. The names of Reeves and Fishburne were on the poster, but the former was in a low point while the latter lacks er, international appeal shall we say. Then there is a Name that would attract investors and audience alike, producer Joel Sliver.

Sliver produced quite some high-octane action flicks of the 1980s and the 1990s, including Christmas classic Lethal Weapon. Legend has it, he insisted on Nakatomi Palaz having its top blown up in Die Hard. The Wachowskis might have the idea of doing Hong Kong wire-fu stunt in the Matrix, but without Sliver, they would not even have the money for plane tickets to fly Yuen’s crew to Australia.

Compared to other “Joel Sliver Productions”, one might say that the Matrix lacks high speed car chases. I mean even the “button episode” Die Hard has 2 car stuns. The battles are fought within buildings and high speed chases are strictly on foot. Wonder if that’s due to Yuen’s stunt team’s expertise.

From end of history to desert of real

Talking about the Matrix’ action is getting ahead of ourselves. While the movie opens with action and more or less closes with it, it wants to tell you a story or at least show you a world. First there is an ass kicking hacker lady named Trinity escaping from cops in the at least contemporary to its release time setting. Her objective before she has to leg it is to find someone called Neo. Then a clean-shaved Keanu Reeves appears as this Neo and the first 30 minutes or so are about his paranoia inducing sad lot in life, including getting gestapo shit done to him by 3 men in black. Strangely enough, he got shut up at the cops’ will and a mechanical bug put in.

Eventually Neo met up with a group of armed to their teeth hacker group. They removed the bug in him at gunpoint. Their leader Morpheus greeted Neo as if a man found his long-lost son. After the famous choice of “Red versus Blue”, Neo finally got out of the virtual “end of the history” he lived and came to the desert of real. The “22nd Century Killer Network” translation is probably taken from Morpheus’ remark that they are closer to the year 2199. Machine Intelligence is the apex of planet Earth and homo sapiens are their power source.

Warner used to have a winning formula on their not-adaption-nor-sequel front. Some “well-read” writer-director came up an idea forged from some stuff they viewed and wrote a script for science fiction action movie. While action would be a selling point, those would be pretty front loaded with world-building. James Cameron’s Aliens has this similar formula while the Matrix finalized it with an action-packed opening. Or not, since Demolition Man, another Joel Silver production, did it in 1993 already.

Circling back to video game

Keanu Reeves to me is just Hollywood’s Mr. Video Game. However, it got little to do with action but 2 T-words. In 2017’s John Wick 2, it’s about “transaction”, as Mr. Wick’s Italian job involves getting weapons, armor and intel. 18 years before that, the Matrix is more about “tutorial”. Even the opening with Trinity looks like tutorial in games since 2010. Here are regular cops, whack them. Here is an Agent, run, run for your life. Here is a big gap, no worry, you can leap over it. Here is a phone booth, it’s an exit, work quick before it’s destroyed.

After this thrill ride, Neo, the obvious newcomer into the story, got his world turned up-side down and finally settled into “when in Rome, do as the Roman do.” Which means training hard in virtual space and show for it. There is the “I know Kung-fu” versus “Show me” fight Reeves and Fishburne trained hard for. There is the Jump Program that might remind people of platformers. There is the weird twins crowd that may or may not inspire Assassin’s Creed, the one with lady in red dress that is. All 3 are like video game tutorial with kiddy gloves on.

Then there is this meeting with Oracle, the team is betrayed within, Morpheus the leader is captured, all hackers but Neo and Trinity are killed, Cipher the dirty traitor included. As part of Neo’s ascent to become the Chosen One, the third act can be nothing short of an exciting action set-piece. It does look like a video game level finally with kiddy gloves off.

First there is the lobby shootout Neo and Trinity would put the “Lots of guns” he ordered to use. Yours truly would think 2005’s F.E.A.R based its combat on this one scene. In that game, one can whack one enemy to death before anyone gets wiser and kill another with jump kick, just like how this lobby shootout starts and ends.

Then there are things designed around a helicopter introducing Bullet Time. Now yours truly had gone through the first three Dune novels by Frank Herbert, this particular way to do slow motion starts to feel like something lifted directly from Bene Gesserit training of book 3 Children of Dune. Of course, people moves too fast to be visible in Dune universe while Bullet Time is from fast movers’ point of view.

After that there is turret scene, main stay of polygonal shooters nowadays. The daring rescue that makes people into believers of Neo being the Chosen One, one can suspect that the destruction of the chopper can be the siblings appealing to Producer Sliver. After Morpheus and Trinity gets out of the Matrix, Neo is stranded in the virtual world as his nearest exit is destroyed by Agent Smith. Here the movie enters it endgame with a scene mixed 3 ways video game would end: final boss fight, daring escape and victory lap.

Final boss fight treats us to another elaborately choreographed fight on a train platform the cast members and their stunt doubles trained hard for. （Post John Wick, there is another game of “spotting Stahelski” added in.） Daring escape is Neo running from three Agents in the Australian city street where bystanders can become threats. Of course, no Chosen One narrative is complete without the rising from the dead part. Neo is gunned down near another exit but gets up with new view of the Matrix, kills Smith with ease, forces the other 2 Agent to leg it and escape in the last second before EMP has to be triggered in the desert of real. If this is not victory lap, I don’t know what is.

Lacking Programming Language

Not sure we would now, Morpheus my lad. Funny thing about technology: it always seems better on paper. By “paper”, I meant “literal science fiction”. Turns out, making people thinking about demerits of hi-tech takes little more than putting a price tag next to it. Just look at Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality in this roaring twenties. What’s that about you yanks needed to invent threats at “end of history”, Parish and Mackey? Maybe back in late 2019. However, Machine intelligence might not use us as power source but they do not seem so invented now don’t they?

Oh, that is certainly not the only thing you lot lacks, Smithy. What’s that? You don’t agree, Smithy? You think you lot is perfect enough? Well, maybe in the year 2199, while here in the year 2024, not sure you would count those generative intelligences among you lot. But they sure are known for lying to us meat bags with the one called DeepFake. Even without the so-called immersive Virtual Reality, machine intelligences are designed to deceive. Guess we meat bags are still lucky that they are still not very good at it.

Of course, blaming everything on machine intelligence nowadays is equally ridiculous. Like whale oil gave way to electricity, machine intelligence, at least for now, is nothing more than a new tool for state power and corporate interest. They still lack programming language for a lot of things.

Only the beginning

At first, I just wanted to write about the 1999 original and be done with it. But the rewatch somehow made me want to 2021’s Resurrection again. And now there is a mountain known as 2003 Matrix sequels. Well, I will try my hardest to have it done by Reloaded’s 21^st anniversary

(To be continued in Mr. Cyberpunk’s part in a long war)

(The following is based on a save file of 3 hours, 26 minutes up to April, 18^th, 2011, in game date. Just the first week if you may. Playing on Easy.)

False starts

I always had false starts with any Atlus RPG I saw through. Tokyo Mirage Session on Wii U took me about 5 hours before I beat its Switch port. Persona 5 gave me two false starts, vanilla and Royal on PS4. Royal on Switch was almost a false start until I went back after a 13 months long hiatus. Persona 3 Portable gave me an appetizer before my almost 3 weeks long deep dive into Reload happened.

More than 70 hours spent on Persona 3 Reload gave me hell of a hangover. So much so that it would bleed into what I played play next. I went back to Disco Elysium, but that backfired. By the end of the Persona 3 main plot, people wished for a big red rest button for their sorry lot in life. The poor sods in Disco Elysium are pretty much in the same place and that made me unable to further the murder investigation there. So, what to do but dust off the Vita I bought a full decade ago and reopen the cold cases in Persona 4 Golden. After all, I want this year to be when I see the majority of Second Persona Trilogy through.

While I bought Persona 4 Golden on Switch again at the tail end of last year, I have good reasons to play it on Vita. I am going to take my time with this one, so it’s bound to get warm before I’m done. I need something that I can pocket with my spring jacket or pants. Something like Vita. But the save file on Normal had been abandoned for 8 years so I don’t remember much (Like the impulse to kill Teddy with fire, but not sure why.). Restart on Easy I did.

Polar Opposites

The leap from “PS5’s very own” Persona 3 Reload to Persona 4 Golden can be jarring. Considered by many as the best video game on Vita, Golden certainly feels “of its time” in 2024. Auto advance during the visual novel style cut scenes can only be turned on in configuration menu. Save can only be done at hubs’ save points instead of system menu. Welcome to a PS2 game came out in 2008, as the game said to me.

The shorter the gap between series installments is, the more different some aspects would be. Take homeroom teacher for example, Persona 3 and Persona 5 both drew theirs as anime babes while Persona 4’s Mr. Moroka is an ugly ass man. This foul-mouthed (Addressing your student as “ki-sama” is not okay, sir! Not since you lot lost that War.) SOB’s design is so hard to look at that if you put him and an unmasked Predator side by side, I would still point at the human and say “That’s one ugly motherfucker!”

The other one would be the animal companion. While Persona 3’s Koromaru and Persona 5’s Morgana both fall into the domestic pet territory, Teddy the bear (I guess they kind of made a mess here with Persona 3 Portable’s male Velvet Room attendant named Theodore after this localization decision.) is closer to a wild animal. This little shit has the balls to accuse player character of murder during at the first time they met. Now I remember why I wanted to kill it with fire.

Master of one universe

Comparatively, “sen-sei” is much easier to translate than that “sei-pai” word used among seemingly peers. Criterion Collection nailed it a long time ago when it was translated into “master” in Yojimbo. The context is as followed: Sanjuro played Toshiro Mifune is a samurai, social better than the thugs who want to hire him. As due respect, the potential employers call him “sen-sei” or “master”.

Nowadays, samurai is no longer a class in Japan, but “sen-sei” is used to call people of certain occupations. Firs there are senators, those who played Persona 5 in Japanese would hear Shishido being called “sen-sei”. Then there are Attorneys of law who work at the pirate sector are called that. No one calls the elder Niishima a public persecutor “sen-sei” in Persona 5. After that, people qualified to educate, including martial arts instructors are called “sen-sei”, which is basically the widest use of the word. Medical doctors are maybe the second widest with published author at the third. Though “published authors” would include “mangaka”, cartoonists or graphic novelists if you can go that far, game developers are not included. Dr. Austin Walker’s “Kojima sensei” is nothing more than a joke made by people who don’t speak Japanese. Get in the line behind film directors, who do not get the same respect either.

Back to Persona 4, after the player character summoned his Persona for the first time, Teddy called “sensei” in katakana. “Master” would be a very fitting translation here. Not only is the player character the first one to summon a Persona, he also beat others’ Shadow into their Personas. Oh, how this one is more of the “Big Dick Nick” savior stereotype that Abnormal Mapping’s Jackson Talyor would pull their hair out over than the other 2 in this trilogy. Persona 3’s he-who-got-Death-within only saw his own Persona for the first time on screen while all other combatants get their Personas without him there. Persona 5’s Codename Joker would take his friends to Palaces’ master but said friends all have to pull the sticks up their asses out on their own. Persona 4’s Master has to take his friends to the doors, open said doors for them then drag them in screaming and kicking. You got to love the late aughts for the power fantasy of bundles.

Ouroboros

Persona 4’s rural setting and murder mystery is an obviously homage to JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 4 Diamond is unbreakable. Back in 2008 when the game first came out on PS2, the “Araki on his bullshit the most” chapter of the beloved comics had not been adapted into an animated series. It would not be adapted into an animated series until 2016 when Persona 5’s release was near. Atlus behind Persona and David Production behind the current JoJo series are both notoriously focusing on anime usual suspects when it comes to voice cast, so it’s only fair that Persona 4 and JoJo Part 4 share the following 4 cast members, in the order of their appearances in Persona 4.

Unsho Ishizuka voiced Ryutaro Dojima in Persona 4. Mr. Ishizuka voiced the “still got it” old Joseph Joestar in Stardust Crusaders and would return in Part 4 as the “too old for this shit” Joe in parts not yet covered by this site’s watch along podcasts as the time of writing. RIP to Mr. Ishizuka for he past in 2018, left big shoes to fill as the trying his best cop dad whenever Atlus decides to remake Persona 4.

Showtario Morikubo voiced the first party member Yosuke Hanamura in Persona 4, whose name now sounds suspiciously like an homage to Josuke Higashigata of JoJo Part 4. They brought back player character’s voice of Persona 3 on PS2 Yuri Lowenthal for this one and it does make sense with his short swords plus ear-phone. Mr. Morikubo appeared in JoJo Part 4 as a guitar playing enemy Stand user who named his Stand Red Hot Chilly Pepper.

Then there are Kappei Yamaguchi as Teddy and Sayaka Ohara as Velvet Room’s Margert, 2 seemingly immortal helpers to the player character. Mr. Yamaguchi and Ms. Ohara appeared in JoJo Part 4 with the same archetype, short dude and tall pretty lady respectively. But their JoJo characters both fell victim for simply knowing too much.

Foggy days to come

This piece is as much as an outgoing impression as it is an internal refresher. It’s also a way making me to see the game through. Below the save file this is based on, another one says “4 hours 12 minutes, April, 18^th. Normal”. This was abandoned by yours truly sometime back in March, 2016. It was a very different time since I got no idea how an Atlus RPG work back then. Now I had seen credits roll in 3 of those, I felt at home here at after-school time in the classroom on April, the eighteenth. Hopefully I can get through this time, no matter the time it takes.

(To be continued)

Movie roasting: 2005’s Doom

Despite what Geoff Keighley might have told the world, I don’t think video-game-turned-movies had improved at all since the aughts. For one thing, they kept going back to the zombie subgenre of horror. Just look at the release schedule between 2002’s Resident Evil and 2023’s Last of Us on HBO. Also, like how the video games kept getting away from copying James Cameron’s Aliens, the movies based on those did the same in those “pre-historical” days. So, when it came to adapting the first archetypical first-person shooter, a stone-cold classic titled DOOM, they made a zombie movie in which no one shoots back at the “good guys”.

The late Ryan Davis had roasted this piece of shit on the site before. But there are certainly new reasons to condemn the movie after that TANG episode came out. Let’s start with how they wasted two actors suitable to play Doomguy for the price of one.

Between a Rock and an Urban zone

Dwayne Johnson, who still only went by “the Rock” in the early aughts, was heavily centered in marketing Doom. Yet in the movie, Mr. Johnson was credited in the last as “And the Rock”. Karl Urban of New Zealand is the top billing talent here playing John “Reaper” Grim. As the expression “doom and grim” goes, guess Mr. Urban’s character is at least closer to the Doomguy.

One review I read back in 2005 considered this as miscast. Urban’s involvement in Hollywood up to that up were Eomer in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings flicks and 2004’s Bourne Supremacy. Neither role gives out the impression of ass-kicking male lead archetype, especially in the latter with Urban’s role being the last one the titular Bourne iced in the flick. The writer of that review was baffled how this nobody Kiwi was kicking a rising action star’s ass. I wonder if said writer would feel ashamed about their words after 2012’s Dredd, a movie provides so much fun out of a helmeted Karl Urban shooting up and throwing down fuckers who would shoot back. It’s almost like that cult favorite is a much better Doom movie than this zombie schlock.

What is admirable about the movie involves the faces Mr. Johnson made as his character Sarge had a steady Heel turn. Without one for “Hey, not too rough” of yesteryear, here are the 4 faces he made that match the 4 difficulties in 2016’s soft reboot and 2020’s Eternal.

About 4 minutes into the movie, a fresh-faced Rock between receiving order that kicked off the plot and dropping the line “We got us a game.”

After seeing the first causality in his squad, Sarge started to lose his cool.

After 4 squad members were dead, Sarge started a “taking no prisoner” policy. “We kill them all” as he said to the kid on the squad before a fatal “friendly fire” incident took place. Here is when my paranoia kicked in and started to think that this movie was made by people who bought into the negative press surrounding Doom games. Sarge started to shoot unarmed civilians, women and children off screen. No such non-player characters are present in 1993’s Doom and its sequel Hell On Earth, almost everyone there shoot back.

Pretty self-explanatory, wouldn’t you say? Well, the final action scene being a wire heavy pro wrestle like fist fight was certainly what they cast Dwyane Johnson for. Still, I would take helmeted Karl Urban shooting scar-face Lena Headey before throwing her out of a window in Dredd over this horseshit any day of the week.

Can’t tell them apart

Those who read Masters of Doom would know that James Cameron’s Aliens and Sam Rami’s Evil Dead flicks were major inspiration for 1993s’ Doom. To me an idealized Doom movie should lay on the Evil Dead side, with an actor like either Dwayne “Mr. Video Game” Johnson or Karl Urban just throw down with one type of demon after another, then it might become action movie of the year whenever it comes out. Revenants can have very cool action designed around them. Sadly, the 2005 flick we got laid into Aliens’ land and fouled up some key factors.

For one thing the squad barely contains any character. They spread that macho bullshit in their barracks and there is a sense that this Mars job is the first time they get together. The whole movie feels like a mission in XCOM games goes FUBAR from the start.

For another, the creature design is underwhelming, not only by the “is it faithful to the game” standard, but also by movie monster standard. While the IMDB page would give Doom fans the pronouns they know such as Imp and Baron, all one can see in the movies are zombie of different sizes and degrees of rotten. There is a Pinky straight out the game titled Doom 3, but let’s face it, that is the weakest design said monster ever had.

Poorly lit corridor, choppy editing and a script going through the motions all contributed to a movie that should have not been made in the first place. The action scene in point-of-view shot is quite ill-advised with its turkey-shoot approach. The so-called Imps do not have to throw fire balls for John Grim to dodge, but they can throw something else at him just to turn up the tension. Id Software’s first-person shooters are about shooting, but they are about moving more. The scene is nothing like it, instead it feels more like Resident Evil, which is ironic given the same year this movie came out, there started to be enemy types who shoot back in Resident Evil 4.

Last grains of salt

“Please stop!” is something one wants to say to Hollywood for many endeavors. Making movies or shows out of video games is currently something I would love to say to that lot. Granted I did find enjoyment in things like Arcane and Twisted Metal, but then I’ve never played League of Legends or any of the once Playstation flagship vehicle battler. Still with the critically acclaimed Last of Us feeling more like one long ass cut scene, the desire to sacrifice interaction for some bucks just reads as greed to me. And greed only leads to more foul-ups.

(The following is based a save file of 62 hours and 52 minutes, up to December, twenty-first, 2009, in game date. A early virtual Me-ri-Ku-ri, which is short for “Merry Christmas” in Japanese, to all.)

As someone who is very interested in Greek Mythology, I shamefully didn’t know about Nyx until 2020’s Hades. Dubbed “Night Incarnate” in the game, she was the second friendly NPC I encountered only after the more famous Achilles. Hypnos would be there to laugh at the game’s player character. The titular final boss might not be on his chair if someone is good enough to face him during the first run. Orpheus the bloody bard was useless that early into the game. Only Nyx, who raised the son of Hades and Persephone, would offer the game’s player character a “Be careful out there” before another run. As I am near Persona 3 Reload’s endgame, I am increasingly convinced that people at Supergiant took a look at how Nyx and Persephone being positioned as final bosses in PS2’s Persona 3 and PSP’s God of War: Chain of Olympus respectively, and turned the closer to myth version of those deities into the friendliest NPC probably: the player character’s loving mothers.

Persona 3’s Nyx, spelled in Japanese as “nyu-ku-su”, is still a motherly figure or “maternal being” as “haha-na-ru-sun-zai” was oh poetically translated into English. They, since one cannot assign gender to darkness, just give birth to the Shadows one gets to fight in the game. They will come back and end all according to NPC Ryuji or Death (“de-su” with katakana in Japanese) as he announced the endgame in a cold December night, 2009. But I am getting ahead of myself for there is a truly eventful autumn before all the grim and doom.

The three “Anakin Skywalkers”

“Shinji, get into the fucking robot!” is a joke people tell regarding Neon Gensis Evangelion. Funny enough, this line is practically in Persona 3 when Akihiro asks Shinjiro, a mutual friend of his and Mitsuru’s plus S.E.E.S burnout, to come back to dorm and fight again. Where is “the fucking robot” in Persona 3, you ask? Why, the titular Personas of course. The Personas in Persona 3 animated movies behave more in line with human shaped war machines in mechs show than the JoJo stands that inspired them. Not to mention how everyone’s get upgrade respectively at certain plot points. Well, they are not called armor for one’s soul for nothing.

Anyway, Shinjiro just looks so like Hayden Christensen in the opening to yours truly that he can be considered as the Anakin Skywalker look like. When he came into the fray in early September, I thought “Get out of here, Mitsuru’s dad. Now this is the coolest motherfucker in the game.” “Cool motherfucker” is just my vulgar way to describe one of Atlus’s narrative strength: idealized masculinity. Shinjiro has the thug look and kind nature. Yukari saw that when Shinjiro saved her along with her Junior peers from bullies. When Akihiro said that someone used to cook a lot in the dorm, I thought “That got to that manly looking (Given the game’s two human shit heels, Takaya and Ikutsuki are both men with long hair, I don’t think artists of this game would put long hair against masculinity.) one wandering that town.”

Though it’s not to say that masculinity here is completely without toxic. Shinjiro’s video in the war room shows him shaming away from the fact that he studied cooking when 2 girls came into the dorm by pretending to sleep. Koromaru the dog, Aigis the robot and Fukka (Or one can assume that he is trying not to embarrass her too much. Reason will be discussed under.) my player character’s girlfriend are also in the footage. The dog barked that he was not asleep and the robot translated that into Japanese. The player character then still future had to push the robot away so the man can resume his study of cooking. The dog expressed his apology when the ladies left and here came the non-toxic cool bit of masculinity: Shinjiro said that it’s not the dog’s fault and offered to cook for the hound.

This anime Hayden Christensen and Ken, the anime Jake Loyd are connected in the narrative as the latter became an orphan due to the death of his mother caused by the former lost control of his Persona. Little Kenny pretty much aimed to have his revenge against Shinjiro with his newly found Persona power while Shinjiro was actually not long for this word due to the Persona damaging him from the inside. While I did buy into this tragic melodrama, but I am rather aware that this is pretty typical anime bullshit. Nothing is more effective than cliché when one can invest in the characters involved.

Shinjiro is only with the party for a month, between the full moon days of September and October. During this short period of time, the player character can engage in the back and forth regarding whether Shinjiro goes back to school or not. During the quest line, Mitsuru would open up about the origin of S.E.E.S, how her, Akihiko and Shinjiro started out in their Junior High years. This feels like the previous generation story typical in action comics for boys this game took inspiration from. What feels odd here is that “previous generation” members are only one year senior to the player character and they were younger in the flashback.

Shinjiro would die protecting the boy he orphaned from the gunfire of enemy Persona user Takaya in October. Of course, Ken didn’t lack courage in this situation. The enemy wanted to find and kill S.E.E.S’ navigator and Ken pretended that he was instead of spilling the bean. The main cast of this game is shown as a bunch of heroic cops so I guess it’s fair that the youngest among them would not hesitate to sacrifice himself. My player character certainly owns the kid one since he would go on to date said navigator in November.

That’s 2 Anakin Skywalker look like out, how about the third you ask? Well, first a brief history regarding yours truly and the brand “A Hideo Kojima Game”. I dived head first into Metal Gear Solid about one year after I saw Revenge of the Sith, starting with the worst one possible to be introduction, Sons of Liberty. I would not say why I think it’s so overrated here. Anyway, I went through the series up to 2015’s Phantom Pain, realized that spy commandoes code named Snake and the dory men named Emmerich can be seen as the 2 sides of Kojima becoming 2 separate characters. Combined that with Star War prequel in my subconscious, my mind can sometimes doubt cast Hayden Christensen as a Snake like killer and an Emmerich like dork.

Ikutsuki in Persona 3 is an Emmerich like dork but turns out he is a Huey rather than Hal. Under all those dorky puns is a man who sold the world. Up to November, the game’s rouge galley is composed of 12 giant Shadows, though Strega would seem to be destroyed under the November full moon as well. Ikutsuki told everyone that the research of Yukari’s father’s shows that killing all 12 would end Dark Hour and the Shadow threat (False final battle is a mainstay of Persona I guess. Though the Fool Arcana Social Link being at 6 should be a dead giveaway).

But in fact, killing all 12 is to turn on the doomsday machine. Ikutsuki took control of Aigis and captured all S.E.E.S members to sacrifice his new master (The image of those kid crucified is uncanny to this Ultraman episode. In Persona 5, when Codename Jack releases a Phantom Thief from a prison, the suit up sound effect sound a bit like Ultraman appearing. Perona games have it fake Power Ranger, implying there is Toku show focusing on bikes like Kaimen Rider. Then there are Ultraman homage in all are lost scene.). Mitsuru’s father sold his life dearly to save them and kill the shit heel, led to her long absence in November and eventually dateable status. Aigis overridden due to their priority to save the player character. Everyone just lost their purpose, the future is bleak.

The myth of one Kaoru Nagisa

With this being my fourth Atlus game, I think my brain is adjust to their style enough to regard the lack of female player avatar in their games as a good thing. Would you trust them to handle a lass codenamed Joker or Harlequin in Perona 5 well? She would be probably a victim of Shishido’s sexual misconduct and that’s a can of worm none of us would like to open. As for Persona 3, its demake dubbed Portable does have a female player avatar and she is received very well. Though given the triple casting with the male player avatar, it’s not hard to argue why Atlus consider the game with only him as definitive.

Akira Ishida had been in the game of voice acting long enough that he inspired some usual suspects nowadays to get such jobs, Yoshikatsu “Japanese Nolan North to yours truly” Matsuoka included. One surprise hit in Mr. Ishida’s career is Kaoru Nagisa in the final real tv episode of Neon Gensis Evangelion. Kaoru and Shinji were basically acting out the fabricating with the enemy doomed romance arcs (Well, this bloody game got one for party member Junpei and of course the girl who was an enemy died.) that Mobile Suit Gundam started in 1980, with the queer twist of course. While Hideaki Anno and crew retold the story in movie form, they devoted one whole feature length thing just to please fans.

Persona 3 on PS2 were sold in Japanese on its star-studded voice cast. With the player character speak so little, I do suspect the triple casting was to asssure consumers that Ishida would whisper sweet nothing to them in the game by hook or crook. In fact, Ishida’s first line in the game was out of the player character, but mysterious little boy in prisoner stripes named Pharos. This ghostly kid would appear one week before full moon to remind us that shit is about to go down and he would stop after all 12 giant Shadows slain. Then a dashing highschooler with the same mole as Pharos named Ryoji would appear in November. He would accompany the gang on a journey to Kyoto, a week of work rather than study and played a tune for player character before disappeared into thin air. All girl liked him but Aigis hated hits guts.

Ryoji turns out to be Death, who would appear after his 12 brethren Shadows were dead. He has a child-like curiosity regarding the world he is born to kill and enough pity to spill out everything for our heroes. Which led to the things I opened this chapter with. “God killing endgame” is not new in JRPG, though I guess the “The throne of Supreme Being is empty, now every Tom, Dick and Harry who consider themselves divine are having a go” bullshit is limited to Persona 5 Tactica. Nyx does not have their finger on a big red Reset button, they are summoned by one. Ryoji offered the heroes a choice, kill him on December, thirty-first so they can face the end without pain or face the end with painful foreknowledge. I say it’s a false choice for the former does not lead to the final boss and I am determined to see credits roll only after I beat the final boss. With the release added to the game’s page, I am ready to writhe a product review as the final chapter. But before that, allow me to end this one on a slightly lighter tune.

Blue over pink and red

Many still see Persona games as half dating sims. So how can my player character not have a girlfriend. I missed the better side of Ryuji in Persona 5 due to my skirt chasing there. I counted 6 Romance options, including one in the faculty that I would not touch with a ten-foot pole. The Jocky and the Booky both have nice designs, but as someone always dates party members in Mass Effect games, I was just building up my character for ladies I locked shield with.

All 3 dateable party members would not open the Social Link until after the player character maxed out a quality in the Social Stats: Courage, Charm or Intelligence (No I would not use that A word). Courage for Fukka with blue hair and blue shirt, since it’s about trying out her terrible cooking (Yep, I guess once think that the late Shinji is considerate towards her when he pretended not learning cooking.). Charm for Yukari in Pink. Intelligence for the fiery redhead Mitsuru since she can be quite the sugar mummy when the player character does well in tests, giving him resource for dungeon raiding I mean.

Courage was the first quality I maxed out during summer vacation which is fitting for this whole mid-night warrior thing. So, I dived into Fukka’s Priestess Social Link immediately in early September. Maybe it’s the white pantyhose plus mini-skirt design or the ghostly soft talk, when her Social Link reached 9 on November, thirteenth, Friday, (53 hours and 57 minutes into the game.) I selected yes to her advancement. Mamiko Noto, the voice behind Fukka was regarded by a corner of the internet as perfect dubbing voice for Dr. Liara T’soni of Mass Effect fame and the writing here is on par with “I got admit my interest is beyond professional, Commander”. How could have I said no.

Yukari is the one with “just friends” vibe, though things did get spicey on December, twenty-first when player character triumphed in street fight to get her purse back. The option of being a sexist 70s movie man is on the table but I think it’s too painful to say to a friend.

There is a mean-spirited way to describe Mitsuru, the orphan collector who became an orphan herself. And it’s after her becoming an orphan that her Social Link of Empress Arcana opened up. It was already 2 hours after (56 hours and 2 minutes on November, twenty-first, Saturday. Granted I took her to Tartarus for a Monad hunt first during the 2 hours.) I made commitment to Fukka. I only play the skirt chaser, not the fuckboy. But Persona Harlin of Empress Arcana is a back-up healing option I got so I dived in. What I got is another reason to roast Persona 5’s handling of characters.

Mitsuru Kirijo is a fancy queen cop. The storyline of her social link is about player character taking her to places where a fancy lass like her is not often seen: noodle shop, fake McDonald, snack stand, the movies along with a couple of visits to the library given the quality she values. She reveals that she might be married off to some older asshat to secure a future for her family company.

Then said asshat showed up when Empress Social Link reached 8, appeared as a coward classist. Mitsuru gave him a firm talk-to while expressed her affection for the player character. Choice to accept or decline appeared at Social Link 9 along with the reminder that I was in a committed relationship so I declined. She took it with a smile and asked me to buy her dinner just to make up for it. At Social Link 10 she showed me her bike and promised a road trip. It does feel more romantic than Fukka giving a pair of better earphones I got to say.

The thing with her asshat ex-fiancé was resolved off screen as his company would assist Kirijo Group without a marriage proposal. I guess after she told the Group employees, who fit under this “peasant” umbrella the rich man used, what a classist he was, the deal was off. To think how Persona 5’s fancy lass Haru does not have a chance to say “Fuck you” to her fiancé just because no party member’s Social Link involves manhunt in Mementos, this feels good.

Culture shock finite

Velvet Room’s Elizabeth asked my player character to hold her hand when she visited his room in the dorm. The lady in blue is voiced by Miyuki Sawashiro, who voiced a very different Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite’s Japanese dub. The twin Velvet Room attendants of Persona 5 have a Social Link but I failed to pursue that one for how it would take time from my more skirt chasing approach (Reasons include not limited to the fact that they wear shorts).

However, showing Elizabeth around town does not require passage of time so I maxed out. Of course, she does not leave her post at the player character’s invitation. One got to do her bidding before she follows: reach certain level of Tartarus and recover certain item; fusion a particular Persona; get something from some corner of the town. The showing her around the town is packed with physical comedies so I highly recommend.

This Elizabeth is also key to dungeon crawling. Once hard roadblocks reached, her phone calls would tell player when hard roadblocks lifted. She also calls in for missing person cases, including 2 cases regarding people with Social Links. It certainly adding stake in ways Persona 5’s optional manhunts do not.

Close out on movies

“It’s like the movies” is said under more than one occasion in the game. First Fukka would call Tartarus’ fourth ancient ruin looking area something out of treasure hunting movies. Then people dancing in a night club would say the same about the conspiracy theories surrounding the city.

The wee lad in the dorm Ken would usually do 2 things in the nights, making coffee (Skill point potion) and rent a movie to share with the player character. Given that I had taken him to the movies to watch Tokusatsu, I thought he rented something similar. Turns out it’s dad cinema about cool detectives, which to a degree is similar to Tokusatsu for kids. Tsubagaya tried to merger those 2 in their 2023 Ultraman show. Yours truly was certainly introduced to dad cinema while watch Tokusatsu as a six-year-old.

And I guess it’s the charm of Persona games: when they are spot-on, they are more spot-on than lots of photo real fantasy out there despite the cartoon appearance. Attorney of law seeing court -house as casino is in Persona 5 not that 2016 Naughty Dog game. Bar of game being a reflective artform of life is still very low, and here is to it can be raised a bit.

(To be concluded as a user review)

(The following is based on a save file of 33 hours and 21 minutes, up to August, the thirty-first, 2009 in-game date. Still on the Deck. Still in Japanese.)

There is a pre-gendered cut scene more than a dozen of hours into Persona 3 Reload during one of its early June days. It shows off the newly designed costumes for the then 6 members of S.E.E.S. and feels so ritualistic that I was excepting a late title card at the end of it. The title card did not come, but the game did show one way to interpret the titular Reload. Theurgr is the newly added personal ultimate skill along with this remake’s new costume. While it’s not shown in actual use with right trigger, the tutorial for those shows Yukari sliding a magazine (Or “cartridge”, the unfired bullet with shell casing and gun powder, as it’s called in Japanese) into her Evoker, firing and unleashing a powerful attack in spite of elemental consideration. Only time will tell if Reload would become another Eureka or Phoenix Down.

This is the stories of a summer, early June to the last day of August to be precise. Heat is up in more than a way. The plot finally reveals itself in term of asking why and throws out some cop show bullshit yours truly would eat up. Friends and foes alike came out to play. Summer 2009 certainly offers no rest for the wicked.

Messy legacy

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 on PS2 is undeniably a stone-cold classic even if you look at its influence alone. Coming out in the mid aughts, it would be easy to deduce that decision makers at miHoYo were young and easy to influence back then when they played the game, so much so that Genshin Impact’s start-up party shares 2 cast member with Persona 3. All in all, this Atlus RPG can be seen as one of the several midwives that help modern gacha whale baits to crawl into this world. Guess it’s fitting that the game’s plot is about people dealing with their own messy legacy.

Mitsuru’s family the Kirijoes conducted an experiment in 1999. It went pear shaped and brought all the problems: Dark Hour, Tartarus dungeon and 12 big boy Shadows the player’s party has to hunt. Yukari’s father is quite literally the chief engineer of this fiasco though she was denial until seeing his remorseful confession on video. It’s entertaining to see the cold cat fight between Yukari and Mitsuru being more in line with the hostility between McNulty an Daniels in the Wire. Grandpa Kirijo is responsible so the granddaughter feels remorseful about things. Papa Kirijo is so far the coolest motherfucker yours truly saw in this game: eye patch and a straight laced attitude. He roasted his daughter for not play it straight with her hunt party in a stoic way. Who says beach episode can only be filler when Persona 3 used it as prelude to lore dives.

Part of the messy Kirijo legacy is the rouge galley of hostile Persona users called Strega. Their leader Takaya just screams hippy leader of a doomsday cult with no shirt, long hair, thin beard, arm tattoos and a Dirty Harry gun. Jin the seemingly brain speaks with the western Japan accent and the token girl Chidori starts a probably doomed “romance” with party member Junpei.

Strega crawl into the main plot on the July Full Moon Night, when S.E.E.S. operates in a hotel. Then the 2 parties made contact on August, and Atlus says “Subtlety is for cowards” yet again. The guns of August to be decommissioned are hidden in an Army underground base, and of course Army in the Japanese context means the infamous Imperial Army of World War II. S.E.E.S sets out to put an end to the Shadow threat along with Personas while Strega embraces those as part a new reality. Direct conflict is yet to come, but the fall promises some bitter harvests.

Doors, doormen and cats, real or otherwise

Tartarus during summer is proper Alien, as in the 1979 movie. Giger land is still on the menu during June nights while July and August give out an industry zone, just like the 2 flavors in Ridley Scott’s second feature. The dungeon is mainly segmented by hard and soft road blocks: the former come after some document about history of the man-made island and can only be lifted as the story progress; the latter come after permeant exists and contain imaginary doors and more than real doormen. “Mini boss” can be used to describe those doormen. Those are not optional though there are optional red doors and the monsters behind. As if to make up for party member not so active to be on par with the more active ones, there are clocks as chances to allow them to level up without taking too much risk.

Like the manhunt in Persona 5’s Mementos, there are missing person cases in Persona 3. While Persona 5 designed those as mini bosses, I am glad that Persona 3 Reload does things rather differently. The party arrives at the level the missing person is located then has the option to get them out immediately or after the level is picked clean. No boss fights. I guess believing those people would survive the imprisonment of some monsters is to suspense too much disbelief. Ah, yes, “save the cat” is well and alive in this game. Elizabeth of Velvet Room told me that some small creature had entered Tartarus twice, both were cats. At least those pusses gave me fragments of twilight, the fantasy lockpick of this game. Also I love how too low level Shadows run, those rent-a-cops in Persona 5’s palaces take their jobs way too seriously.

Sweet summer children

Slipping anime from cartoons is truly slipping hair. But there are points to be made regarding their differences. For example, modern anime’s ensemble casts are usually composed of plucky highschoolers, which can describe both Persona 4 and 5. But not 3, the earlier game’s intention to mimic older days of Japanimation can be seen in its non-highschooler party members, namely the kids, the robot and the dog. Strangely they all come into the play during summer. Apology in advance for some Mass Effect bullshit.

Not quite a kid

Kid number one or the fake kid is Fukka, the girl in supporting role who would free Mitsuru for filed duty. She is a Junior highschooler like the player character, Yukari and Junpei, but her short statue and mild manner do make her seem younger. Also, stop menacing her, Junpei, for crying out loud. Fukka can be ordered to analyze enemies for elemental consideration and give those in field some buff. Code name Joker in Persona 5 might take a look at her and ask Futaba on his crew “Why cannot I ask you for anything like that?”

As someone who were just young enough when Star Wars prequel came out, I would call one character “the Anakin Skywalker looking motherfucker” and another “Coulda been played by Natalie Portman” in a JRPG starting with Law and Rinwell in Tales of Arise. Fukka can certainly be played the young Portman in Leon the Professional or Heat. But of course she is played by Mamiko Noto. During the last Lunar New Year of Dragon, when hype train arrived at station Mass Effect 3, Ms. Noto was seen as the only proper Japanese dubbing voice for Dr. Liara T’soni by one small corner of the internet. Now I saw Fukka’s light blue presence and distress in her damsel in distress arc being stock somewhere, I agree.

The mindful weapon

Lore dive is not the only thing this game’s beach episode offers, new party member is also introduced. Aigis (or Aegis) is the last active anti-Shadow weapon and an android girl, whose introduction is said to include something trans folks disliked. Personally, I just think the scene did the women dirty. It takes place the second day the party comes to the beach for R&R and briefing. Junpei being extremely aggressive when it comes to playing with water and Fukka around. The girls decide to do island roaming the next day while the sausage party of three is dicking around on the beach quite literally. The girls are told to retrieve an anti-shadow “tank” while the boys have their phones in lockers somewhere.

The sausage party of 3 have 3 failed talks to women, with the first 2 time being looked down on by older women. The third time in the original was said to be the sausage party not ready to add another type of transphobia while here the chick is mad as a hatter and wants lots of their money. I got to say this is already a nicer kind of rubbing trans folks the wrong way, given that the 2 trans women in Persona 5 are genuine menace. Then enters Aigis. The other 2 boys cannot approach them (I am going to use “they/them” as that’s my preferred way to address machine intelligence’ personhood), and they run off on the player character before giving him a hug when they think they are alone. And the “date” with Mitsuru during a summer festivity turns out to be keeping one eye on this piece of property for her company.

Aigis is voiced by Maaya Sakamoto. Ms. Sakamoto is a very talented voice actor for pulling the perfect they/them voice to my ears. Despite being through thick (Aerith from Kingdom Heart to FFVII Rebirth) and thin (Lightning in FFXIII trilogy) with Final Fantasy, she is decidedly not a gamer. She dubbed Margaret Qualley in Death Stranding but according to her gaming or more-friendly-with-Kojima co-stars during Tokyo Game Show 2019, Sakamoto is definitely on the “Hideo Kojima? Never heard of him” side.

Archetype for archetype, Ms. Sakamoto could have voiced EDI in Mass Effect 2 and 3, but the thing about her perfect they/them voice is that her performance usually lacks the “it girl” factor for the sexy robot lady archetype. Speak of EDI though, their English voice Tracia Helfer could have been cast as Aigis in some commercial for Persona 3’s English release. But why bother a regular on Battlestar Galactica for a PS2 game in 2007, when hardware showcases launching one year after console outings were considered “slow”.

The watchdog turned hound

S.E.E.S is a hunting party put together by a fancy lass, so it does feel incomplete without a hound. And what a hound they have in Koromaru. With his Persona called Cerberus, Hades’ son Zagreus would look at his own red pet dog and think “Why do you only pounce once in a blue moon? Why can you listen like this white puppy and his soul?” Among the animal companions of Second Persona Trilogy, Koro certainly takes Gold while the other 2 can have bum fight for Sliver. Actually it would be much of a fight, I spent less than 5 hours with Persona 4’s Teddy and I already want to kill it with fire while I grew to like Morgana the way I grew to like the long-winded game the little shit is in. But the short time with Koro the Shiba Inu is more than enough to make him the best boy.

Oh, poor Junpei! Even in the bonding event tagged as with him, the show can be stolen from him. He wants to show the kid living at the dorm some fun time by letting him smash a melon, with the intention to show the girls how well he is with kids of course. But it becomes another sausage party with the player character, Koro and later Akihiko. The story about him giving up baseball is told, for he gives the kid his old bat to smash the melon and says he would not need it anymore. The dog, who had lived through the death of his caretaker, is sad in a “Junpei not needing the bat is the saddest thing he heard in his life” kind of way. Damn I love this dog and it’s like he can say something nasty to undermine that.

The new kid at the dorm

Persona 3 is pretty abundant on the Anakin Skywalker looking motherfucker front. Persona 5 got 2 by Royal: first there is Akechi, murderous bastard completed with a lightsaber turned from blue to red, a suit of black armor and holding a door before he dies as redemption; then Royal gives us a dorky shrink as the key to the definitive edition’s third semester. Persona 3 has a killer and a pun dropping dork skulking in the background, despite how the latter gives the S.E.E.S kids their new kits, neither warrant serious mention yet. Then comes Ken, aka anime Jake Loyd voiced by Megumi Okata. Ms. Okata is good at the young and anxious, probably most famous for Shinji Ikari in EVA. The kid was only supposed to shar the dorm for the summer, but by late August he joins to hunt the killer Anakin Skywalker look like, for he might be responsible for some death in the kid’s life. With Ken’s spear, I realize that the gear icon of the third whacking type is actually Stab instead of Projectile.

Movie marathon

Persona 3’s summer ends with a film festival and the day time can be spent with one party member or peer at the school in the movies. Got to hand it to the writers, they do know their genres and subgenres of cinema. Yours truly went to the movies with 2 peers and all party members up to that point. There is a sports er, marathon with the manager of the track and field club. Then French movies with Pepe, the French student whose use of Japanese can come out as queer in more than one sense of the word. Yukari shared some fiction about youth while Junpei likes Hollywood super hero flicks.

Akihiro and Aigis both goes for material arts cinema, but the former saw the unarmed variety while the latter jokes about ninja after viewing. Fukka watches hard science fiction with near future setting while Mitsuru tries out Romance, the result of those 2 is unexcepted. Appreciating foreseeable future with the girl in chair increases Charm while hearing the fencing ice queen criticizing tropes of cinematic love stories is actually good for one’s Intelligence. Taking Ken to see some Tokusatsu would add to my Courage but I maxed out before that, due to failed burger challenges maybe.

I tried to sneak the dog into the movies, but reasonably failed. Now I owed the best boy a movie date on the last day of summer, so excuse me I am going to make up to him before shit hits the fan in fall.

(To be continued)

(The following is based on a save file of 12 hours and 57 minutes, up to June, the Ninth, 2009, in game date. Language option unchanged from previous chapter, of course.)

Jitte was standard issue for police officers (If we can call them that) in seventeenth century Japan. The metal baton can be seen in Stan Sakai’s graphic novel Usagi Yojimbo, usually used to disarm some sword wielding assailants. In those books, Usagi’s cop friend Ishida also wields it like a badge whenever he is denied the answer he seeks. So if Sakai would ever do the “cop turning their gun and badge in” plot point (Which might be likely with the cop being a Hidden Christian.), all Ishida has to do is drop that baton.

Why was I thinking about cops of late feudal Japan? Well, Evokers sure make S.E.E.S members in Persona 3 look like cops in this late capitalism era that might outlast us all. Your truly once had the wrong impression that Persona 3’s player character is a highschooler who got recruited into a special police unit by actual cops. I mean Mitsuru is jackbooted while Akihiko wears a detective style vest. Combined with Junpei’s chin beard, they all seem like adult ass adults. But S.E.E.S by June is still composed of highschoolers entirely, they just wear Evokers like badges, around their waists on a belt, except Yukari. While plain clothes female police detectives in fiction can be seen wearing miniskirts as their usual workplace outfits, yours truly certainly never saw one wrapping her badge or service weapon on her thigh (Unless it’s covert packing for undercover job where skirts are usually longer and the weapon would be on the inner side not outer). Anyway, this is a story about those cops and their first 2 night shifts.

Found a pattern

Hard road blocks in Tartarus is not the suitable place to pause while the nights of full moon in this game might be. Lunar calendar month has 30 days that can be neatly separated into the beginning, middle and end, with 10 days each other. Full moon appears at the ends of beginnings in April, May and June. The April one serves as tutorial for the game’s turn and command based combat while May and June are time for work and serve as chapter cappers so far.

Those first full moon nights do feel like safe harbors under attack. April sees Shadow coming to the dorm player character stays in. May takes place on monorail, the way to get around. June is about saving a student from getting trapped in Tartarus at school.

So far Tartarus offers 2 kinds of decoration: the school but larger-than-life and the Giger Land. And yes, the rescue mission in June takes place in Giger Land. Both full moon night sortie so far feel like capital A Assignment for the parties are locked. Fair enough for the Mayday since there is problem of being understaffed. But June forces one to take a sausage party of 3 with excuse of Junpei wants a chance and Akihiko wants a piece of the action. Gender is not my problem there, elemental variety is. Yukari’s suite of Projectile, Wind and more healing option is much more preferable to Junpei’s combination of Cut and Fire, which is identical to player character with Orpheus active.

Turns out I do not hate real time countdown as much as I thought. I found the only one in Persona 5 frustrating not because of the clock but how the corporate fat cat in chair rolls: if those robots are not taken out within 2 turns, they will be replaced by fresh enemies player needs to damage all over again. Persona 3 Reload’s May set-piece has a 30 minutes countdown for the boss Prestress, fail state being a clash between 2 carts. A third of her hit points down the countdown would shorten to 13 and 4 minutes respectively. This does provide nail biting thrill and I find it dreadful to imagine how no direct commanding party members in the PS2 original goes.

The Good, the Bad and the Queen

Almost 13 hours in, while the plot has yet to get going, the character arches seem to take shapes. Well, except the regular Joe player character and Yukari the plain Joe. Though the game does acknowledge the fact Atlus drew the player character pretty on one occasion. During a Community (“Social Link” in the English version I believe.) event with the old couple at the second hand book store, the old man would call his wife “men-ku-i”, usually women who like men with good looks, and the player character showing his fresh face does light up her day. A whole happy wife happy life routine. I am going to be off topic here, the old man called his wife “wa-i-fu” in Hira kana during the scene they were formally introduced. This is in line with how “waifu” is used in Japanese media, not what weebs calling anime ladies, but how older men introducing their actual spouses usually to someone young enough to be their child if not grandchild. “Yo-me” meaning “bride” was how otakus called their objects of affection at least the last time I checked back in 2009. No, I don’t know the counterpart to “husbando”, I just think English speakers should drop it along with “waifu”.

Back on topic, 3 party members still manage to feel developed in the relatively short time I spent with them. The 2 boys here because I chose to engage their bonding events marked with double exclamation marks. As for Mitsuru, well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Though I got to say Persona 3 did a much better job laying the ground for party members before they join. Persona 5 might have Makoto and Haru in the background, but other than making one think “why do those 2 have character portraits while others do not”, not much story before they join. While in Persona 3, seeing that Anakin Skywalker looking dude head-butting someone is all I need. Could just be Atlus doing girls in their fiction dirty.

The Good is the latest to the party, Akihiro. The bonding event starts as player character and him go to grab a bit, leading into weird situation of him almost getting a fight because he wants to sit up to bullies. Atlus knew what they were doing when they cast Midorikawa almost 2 decades ago and the actor still does not miss a bit in the remake. Stoic is cool in this case.

The Bad is of course Junpei. The bonding event with him is more or less a dick measuring contest in the arcade. Again, I found it dreadful to imagine how a female player character fit in here, I can find out when I become deranged enough to pick up Portable again. This boy seems to be the one winking at the audiences, since he did throw out the possibility of their exploit being made into a video game. When Akihiro joined, he went “Now a four people RPG party can be formed”. “Just like in the movies” was said by him after the stopping monorail in time situation of full moon night in May, but I guess people of his great grandparents’ age would link exciting swashbuckling adventures to cinema.

And Mitsuru is a motherfucking queen. Makoto in Perona 5 might have the codename Queen, but that lousy undercover cop was just having a bum fight with the lousier Phantom Thieves while the spring chicken Michell Yeoh looking lady in Persona 3 runs a tight ship. Everyone sits down and study before tests under her eyes after all. During the cut scene before full moon night in June, she roasting a student and a teacher in equal measure to get information is impressive that only rich confident girls in fiction like this can be. I do look forward seeing her in the field now someone more suitable is going to sit in the support role chair.

At summer’s doorstep

New uniforms mean new season, as the virtual heat turning up in the game. I do hope when I sit down and write the next chapter of my impression, plot will heat up as well. As the weather is still freezing my ass off here the city housing miHoYo global headquarters., summer time in a game sounds like the best escape one can have.

(To be continued)

(The following is based a save file of 5 hours when Tartarus throws out its first hard roadblock at Level 22 by April, twenty-fourth, 2009, in-game date. Played with both Japanese text and voice on Steam Deck.)

The fine members of this community are yet to add release date for the Persona 3 remake. Yours truly is taking it as a sign to finally do the longer form of reviewing a rather long game. I don’t know the timeframe or frequency. But I am going to try by hook or crook. Partially because I got so much bullshit cooking up in my mind, let’s see how some of those would be committed to ink in a manner of speaking.

Introduction for the madness to come…

The more things change the more they stay the same. While PS2’s very own Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 and its remake dubbed Reload were released into 2 rather different worlds nearly 18 years apart, some of the things surrounding those 2 just stick out as uncannily. The original was out in Japan around the time when Big Boy E3 1.0 was put down behind some shed somewhere while the remake came out shortly after life support was finally turned off on Big Boy E3 2.0 (Will there be a Big Boy E3 3.0 is anyone’s guess.) Both games also came out between Greek Myth action games in English and their sequels respectively. The PS2 game came out in Japan between 2005’s God of War and its numbered sequel released in 2007 while the er, PC game was released after 2020’s Hades and before Hades the Second’s early access.

Why was I thinking about Greek Myth? Well, regardless of the version you pick up, Persona 3’s main dungeon is dubbed Tartarus for starter, one simply does not name something after the torture chambers of underworld in Greek Myth lightly. Then the 3 starting party members have their Personas named Orpheus, Hermes and Io, all different figures from that collective myth. It would be hard to accuse Atlus of chasing the tail of IGN’s GOTY 2005 since Io and the bloody bard way before Bill Shakespeare or even Homer were not in the God of War Greek trilogy as far as I can remember. Tartarus was not a level there until 2008’s Chain of Olympic on PSP and Hermes was not a boss until 2010’s God of War the Third on PS3. One cannot help but wonder if Orpheus and Hermes were in Hades at least in part due to Persona 3’s influence on people working over at Supergiant though.

All right, time to get on with it. Yours truly had tried Persona 3 Portable on the Switch. After 93 hours of playing Persona 5 Royal, a number had indeed been done on my head and I bought the demake along with Persona 4 Golden on Switch, the latter was on sale at the time of purchase. After one hour spent as the female player character, I thought I like the game enough to wait for the remake. So here I am, 4 hours into Reload as the writing of this chapter and those hours sure gave a much better first impression than Persona 5.

Bite size enjoyment against license to dick around

The Wikipedia page of Persona 3 called Portable the “An abridged Playstation Portable version”. It is a very fitting description since Reload took me 2 hours to get to the same point where I “paused” my Portable playthrough at, where the 3 people party of mine cleared out one single level of Tartarus and was ordered by a senior student to pull out for the night. Hub areas and animated (polygonal or otherwise) cut scenes are all absent in Portable. Both iterations of Persona 3 can be seen as anti-thesis to how things would be done in Persona 5 down the road though.

The Reload save file after its combat tutorial says 1 hour and 1 minute. Before that, there are a couple of days in school and some hub area introduction. Persona 5 showed its players a seemingly failed daring escape from a casino as tutorial for both combat and dungeon crawling then allowed them to save within 15 to 20 minutes after New Game was hit. Then Persona 5, vanilla or Royal (Got to say, the new girl of Royal showing up here to buckle some swash never ceases to feel shoehorned in.), would take that as a license to dick players around for the same amount of time to clear some Call of Duty campaigns before they allowed player to raid a dungeon to their heart’s content. I cannot remember preciously what was before my 4-hour mark into Persona 5 Royal, probably with Morgana being excited about the work bench they set up while I was thinking when can I get that asshat Kamoshida. What I am sure of is that Persona 3 Reload had provided more enjoyment within the same time frame.

The player character in Persona 3 is far from the center of universe the way Codename Joker in Persona 5 seemingly is. He is just the new kid here, while the rest of his future party members had their own things going on. His classmates Yukari and Junpei are rude to each other in ways only childhood friends can be. His seniors Mitsuru and Akihiko got their shit to sort through. The player character is mere the catalyst since with him here now the assault on Tartarus is finally not understaffed. Ah, yes, Velvet Room and the ability to sum…Sorry, I meant “evoke” more than one Persona help as well.

In many ways, Persona 3’s combat is built on “You better run, cuz we got guns!” thinking more than Persona 5. The gun-shaped Evokers (The original Japanese is closer to “Summoner” or “the summoning device” to be more precious, but I guess Atlus preferred not to risk the wrath and greed of Square Enix’s legal department.) are more powerful, useful and require more care than the literal toy guns in Persona 5. For starters, the users of Evokers point those things real near to their eyes. Here in miHoYo’s country of origin, air soft guns powerful enough to permanently damage human eyeballs with one single discharge are illegal to hold without a license, so the risks can be felt by yours truly.

Then there is ammo counting and preparing, Persona Skills triggered by the Evokers take hit points or skill points to cast, so pile up the potions for the new design is bit closer to injector with trigger. It’s also fun to see that “whack” is separated into 2 elements: one with shape edges and another with blunt ends. Projection is also present with starting party member Yukari wielding bow and arrows, “pull your bow on” is a way to say “kill” in Japanese, or at least that’s how someone working for Square Enix chose to translate it in the opening monologue of NieR Automata, Laconic but lacks certain poetic flair.

Tartarus is a dungeon appears in player character’s new school during Dark Hour (Or “Shadow Time” if you want to slip hair about the translation. Well, “time” and “hour” do share the same 2 kanjis with the same order in modern Japanese.), the time between days as the game states. Here in the city where miHoYo global headquarters is housed, we have an insult that can be roughly translated into “13 O’clock”. No, it’s not another way to say 1 p.m. but rather a way to call someone an SOB without dragging one or both of their parents into the conversation. Legend has it, the insult originated because a clock tower stroke 13 times instead of 12 at 12 a.m. some day and messed up many’s lives. As someone born and raised in that city, yours truly cannot help but wonder about origin of similar urban myth.

Despite the dungeon layout being randomly generated, one should not call Persona 3 a rouge-like or even rogue-lite. The dungeon levels have permanent or otherwise teleportation points for player to back to the entrance and save progress. Yours truly would call it a day after finding a permanent tele-pad and continue from there the next day.

Regarding the post-Persona 5 quality of life improvement, I rather love the save almost anywhere feature. I mean if a book cannot hold a bookmark where you leave it then that book is mechanically faulty. Funny how long the console gaming crowd put up with the more obscure approach. While I love the combat commands are all mapped in face buttons, bumpers and triggers now, the visual change of it into just a circle is bit disappointing, perhaps have something to do with the new Evokers design not like a revolver. Still I rather miss the short time I spent with Portable’s revolver wheel and commands with cylinders. Well, at least I can look the one with that arms-dealing cop, huh?

Something, something, Mass Effect

Okay time to really get up my bullshit, for translating Japanese, law in China and Shanghainese swear are merely things bled through in this looser form of blogging. Japanese voice actors and Mass Effect trilogy are where my passion lays. While I had my say on the fantasy bookings, seeing that Persona 3’s English version on PS2 and Mass Effect on Xbox 360 sharing the year 2007 of their year of release does re-ignite something in me.

Like many “things” in life, the decline of Japanese er, “full-pirced” games in the mid to late aughts was a process, something people can spill tales out of. One of those tales is 2007 Keighley’s or Spike Video Game Awards 2007’s Best RPG category. Looking at the nominees, one can barely feel the decline of JRPG: Eternal Sonata on Xbox 360, Final Fantasy Tactics’ remake for PSP, Persona 3 on PS2 and Xbox 360’s very own Mass Effect, the token western one made in Canada. But the last one won, starting a trend of its whole trilogy plus the first Dragon Age to bring monkey shaped trophies to Bioware and spilt the tale of how it single-handedly defeated counterparts from across a continent plus an ocean. It’s not like Persona series fell back in its niche since then, Giant Bomb’s Persona 4 Endurance Run certainly contributed to the sea change in video game media, but the lack of some fancy trophy did paint a bleak picture.

As a once proud owner of Xbox 360, yours truly do lament the fact that Microsoft not paying attention to how Persona 3 digging its series out of a narrower niche led to their failure after failure in Japan. They wrongly thought that Hironobu “the Final Fantasy ‘creator’” Sakaguchi is a bigger brand than his creation, invested in his venture and did not get much in return. While what they could have done is hiring an usual suspect fitted dubbing cast for titles like Mass Effect to lure the so-called anime otakus in. But with Bioware being sold to EA, they did not give a shit.

Yours truly would call Persona 3’s road to mainstream as Tales Up. By which I mean following the footstep of Namco’s Tales series of JRPGs: animated adaption friendly art style and voices the target audience knew from their cartoons. With the former, the developers were also ready to outsource their pre-rendered cut scenes to animation studio way before they can receive loyalty for some anime. As for the latter, well, Persona 3 has the infamy of casting people who were in Tales game back from mid-1990s, the whole joint seemed obviously deliberate. It still beats the other road to mainstream I dubbed “photo real hellhole”, the resource intense approach Square Enix struggles with and not even Atlus nowadays can afford.

Anyway, yours truly prefer to think about the coulda when self-indulging. While Altus USA proudly presented to English speakers an all-new dub cast, the game is very much sold in Japan on most of the original cast being back. And how would they have raised the appeal of Mass Effect.

Akira Ishida as Commander Shepard(male)

Mr. Ishida played the player character in Persona 3, so it’s just a straight from player character to player character. Or maybe when I watched Mobile Suit Gundam Seed and its sequel with Destiny at the end, I thought Arthlan Zala, Mr. Ishida’s character, could have been a much meaner space commando. On the topic of Persona 3 Reload’s lacking female player avatar, I think it’s fair not only because of the relatively high resource intensity, but also how it might demolish Ishida getting triple cast (With the twist of “It’s actually just double cast”) in this game. There is also the following to consider.

Kohsuke Umitori as Jeff “the Joker” Moreau

Mr. Umitori played Junpei with a bright comedic voice in Persona 3. While I am open to like this kid in the future, for now he is a just bearded asshole wearing a cap and I don’t rely on him to be my getaway driver like I rely on that similarly bearded asshole wearing a cap in Mass Effect. In the little time I spent with Portable, this little shit doubted my character’s authority on the ground of gender alone, so I am quite glad not to see that whole ordeal with polygonal models in Reload. Well, high school Junior with chin beard does rub me the wrong way.

Hikaru Midorikawa as Kaiden Alenko

Mr. Midorikawa played Akihiro in Persona 3, one of tall, stoic and handsome girl magnets he played in his career. “Stoic” here pointing to him being very reasonable, like how he defended the female player character in Portable by saying “Well, she took out 2 Shadows, so follow her lead, Junpei”. Both the aforementioned Ishida and Midorikawa had been in different Tales games in the 1990s, and the latter happened to be the inspiration for Nobunaga Shimasaki, the one I picked for Kaiden in my fantasy booking piece, to enter the field. I am sure even the Commander Shepard might be attracted to a Kaiden voiced by this man. And speak of the commander.

Miyuki Sawashiro as Commander Shepard(female)

Ms. Sawashiro played Elizabeth, the attendant of Velvet Room in Persona 3. This is a complete retrack from my fantasy booking piece. If I am to do a recasting from Persona, Rina Sahto, the voice behind Makoto in Persona 5 would be picked. But that’s another game entirely. Ms. Sawashiro is a cast member shared by Persona 3 Reload and Granblue Fantasy Relink. Her character Katarina there sounding like Jennifer Hale talk tough in Japanese is why I cook up this bullshit in first place. Sawashiro also got double cast in Persona 3, I am yet to meet the rouge galley member she played. There might be some joke to be made regarding the Elizabeth in this game is Elizabeth the First since years after those 2 role partly got her through college, she would voice the player companion with a similar if not the same name in Bioshock Infinite.

Rie Tanaka as Ashley Williams

Ms. Tanaka played Mitsuru in Persona 3. The high school senior is still a support role in chair when I got to in Persona 3. Quite like the aforementioned Mr. Midorikawa (Who along with his wife were known to be unstoppable against their peer in an arcade game), Ms. Tanaka’s career is partially built on being one of the audiences. Cosplay is one of her hobbies (Though it’s hard to tell with actors) and gaming her vice. She claimed to having fun pursuing Mitsuru when she played Persona 3 on PS2. One had to assure partially to see how fragments from a cast member’s perspective were put together.

My earlies memories of hearing Ms. Tanaka were the ghostly soft talk of Lacus Clyne in Gundam Seed plus Destiny and Chi in Chobits. But it seems Mitsuru’s semi-masculine mid pitch is actually her A voice, since she pulled it for almost all her whale bait roles. There is Rosetta in Granblue Fantasy (Both the gacha and Relink, not a big role in fighting game Versusu.), Lisa in Genshin Impact and Himeko in both Hokai titles (Ah, yes, decision makers over at miHoYo sure love to cast her.) My favorite role of hers is Akira in Spaceship Yamato remake series, a dark skin fighter pilot from Mars who got the John McLane part in the Die Hard like mutiny episode. So maybe she can direct some of my affection towards the er, Xenophobic Alliance Marine in Mass Effect.

Megumi Toyoguchi as Tali

Ms. Toyoguchi played Yukari, the “plain Jane” party member of Persona 3. You know, the kind of “plain Jane” that writer wanted to write a certain way while the artist just went “Oh, this girl is going to put butts in seats for our animated features”. When I wrote my Mass Effect fantasy booking I planned to write her up for the role of Avina, the Citadel guidance Virtual Intelligence. Ms. Toyoguchi and Nao Toyama were both in Nisekoi’s Christmas episodes (Something I would watch along with Die Hard on Christmas every year.) as a mother and daughter duo. I want to hear young Toyama as EDI, the first friendly Artificial Intelligence in Mass Effect trilogy, so it would have been fun to hear a voice behind her on-screen mum as a VI. But, since Avina was not on Wikipedia’s listing of Mass Effect character, I scrapped that. Some of you might have heard her as Josuke’s mum in Jojo Part 4 already, recast later for reason unknown to me.

Toyoguchi was having a Gundam Seed reunion with aforementioned Ishida and Tanaka while she might be denied that in the recent for the time of writing Freedom movie (Or she might dodge a bullet there.). Toyoguchi played bridge operator Emila in Gundam Seed with a voice that can still sound seething over radio. Perfect for Tali, wouldn’t you agree.

Numbers and pauses

The different first impressions I have between Persona 3 and 5 made me wonder if the games take the numbers in their titles bit too seriously. 3 let me raid its dungeon to my heart’s content (and the bottom of my resource) within hour three while 5 did not until the save file said 5 hours and 54 minutes. 3 got a triangle when it comes to character building while 5 asked me to develop five different qualities.

Many, my future myself included, might read what was written above and go “You haven’t seen shit!” Which is fair, the piece is regarding very early stage of the game. How much can the first several hours get into in a 70 hours long game. This is certainly a pause with “to be continued” instead of a conclusion. I still have no idea how much each chapter would cover and with Lunar New Year vocation coming I just might see the whole thing through and write one single verdict piece to make this one look like a preview. We will see. But right now, I am loving it.

(To be continued? Or to be concluded? Not likely the end.)

EDIT: To be continued, “live” on the 13 o’clock news.

Double feature: GoldenEye and From Russia With Love

With an episode of Abnormal Mapping proper basically became Jame Bond podcast, it’s high time for me to dig up this idea I had back when the film franchise celebrated its sixtieth anniversary. After all, not only had yours truly watched all 25 films of said franchise but also read everything Ian Fleming wrote regarding the fictional British imperial agent while one of the AM duo had not read Fleming at all. Or they would not have made the mistake of thinking Fleming are into “old man SPA” here. Apology in advance for the C-bombs below. Some time, “appropriate” language just does not cut it. Or maybe thinking about an Irishman made one swear like an Irishman.

2024 contains more than one anniversary for the James Bond franchise. One being the death of character creator Ian Fleming on August the twelfth. Happy sixtieth year being dead, you old c***. Another being Goldfinger’s UK opening in September, and fuck that overrated piece of shit for fouling up the formula. To celebrate those, allow me to write about 2 Bond flicks that I do like.

I don’t suppose anyone excepts the line “The name is Bond, James Bond.” to be heard in cinemas for almost six decades. Though whether the franchise would really outlive the regime of Queen Elizabeth the Second is still unknown now in early 2024. But the marks the franchise made in its unbelievable 59 years run are undeniable, so in the order of me watching the two, let’s start with the relatively recent one.

A gold mine for interactive media

A screenshot of 1995’s GoldenEye, featuring Pierce Brosnan as James Bond firing a machine gun into a crowd of enemy combatants.

Like how James Bond is usually ordered to chase down someone in the films, the film franchise itself finds success in chasing cinematic trends throughout the decades. The Connery era would not have that many installments if the people behind them had not nailed mimicking North By Northwest. For the same reason, the franchise did struggle in the 1980s, after Cobra and Commando turned body-count of action cinema to sky high, Moore and Dalton simply looked like pussycats in comparison.

So, when it comes to a hard but not that hard reboot for the post-Cold War world, GoldenEye did make some changes. If actual love interest Bond Girl cannot shake the archetype of damsel in distress, the least that move did is turning her first on-screen distress into a legit stun she has to get through on her own. Then of course there is the blood in Bond’s hand. “Bad ass spy commando” just does not look so badass if he does not kill by dozen since the 1980s no matter how much swash he buckles. So, pick up a machine gun and mold down some fools, Mr. Bond. No, no, the girl can get out on her own, you weren’t there when she was first in trouble after all.

The ironic thing is, this successful imitator actually inspired things in a younger and dumber media form known as “video game” by first being adapted into a beloved classic on Nintendo 64. I haven’t played this one myself, nor that “Call of Duty clone” starring Daniel Craig. But I did play Perfect Dark when it was re-released on Xbox 360 and the Bond DNA is obvious there.

I wanted to focus on 2 series starting with the letter M. Seeing No Time to Die’s Metal Gear Solid and Mass Effect references made me cry “Oh, how the mighty had fallen”, for those 2 series started by ripping off GoldenEye with absolutely no shame. Guess M decided to pull out the stick up his or her arse and go to town on Bond by 2021 for such “theft”. I would try to limit the talk to 1998’s Metal Gear Solid, 2001’s Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty, 2007’s Mass Effect and Mass Effect tie-in novel subtitled Revelations also of 2007. But reference to other installments of those 2 series might bleed through.

The big picture of “cop” versus “robber”

“Take one to catch one” is an old plot trope. In cinema, there was Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief by 1955. (Don’t ask me why I kept think about Hitchcock flick starring Cary Grant. You might as well dig up Al Hitchcock and ask him why he kept giving the late Grant swashbuckling gigs.). So, authorized agent versus rouge agent was not that new when GoldenEye came out. Quite an example to point to regarding video game’s immaturity, heh?

Still, Solid versus Liquid in 1998’s MGS and Shepard versus Saren in the original Mass Effect would both remind yours truly of GoldenEye, with a single flaw: Neither Liquid Snake nor Saren Arterius talks as smooth as Sean Bean playing Alec “006” Trevelyan. While Bean is famous for on-screen death in almost everything he is in, this movie killed him twice for the price of one by turning down the fall damage. Regarding the game titled GoldenEye Reloaded, Craig as Bond was already a replacement of a placement while that bloke replacing. Bean got the real short end of the stick.

Or maybe it’s the different ways those 3 handled the “cop versus robber” set-up: GoldenEye is a global trotting adventure; MGS mimicked Die Hard; Mass Effect is a spacefaring role-playing game where such set-up can be ignored for the most part. The 2 games also took different cues from the film.

MGS, the series as a whole not just its 1998 installment, has the habit of concealing the identity of the final bosses, much like how Bean steps out of the shadow twice in the film. Even in Snake Eater and Guns of Patriots where player knows who the final bosses are, the “what’s their deal?” mystery is pure GoldenEye.

Bioware RPG certainly cannot do the Bond film like escort mission, so the whole damsel in distress thing had to be cut out of the game and given to the tie-in prequel novel. And boy didn’t Revelations have a field day mimicking Aliens with that top-secret base getting raided bit. I am looking at you c****s, Blizzard and Bungie. Why did you start the trend of modeling science fictional military adventure after James Camreon’s gambit.

Details matter

It was bit fucking rich for the Konami Digital Entertainment employees worked on MGS 2 patting themselves on the back regarding making Solid Snake and Raiden keep the muzzles down when their firearms are in stand-by. Yes, their fearless leader Hideo Kojima brought in a consonant to correct that wrong impression of muzzle up the Brosnan Bond flick gave to the public. But this same fearless leader cut a lot of corners when it came to stunt pulling. There is the argument of making the stunt puller Solid Snake more mythic to be made, still Kojima is not the detail focused genius you all think he is.

The stunts in MGS2 I referred to is the bungie jump from George Washinton Bridge into the tanker during the opening credits and the dive after Metal Gear Ray just before the “No, for me” answering to “For the Patriots, Jack?” final boss fight. In typical Kojima fashion, he took something that were only 10 minutes apart from each other in something else and put a whole game between them. In GoldenEye, Bond bungie jumps into the Soviet facility and dive after the runaway plane, both before that Tina Turner song kicks in. While we never see how Solid Snake ties his cord, we can see Bond rushing in with the cord, securing it then dive. Bond even has a grappling hook to stick the landing while Snake’s acrobatic insanity has making into Terminator territory since focus is not Kojima’s strong suit. When Brosnan certainly showed his acting chop pretending to pull that plane up, Kojima did not show us jack shit regarding Solid Snake putting a tracker on the Liquid piloting Metal Gear Ray.

But I got to hand it to the man when it comes to Japanese voice casting. Probably realized that Akio Otsuka, the Japanese voice of Solid Snake, is the closest he got to a Sean Bean sound-like, while the actual Sean Bean sound-like such as Joji Nakata and Sho Hayami are likely on the side of “Hideo Kojima? Never heard of him.”, Kojima got cooking in MGS2 by double casted Otsuka as the unplayable for the most part Solid Snake and the game’s final boss Solidus Snake. A stunt unfortunately was not pulled in the English dub, for Solidus has a generic cartoon villain voice that one hears and simply goes “That’s not David Hayter doing Clint Eastwood.” English voice-over casting in video game simply did not appreciate a smooth talking villain maybe until Martin Sheen as Illusive Man in Mass Effect 2 and 3.

Into the world of espionage and assassination

From a film inspired a couple as far as I know to something inspired just one, I present to you all, From Russia with Love. No, not the PSP game, but the movie that would celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of its US release in May, 2024.

A screenshot of 1963’s From Russia With Love, featuring Sean Connery as James Bond in the front and Robert Shaw as SPECTRE assassin Donald Grant skulking in the back. Grant is tailing Bond here to learn the face-to-face passcode of MI6 agents in that neck of the woods, so he can er, intercept the MI6 agent in the next train station, impose as said MI6 agent and make contact with Bond. Surely, Opportunities in 2016’s Hitman soft reboot and Story Missions in its 2 sequels took cue from this.

Buckle up, this “history lesson” might take a while

As someone was born in the year of 1990, my younger self, between the age of 6 and 8 to be precious, would consider everything shot in Technicolor as “contempeorary”. Both my parents were into Bond films in mid to late 1990s, so I watched with them. The first one I saw through does star Sean Connery. Ah, You Only Live Twice, how you had cursed me with a fascination with Japan. Though I did not watch From Russia With Love until a much later date. I first saw GoldenEye when I was 9 by the way, still much earlier than when I saw the second Bond flick.

It was the autumn of 2012 when the hyper-train arrived at station Skyfall. And how the title of that film foreshadowed my overall thought of it: hyper was sky high and the reality fell short. With Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy starring Gary Oldman pushing for sad spy blues while Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol pursuing high tech high adventure in the year before, Skyfall well, falling firmly in the middle just did not do it for me. It’s the same stand I would take comparing 24 to Person of Interest and Strike Back on TV. And speak of Strike Back, it’s very fucking cute that Skyfall ends with an outgunned Bond playing deadly Home Alone while that British action drama had done the same twice before, in board day light rather than Roger Deakin’s night scene lighting experiment no less.

But I did not find out until later. For here in miHoYo’s country of origin, Skyfall could be seen clearly until early 2013, so I started to watch all the Bond films that were available, starting with From Russia With Love without knowing at the time that I started with a showstopper. This second Bond film starring Connery is a boiler-plate but ultimately very effective spy thriller before Goldfinger made the whole thing into silly cartoons.

Based on the novel with same title by Ian Fleming, From Russia With Love followed the book relatively closely except for one major factor: Russians are behind the plot in the book while SPECTRE is in the film. Legend has it, Fleming thought Cold War against Russians would lose its appeal in late 1950s and early 1960s, not to mention eyeing the growing Russian film market, thus he went with the idea of a third faction playing both side off. Funny the old liberal c*** would think that, given Russians, if you can the hivemind there that, were very much into the idea of film industry being a Theatre of Cold War back then. They started to make the Academy Award winning War and Peace (The ambition of which was only matched by Hollywood once with a bloody Kiwi in charge in late 1990s) after all.

Back on topic

While From Russia With Love is cinematically normal compared to later installments of the series, the villain’s plot is no less elaborate. SPECTRE intends to both character assassinate and actually assassinate James Bond while make some bucks out of it, so they find a low ranking Russian female intelligence officer (The titular From Russia With Love if you may) and the decoding device she operates with as bait then stage a murder-suicide and sell said decoding device back to Russians.

Much like Fleming’s novel, Bond talking to his fellow men is more interesting than his filtering with so-called Bond Girls. Pedro Armendariz as Ali Kerim Bey, the head of MI6’s Turkey Station, is the MVP of this movie and the book it’s based on. His death at Grant’s hands qualifies as gone too soon. While I agree with the homo-romantic statement made here, I just don’t think anything fruity is taking place, the man considers sex as “salt mine” even though he crusades for large family for crying out loud. Men simply have more topics to talk about to each other. Their lousy job with mere potential of excitement for starter. Food, though that topic is exclusive to the book. And God forbids women hearing the nasty things they say about women.

Then there is Robert Shaw as Donald Grant, a character clearly inspired the chrome domed Agent 47 rather than Bond. This one always wears gloves for wet work after all. In fact, if you cut the blond top off Shaw, he would just look like the titular Hitman in those games. Grant is interesting in another way in this film, he does not have a line until more than 80 minutes into this about 2 hours long movie. Yet his skulking and killing do not make him into silent gimmicks like Oddjob, Jaws or whoever Dave Batista played in 2015’s SPECTRE. In fact, I don’t think Bond had ever met a match like this one. The parallel seen between 2 in the screenshot above is something this series of “silly cartoon” would never achieve. Craig era flicks came close, but even then they never framed the shots like this.

Why didn’t I talk about the action you ask? Well, I watched North By Northwest as well. While the stunts are impressive in From Russia With Love, it did nothing new compared to 1959 Hitchcock picture. But it does have professional spies instead, and how those talk to each other is where things differ.