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.

Reviewing Jack Reacher “A Tom Cruise Production”

The poster of 2012’s Jack Reacher featuring its starring producer Tom Cruise as the titular character It’s funny to see Cruise carrying the pistol Reacher only uses once in the film. It would be like Vanquish having a poster of its player character Sam Gideon carrying that transforming Russian rifle he uses only in that game’s final Quick Time Event. It just seems funnier to me than character carrying a gun on the poster yet never fires once in the film like in the case of Sound of Freedom.

Full disclosure: I’ve not read one single book written by Lee Child as the time of writing. When it came to thriller novelists, the late Tom Clancy and Ian Fleming were the only 2 rabbit holes you truly went down a long, long time ago. I have not taken notice of Child’s creation, Jack Reacher until early 2022 when this Polygon review led me to watch Reacher on Amazon. “Schwarzenegger movie sure is back with a vengeance” was all I thought after that 8-episode binge.

Now the Amazon series had its season 2 aired and season 3’s production started, I think it’s high time for me to check out the previous attempt to bring Jack Reacher live on the screens: a 2012 movie made by basically the Mission Impossible people. Or maybe it’s a throwaway reference in Reacher season 2 that made me curious. I meant that Amazon show crew was basically saying “No, we are not touching One Shot by Lee Child. Not until after at least one Amazon cancelation, anyway.”

Written and directed by frequent Tom Cruise collaborator Christopher McQuarrie, the 2012 action thriller shares both strengths and weaknesses with all the director’s Mission Impossible movies. Well, not really, since Cruise’ Reacher does not come near any aircraft on screen. Still if you want a film screams “Tom Cruise is awesome, starring and produced by Tom Cruise”, this one might be more up your alley than any Mission Possible flick. Since those are legit ensemble pieces while Jack Reacher walks “tall” alone in this one.

Compared to the Amazon show, the 2012 film opens familiarly enough, with “murder most foul” like so many pieces of crime fiction would. We see a thug played by Jai Courtney sniped five random people in a parking lot and across a wide river. Then the police locks on a suspect named James Barr and picked him up. Strangely, this Barr character is not played by Courtney and McQuarrie keep the façade up for about one minute by obscuring his face while the cops start their interrogation. Barr does not talk, only writes down “Get Jack Reacher” and it’s cue for starring producer Tom Cruise to enter this picture.

From here the movie and the Amazon show differ, since Reacher would appear as a gentle giant in the latter while Cruise plays him ice cold in the former. Colder than that rather charming fellow who turns out to be a cold-blooded killer in Micheal Mann’s Collateral in fact. While both seasons on Amazon would have Reacher sharing his insight with people who show crime scene photo to him in the first episodes, Cruise’s Reacher plays it closer to his chest. That would lead to pacing issue. Cruise looking cool in the crime scene with flashback of foul plays from different angles. Audience has no idea what Cruise’ Reacher was thinking until he shares those with Barr’s defense attorney by the way of more flashback. The decision to do so certainly makes this 130 minutes long movie go down much less smooth than Amazon’s 8 episodes runs where Alan Ritchson would not skimp on sharing his insights. This film is really in a pickle with that run time, while the show on Amazon would let the mystery of who and why breath a bit, the feature length just seems too laser focused on Cruise looking cool and mystery taking the back seat.

To hide Cruise being short is almost like a farce in this movie. Cruise talks to 2 women in this movie and both would sit down when he talks. It’s easy to guess that military had drilled the idea of going to opponents’ knees into both on-screen Reachers from the fight choregraph, Alan Ritchson would seemingly aim for the knee but destroy the leg in the Amazon show while Cruise just punches down. When Cruise’ Reacher is framed for murderer in the film, he is described as “One-punch Man”. Really? Did they just take the line from the book without checking the look of their starring producer?

Action is of course the saving grace of this film, but then again when you work with a feature length movie schedule, that is not saying much. Reacher on Amazon is in every way “Schwarzenegger movie slightly better plotted”, that includes the rapid but not that rapid cuts in action. The 2012 film is determined to show its starring producer as the baddest motherfucker in town in profile shot and relative long takes.

Director McQuarrie might get fame for shooting the fights raw with the restroom fight early in Mission Impossible Fallout, but one can see he practicing with a bathroom fight in Jack Reacher, where Cruise fights a couple of comedically incompetent amateurs. The final set-piece set in a quarry does keep one on the edge of their seat, though there is certainly a sense of too little too late. McQuarrie’s style is bit too meandering here especially compared to the “hivemind” behind the Amazon show, but I guess it’s in line with Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning being the longest and thinnest in the series.

All in all, Jack Reacher is the polar opposite to Edge of Tomorrow when it comes to Tom Cruise’ career in the 2010s. It’s critically panned but apparently enough of a commercial success to warrant a sequel while the mere cult favorite also known as Live Die Repeat has no sequel now a decade past. It’s a good reminder that one starring producer’s ego is so not the winning formula for good movie, while if the committee is good enough then “designed by committee” should not be something critics automatically reach for criticizing. When it comes to being up one’s own ass, individuals have the potential to do it a lot worse…

Reviewing Suzume while gamer brained

Introduction: WU-TANG over TANG

It was a quite shame that I started to visit Giantbomb only shortly after Ryan Davis’ untimely passing back in 2013. I do wonder had he been alive in 2023, A would he be with Nextlander or still co-hosting with Gerstmann and B would This Ain’t No Game return in some form given the year’s video game adaption “volcano”. More importantly, would “Giantbomb’s anime editor before Patty Klepek” have been bold enough to cover Makoto Shinkai’s Suzume on the Wonderful Universe of This Ain’t No Game.

In markets outside Japan, or at least here in miHoYo’s country of origin, Suzume no Tojimari came out between Dungeon & Dragon Honor Among Thieves and the Super Mario Bros Movie. Your truly dare to say that Suzume is a better video game movie than those 2 with big brands combined. Don’t get me wrong, Honor Among Thieves is a still a surprisingly fun fantasy swashbuckler and Mario is entertaining in its own rights. But neither can hold a candle to Suzume in term of feeling like a video game design from the bottom up.

But first, my thoughts on Shinkai flicks

Matoko Shinkai is an animation director breaking into the scene in very early aughts. He crashed into the scene as a one-man animation studio with Voice of a Distant Star, something endorsed by Yoshiyoki “Creator of Gundam” Tomino himself. For better and worse, that 25 minutes long short showed the animation director’s strength and weakness in equal measure. It’s visually stunning, well thought out to a degree and lacking originality to an audience as “well-read” as its creator. It is Gunbuster with the revenge plot cut out after all. And I remembered enjoying 5 Centimeters Per Second only once when I watched it during a hours-long wait for the dentist.

Even as someone who think Your Name is just fine, I found Weathering with You to be a big disappointment, “what the fuck is this piece of shit?” provoking kind of disappointment. So, I consider Suzume a big bounce back for this man’s body of works.

Closing doors, heh? Sounds easy enough.

As it’s called in Japanese, Suzume no Tojimari (Turns out, it’s the working title from the very beginning) can be literally translated into “Suzume closing doors”. The late title card of the movie certainly plays into that, as it would appear after Suzume closed the first of five doors. I took the screenshot above deliberately with the white line in the middle because the title does not come in full until a door closing visual and sound effect hits. “Suzume’s Journey” as it’s released in miHoYo’s country of origin is too generic of a title if you ask me.

Closing doors, or pretty much gates to hell in abandoned places is all the action this come-of-age story provides. It’s almost like a video game mechanic that can be built on. 5 doors in this movie do get harder to close. First door being one out of nowhere in an abandoned hot spring. Second being a slide door of an abandoned school. If you think so far so easy, the third one would throw a curve ball for it’s on a moving Ferris Whell cart in an, you guess it, abandoned theme park. The fourth one only shows hell and damnation pulling out of a working railway tunnel without way to pinpoint the origin. And the fifth and final can only be closed on the other side, aka the underworld where hell and damnation lurks. This is where I think this movie pulls “gamey” off better than Honor Among Thieves and Mario.

It’s slipping hair to debt whether D&D is a tabletop game franchise or a video game franchise, but with the frequency of “Baldur’s Gate” being referenced in that movie, I would call it a video game movie. BG the third was a king many hailed to in 2023 after all. Still its tabletop root would determine that its mechanic would not feel as rigorous as those in video games, friends fantasizing about swashbuckling together require something bit more loosey goosey.

Then there is the polygonal animated action flick with the Mario brand slapped on it. The plumper gets to work fast in a world real to him? 2D platforming. The plumper goes to a fantastical world and cannot handle the regular traffic there? 3D platforming. The plumper goes into a Thunderdome situation? Smash Bros got his back. High speed car chase? Time for Mario Kart. And even as someone who still swear by Japanese action comic for boys from time to time nowadays as I am, that final showdown against Bowser made me go “What’s this anime bullshit!” Or maybe they just suddenly threw in a turned-based JRPG battle? What a weird mixture! Why couldn't it stick to a core mechanic and build on it like Suzume did?

This “core mechanics” is not the only thing this movie has in common with video games. Suzume’s journey is from the west corner of Japan to the east corner, much like 2D platform’s from left to right routine. Then there are shots like those even before the late title card.

The shots do feel like same character moving through the same graphic adventure screen under different circumstances. Shinkai is credited for “Created, written and story-boarded by” minutes before the “Directed by” one, so I can only imagine the sense of “video game” is intentional.

Of course, Shinkai’s “lack of originality” can still be felt in this flick. For one thing, there is the “love saves the world” trope. Mr. “Damn, he is hot”, being a talking chair with only 3 legs for most of the movie, would tell Suzume to feel the memory people share with their loved one around the first 3 doors to make the locks appear.

And no, I am not going to talk about the cat they cast an actual child to voice and made plush out of. A comparably subtle Ghibli reference later into the movie almost made me stand up and yell “Oh, fuck you, Shinkai!” when I first saw the movie in theatre. This little shit being a social network sensation with one blink-and-you-will-miss-it post directly referencing a Ghibli movie just block this annoying fur ball out of my mind completely. Until the plot mentioned it again that is.

Still, it’s nice to see a gamey come of age story does not lay into role-playing games’ leveling territory. I celebrate my 34^th birthday in the week of writing this. I know enough to think that life would challenging me more yet not offer me better solutions going forward. I had better learn to ask for help more effectively. Strangely how much people can learn from those half of their age at times

Mapping 14 voices from 13 Sentinels onto the characters in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

（Full spoiler for 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim obviously. So, if you are one of them sensitive spoiler culture type, get out now.)

You all can blame this one on Scavengers Reign: a bande dessinee looking animated science fiction series on Max about a starship crew’s struggle to survive after they got stranded on an alien planet. Critics connected the show to Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki. After all, both have harshly beautiful natural landscapes and “tree hugging” messiah figures.

“A starship crew’s struggle to survive after they got stranded on an alien planet” is basically what 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim all about after its cook-sink sci-fi façade is lifted. Well, the Sentinel pilots’ struggle is not exactly against an alien environment but a Matrix style virtual world allowing Vanillaware to do the “kitchen sink” approach of science fiction. The game’s selling point in Japan is of course an all-star voice cast. And after mapping two late teens video games’ voice cast on Nausicaa, why not a third one? Yours truly had triple dipped (First on PS4, then on Switch, and read the whole thing in chronological order on Switch again.) on 13 Sentinels yet struggled to review the bloody thing. This way I might be able to dive into the character archetypes more easily.

1. Doll-faced stoic

Atsumi Tanezaki as Naussica

Ms. Tanezaki is credited to play “Iori Fuyusaka / Chihiro Morimura / Chihiro Morimura (Child) / Chihiro Morimura (Adult) / Chihiro Morimura (AD 2188)” at third billing in 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim

Atsumi Tanezaki is a NieR Automata cast member. Well, she was not in the well received 2017 video game since she would certainly not be usual suspect enough for the snubs at Platinum back then. But she is in the 2023 animated adaption and A-1 Pictures just dropped Nausicaa into the world of NieR Automata with her character named Lily. As the replacement of a happy go lucky do plain Jane named Anemone in the game, this stoic doll-face just screams merchandising opportunity. After good old uncle Pascal being made into butts of more jokes, this android lady is almost made into the symbol of peaceful co-existence in the show. Until Mr. YOKO finds a way to fuck her over in the next season of course.

As you can see from her 13 Sentinels credits, this woman can play someone from cradle to the grave. Nausicaa is such an icon that every female usual suspect in the business can voice her being a young girl. So, the key is also can the actor also voice the Matron in the Valley of the Wind, a character sitting on the threshold between the graphic novel’s plot and the er, shall we say, beheading for that motion picture. The Matron appears when the movie plot ends and explain the merely centuries long cycle that drives the plot for the graphic novel. “Chihiro Morimura (AD 2188)” in 13 Sentinels is a similarly elderly woman and Ms. Tanezaki played the part convincingly, she should have this one in her bag.

2. Point, click and swash-buckle

Daisuke Namikawa as Yupa

Mr. Namikawa is credited to play “Ei Sekigahara / Ei Sekigahara (AD 2188)” at fourth billing in 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim

Okay, here is someone who were in both Automata the game and the show. Daisuke Namikawa voiced Machine Life-form named Adam in Automata and the character got a promotion from merely the harbinger of the endgame to the final boss of Route A plus B in the show. Yours truly once imagined Mr. Namikawa as a villain in Naussica for his part in Automata, but Ei Sekigahara in 13 Sentinels is closer to a heroic figure. The graphic adventure game even gave him a “shoot the baddie and save the girl” swashbuckling scene within its very basic point and click adventure mechanics. Plus, Namikawa does gravitas well, so he can certainly play the man, the myth, the legend named Yupa. Only the best swordsman across the wasteland.

3. Warrior Princess

M.A.O (Mao Ichimichi) as Kushana

Ms. Ichimichi is credited to play “Tomi Kisaragi / Tomi Kisaragi (AD 2188) / Miyuki Inaba” at eighth billing in 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim

Even in Japanese text, Ms. Mao Ichimichi is usually credited with the letters M, A and O, all caps with period in between. If you look up a picture of hers (Type in “M.A.O voice actress” I would suggest), you might think “Is she bit too pretty to just do voice-over works?” Indeed, she is one of them pop idols who found out that they can speak well enough into a microphone with more than one kind of voice.

Back to 13 Sentinels, Tomi Kisaragi is like that little boy in Pacific Rim. You know the one, following his scavenging father and found the broken Gipsy Danger stranded on a beach with a traumatized pilot crawling out. Except that little Miss Kisaragi was with a taller friend of hers. Miyuki Inaba is a former version of hers who pose as a pop idol. Shame Vanillaware did not let the voice actor sing in this one.

Anyway, yours truly actually have no idea what Ms. Ichimichi’s “radio voice” sounds like. In 2019, the same year I went through Nausicaa graphic novel twice, her filmography was filled with mature female warriors dipped in gravitas, So, voice Kushana she shall.

4. The Mustache Twirling Goof

Jun Fukuyama as Kurozawa

Mr. Fukuyama is credited to play “Renya Gouto” at fifth billing in 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim

First impression is important, there is no 2 ways about it. Even after spending more than 100 hours (36 hours with Persona 5 Tatica and 88 hours with Royal) imagining Jun Fukuyama’s voice coming out of a swashbuckling phantom thief code named Joker, Mr. Fukuyama would always sound like Johnny shit pants in Guns of Patriots to me. It does not help that the man’s radio voice is much closer to the ones he pulled for butts of jokes.

Renya Gouto in 13 Sentinels is not comedy relief per se since the game is pretty serious from top to bottom, but he is barely a character. His story would not really begin until one read through eighty percent of all 12 other points of view, and then he would come out, pull his notes out and go “We are all in the Matrix, baby!” He is a total goof with a façade of being formidable just like Kurozawa in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

5. Cooler Queen

Sario Hayami as Rastel

Ms. Hayami is credited to play “Ryoko Shinome / Ryoko Shinome (AD 2188)”at sixth billing in 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim

This one is more about someone going back to her old ways in new genre rather than first impression. In her early 20s, Sario Hayami’s voice acting career is littered with Fridged ones in science fiction flicks, namely Gundam Age and that one guild chick in the very early stage of Sword Art Online. A decade later, it just so happened that Ms. Hayami voiced 2 Fridged ones in fantasy. First there is trope extravaganza Butareba: The Story of a Man Who Turned into a Pig, implied horrible violent death, part of her still powers her avenger’s weapon and not only there is younger woman who looks like her, there is also a girl almost sounds like her, this piece of shit has it all. Then there is slightly less offensive Delicious In Dungeon, a successful rescue mission where Ms. Hayami’s character is kept alive on ice for the most part. Guess no more doubt for this one to play a Fridged one in a classic.

Rastel in Nausicaa and Ryoko Shinome (AD 2188) have just one thing in common: both pulled people into the plots. Rastel spent her dying breath telling Naucicaa things to set up a plot both the graphic novel and motion picture use. Ryoko Shinome (AD 2188) is the reason why 13 Sentinels’ Matrix world has any stakes, she started a malice cycle for loathing a man, and by the game’s current day, that cycle would damage life support forever so everyone got to fight their way out. Oh well, I already had typed way more words than this character would say in the whole graphic novel (Only 85 words in the Viz translation, 2 of which are repeats to show how weakened she is.), moving on.

6. May Hayao Miyazaki be proud of him

Kaito Ishikawa as Asbel

Mr. Ishikawa is credited to play “Keitaro Miura / BJ / Keitaro Miura (AD 2188)” at eleventh billing in 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim

Ah, Keitaro Miura, how might Hayao Miyazaki himself be proud of you! Had Ghibli made an ET knockoff with Mr. Miyazaki in the director chair, it might not look too different from 13 Sentinels’ Miura and Minami storylines. Minami being the kid made first contact with the alien, just gender bent from Elliot to Ellie or Ellen, and Miura would be a typical well meaning Miyazaki boy who offered help. It might not have the plot twist of alien known as BJ somehow being future Miura, but just the double casting would already be a Miyazaki touch.

In Kaito Ishikawa, yours truly got a lap with Fire Emblem Three Houses. Mr. Ishikawa played the edge lord dark fantasy hero named Dimitri there, so he can play an edge lord dark fantasy villain according to that performance, He played a Miyazaki boy in 13 Sentinels, so no pressure playing the very first Miyazaki boy in cinema history.

7. May Hayao Miyazaki be proud of her

Kaoru Sakura as Ceraine

Ms. Sakura is credited to play “Natsuno Minami / Natsuno Minami (AD 2188)” at seventh billing in 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim

There is “tree hugging” messiah figure, then there are just tree huggers. Ceraine is one among the latter called People of the Forest in Nausicaa graphic novel who offered a helping hand to the titular “tree hugging” messiah figure after the latter almost gave up. I know nothing about Ms. Sakura’s voice acting beyond her “Ellie or Ellen” role in 13 Sentinels, but the role is more than ready to offer helping hand, so she should be fitting for Ceraine’s very small part.

8. Henchman

Hiro Shimono as Miralupa

Mr. Shimono is credited to play “Juro Kurabe / Juro Izumi” at top billing in 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim

Mr. Hiro Shimono getting top billing in this game is injustice! He did not even voice the older selves of his character. As someone who got tired of hearing queer folks complaining about hereto-normalcy in media, the poster boy and girl who did not express their talent to full extents in this game getting top billings certainly feels like hereto-normalcy horseshit to me: man being man, woman being woman, always in front of our minds.

While Juro is your typical goody two shoe protagonist on the more vanilla side, the voice behind him is quite cable of voicing villains, who in the usual suspect club cannot? But it’s hard to find a mastermind kind in Mr. Shimono’s filmography, so the powerful henchman who really raised the stake in Nausicaa he shall voice.

9. “Mastermind”

Tatushisa Suzuki as Namulith

Mr. Suzuki is credited to play “Shu Amiguchi / Tetsuya Ida / Tetsuya Ida (Youth) / Tetsuya Ida (AD 2188)” at tenth billing in 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim

For our final NieR Automata cast member, I present to you Tastushisa Suzuki, who voiced Eve there. Woe to Eve for he got demoted from the final boss as far as the show is considered to the Fridged harbinger of endgame in the animated adaption. Either way, that’s a performance fitting for the henchman Miralupa. But Tetsuya Ida is depictable mastermind type in 13 Sentinels much like Namulith, Miralupa’s brother who always wanted to kill each other.

The pov character Shu Amiguchi being a dashing womanizer is archetype modern media struggle with, so it’s easier to assume Mr. Suzuki had more fun playing the mustache Twirling Ida. So why not let him play the role that Miyazaki killed off just before a movie about pig headed men flying planes went into full production.

10. Destined to have a man

Maaya Uchida as Ketcha

Ms. Uchida is credited to play “Megumi Yakushiji” at second billing in 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim

Ah, the “dad” to her friend Tomi and the “mom” to her future hubby Juro, Megumi Yakushiji is quite the Yamato Nateshiko, a model of femininity in Japanese culture. Of course the role got second top billing in this game.

Back to the cast, Ms. Uchida is quite a talent who flourished in both voice acting and J-pop. Megumi Yakushiji is definitely not her most memorable role in her filmography, but she was the one introduced player or reader to the real world in the game. Bit like Ketcha’s final panel in Nausicaa where she embraced a boy, Megumi’s happy ending in 13 Sentinel is about fully embracing the gender role. Quite a match.

11. A life-keeper’s way or the highway

Takayuki Ishiii as Selm

Mr. Ishii is credited to play “Takatoshi Hijiyama / Takatoshi Hijiyama (AD 2188)” at twelfth billing in 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim

Takatoshi Hijiyama in 13 Sentinels is a cop. Well-meaning maybe, but a cop nonetheless. I know nothing about the voice behind this one beyond 13 Sentinels, but the seemingly well -meaning one with firm belief seem fitting for Selm, the man who leads the People of the Forest. After all, it takes a well-meaning cop to shout down the penultimate evil and fend off the ultimate evil of a story.

12. Boy!

Mutsumi Tamura as Chikuku

Ms. Tamura is credited to play “Tsukasa Okino / Kiriko Douji / Tsukasa Okino (AD 2188)” at fourteenth billing in 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim

This blog piece had been floating in my mind since March, 2023 yet the time of writing is much later. I am glad, for the delay actually gives me a better way to frame the whole thing and this one in particular. Mutusmi Tamura voiced the “white haired adult who looks like a child” archetype in Fate/Samurai Remnant just like NieR cast member Mai Katowaki did in Fate/Stay Night. Ms. Tamura has the advantage of gravitas, given that Chikuku is a prince of a fallen dynasty in Nausicaa graphic novel, would not hurt if the performer behind him can bring out the quality of august.

13. Gender flair, like water

Ami Koshimizu as Master of the Garden

Ms. Koshimizu is credited to play “Yuki Takamiya / Yuki Takamiya (AD 2188)” at ninth billing in 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim

Yuki Takamiya is an homage to Ryoko in Kill La Kill obviously, or they would not have designed this one just with longer skirt and cast the same voice actor. Strangely, in a game that does not shame away from up-skirt shots, this one is quite preserved, for the character’s masculine mannerism I would presume.

Well, Ms. Koshimizu does have “water” in her name and her voice does have a gender flair quality. A quality fitting for the man-made Master of the Garden, who does have a gender in Nausicaa graphic novel.

14. The self-proclaimed Champion of Light

Tomokazu Seki as Master of the Tomb

Mr. Seki is credited to play “Nenji Ogata / Nenji Ogata (AD 2188)” at thirteenth billing in 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim

Or “the sole light that remains in the darkness” who calls the titular heroic figure of that book “child of darkness” according to the Viz translation. Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself. Listening to Herald of Darkness can make one think about the light being evil while the darkness being good bit in Nausicaa.

Anyway, Mr. Seki getting bottom billing among the point-of-view characters is rather justified. Nenji is an idiot, the kind one can put into a time loops if one wants that loop to go for more than a couple of times. For the facade of mystery box of course. Even his 2188 counterpart is only about “You lot promised my dad eternal life, now where is it?” I think he is drawn up simply as a visual homage to Jusuke Higashikata, the JoJo in Part 4 JeffJeff podcast would soon meet as the time of writing.

Speak of JoJo, Mr. Seki played the villain in Part 6 of this new and intended-to-be-complete animated adaption, a self-righteous asshat called Father Pooch. Aforementioned Ms. Atsumi Tanesaki played the heroic figure (Not the titular JoJo of Part 6 though) who told him to go to hell before sent him there with a recently acquired powerful weapon, just like Nausicaa did to the Master of the Tomb. Thus, bringing this horseshit in full circle in a better way than I excepted.

Yohane the Parhelion: Blaze in the Deep Blue review

(9 hours 10 minutes and 2 seconds to “100%” according to my save file. Played on Switch with Japanese text.)

To describe Yohane the Parhelion: Blaze in the Deep Blue by Inti Creates is to keep the impulse of using “sequel” and “spin-off” in check. First there was Love Live! phone game. Then it got an animated adaption which became a new horizon for a couple of anime critics I trust. Then that show got a sequel subtitled Sunshine. Or was it adapting the phone game’s upgrades?

Just as Aquor, Sunshine’s idol group, seemed to be disbanded like Muse before them, a fantasy spin-off called Yohane the Parhelion came out in 2023 featuring the 9 girls who didn’t manage to save their school with winning Love Live. Here they are leading mounding lives in a fantasy world. Tie-in video games did not fall far behind in this case.

There are 2 Yohane the Parhelion video games planned: one being a deck builder set for early 2024; the other is Blaze in the Deep Blue I am writing about here. (I ordered those 2 as such because I typed “Yohane” into Steam search bar and the deck builder came up first. Guess Valve’s algorism has its audience figured out.) This “Super Metroid like” made by “more Castlevania people” is a 2023 game through and through since it fits into the following 3 “trends”.

First there is the mega corporations bleed into the so-called “indie” game development scene started with people looking into Dave the Diver. This franchise started with dependence on whales now it has a decent enough pixel side-scroller, what are the odds? Speak of whales of phone game, the second point is that very much like Fate/Samurai Remanent, Blaze in the Deep Blue dares to ask those same whales to pay just for playing the game this game. Last but not least, an anime tie-in game not being a polygonal affair in 2023 certainly screams cutting spend on contents generation…

My fellow Love Live! Sunshine fans…

As the title points out, Aquors’ resident day dreamer Yohane is the player character. No, she is not called Yoshiko Tsushima ever once in the 13 animated episodes aired between July and September 2023. In fact, nobody has a family name in the show. Yohane’s day dreaming is almost the reverse of Sunshine’s Yoshiko. While Yoshiko is fantasizing about being a fallen angel in a relatively realistic world where her follow school girls pursue music, Yohane is pursuing a music career in a fantasy word where her peers start to have “real jobs”: baker, inn-keeper, postal worker, mayor, so on and so forth. After yet another failed audition, Yohane went to her hometown, started to take on odd jobs to make ends meet and put the band “back” together if you may.

How the game Blaze in the Deep Blue fits into the anime’ continuity is tricky and ultimately not important. By the start of the game Yohane already knew all 8 other Aquor members and got to rescue them as the usual upgrades in “Super Metroid likes”. Always after a boss fight.

The game’s humor lays heavily on puns just like the Sunshine animated series. For starters, the Japanese counterpart to “the Parhelion” part of the title reads as “gen jitsu” with 2 kanjis mean either “fantasy days” or “day dreaming”. Yet, the kanjis associated with “gen jitsu” the most actually mean “reality”. So, the game does throw those know Japanese a curve ball once booted up. At least 3 of the Aquor members got punny catchphrases that would make one go “Cut it out, sister!” Along with all the winks and nods regarding Sunshine’s more comedic plot points and the returning voice cast, I say the appeal to fans is obvious. Though this being a Inti Creates joint, one cannot help but feel that the 2D character portraits in the cut scenes had been Gal-gunned up…

…and the rest of us

Now the rose-tinted glasses can come off. Blaze in the Deep Blue is a “Super Metroid like”, certainly more Metroid than Vania if you ask me. The progress is linear like Metroid games despite all the back tracking required in the Deep Blue undersea dungeon with no chance of sequence breaking. Yahane does not level-up like those player characters in the Vania side of things, instead there is the crafting system. Get the right material and craft armor to increase health and the mana pool called Darkness Point. Weapons are crafted rather than found and they take up DP.

Inti Creates being the side-scrolling Mega Man people does bleed in. There are 8 bosses blocking 8 attack upgrades and you got to fight them all over again in the end game boss rush. The game starts you with Yohane’s wolf nanny Lailaps, who does a weak beat that does not take up any resource then other 8 Aquor members would provide attacks consuming DP. One can still use most of those attack when DP run out, they just take up health at that point. Of course, weak bite is not the only thing the wolf nanny has to offer. In true "baby's first Metroid" fashion, she would carry Yohane to her home base once her life runs out. And the map will keep track how far the player goes.

Aquor members and wolf mum’s attacks are mapped to left face button while weapon is mapped to right trigger. Left trigger is for Aquor members’ more powerful attacks and those upgrades are gated in a more Metroid like fashion. Aquor members’ attacks are mostly mapped after their appearance in the anime, like inn-keeper Chika and de-facto mayor Dia both have vigilante alter-egoes in the show, so their attacks are modeled after those. Postal worker Yo’s human cannon and diving scavenger Kanan’s drop-stomping frag-shaped robot are just tools for their trades in this fantasy world. But some can feel out of left filed even for those who watched the show. Such as the baker Hanamaru, who would roll spikes into flat ground while her explosive left-trigger thing is a nod to the original Sunshine.

Another RPG element is the debuffs. There are the usual poisoned, frozen, attack down, defend down and so on. This game got one called Lonely meaning disabling the left face button and left trigger attacks, kind of an anti-thesis to the power of friendship this type of story likes to preach.

The game’s sense of “being rushed” is in the details. Like how the shop only sells but does not buy. After one failed attempt at a Boss with all portion spent, the player is forced to either try without portions or grind a bit for portion money. Then there is the logic of one type of puzzles near the end. It involves Aquor’s token white girl Mari’s time stopping power, the left trigger one. In one of those one got to step on one single weight trigger, stop time and get through the door. In other, one got step on one of 2 triggers, stop time, step on the second one and door opens. It’s by no mean deal breaker but somewhat implies that something was not thought through.

Verdict

30 US dollars for a under 10 hours long game is not exactly a bargain. Yours truly somehow felt this year of gaming is not complete without one 2D side-scroller and this one just came to the shelf. It helps that I like Sunshine and it also helps that I got a mechanic itch. However, I cannot in good conscience give Blaze in the Deep Blue my full inducement. But if you are fan enough, you can do a lot worse than this one.

Reviewing High and Low

For the week of Metal Gear Solid’s twenty-fifth anniversary, let’s hop on the way-back machine and go back to sometime even before Hideo Kojima’s birth date. High and Low co-written and directed by Akira Kurosawa came out in Japan on March the first, 1963, one week short of six months before the infant Hideo was born. Both before and after his nasty departure from Konami Digital Entertainment, Hideo Kojima had called this one his favorite Akira Kurosawa film. Given that said nasty departure from Konami and reopening shop under Sony does resemble a subplot of this film, Kojima’s affection for this movie does seem honest.

A brief history of viewing Akira Kurosawa movies

Hidden Fortress was the first Akira Kurosawa flick I had ever seen from beginning to end, tried Seven Samurai a decade before that and did not stick for its end. George Lucas had listed that movie as a main inspiration for 1977’s Star Wars, so watching it in the year 2015 did not do Force Awakens any favor in the eyes of yours truly. While slow at places compared to modern blockbusters, the spark of liveliness in older films simply is simply nowhere to be seen in modern cinema.

Then I had watched period pieces like Rashomon, Yojimbo, Sanjuro and Throne of Blood. Strangely, Kurosawa was actually known as a good director of contemporary to his time back then. A view of Ikiru did make me see why: he did have the chop to make night life in Japan look like something at home in Twilight Zone.

One can say that Kurosawa was stock mentally with monochrome. 1954, the same year as his Seven Samurai, Miyamoto Musashi was film marketed for being shot with Easter Color film. To be fair, color film back then did feel like video game marketing focusing on ray-tracking in 2023. Still, Kurosawa still shooting in black and white even into the 1960s did make him bit old-school. Well, at least with High and Low, color was inserted into one single shot.

Every piece matters

Based on King’s Ransom by Ed McBain (as listed in the film’s Japanese opening credits), High and Low is a movie about cops solving a kidnap case. Clocked at 143 minutes, it plays out like 2 Wire episodes, one over 60 minutes long season premiere and one feature length season finale play out back-to-back. The first 61 minutes are about saving the kidnapped while the remaining 82 minutes contain the cat and mouse game between cops and the kidnapper.

The film falls under the “15 minutes rule” of feature length movie. Regardless of length and genre, many films have their first 15 minutes meandering about some other stories, then at a quarter of hour they finally kick into their marketed genre. First 15 minutes of High and Low seem to be about corporate intrigue. The soon to be blackmailed Kingo Gondo played by Toshiro Mifune was planning a gambit to acquire controlling share of the National Shoes company he oversee production for. As he has the fund of 50 million ready, a phone call comes in claiming his son is kidnapped for a ransom of 30 million.

Turns out his son is fine but the boy’s playmate and the son of Gondo’s chaffuer was taken. The cops are called and Gondo start to having an internal debate about to pay the ransom or not. Pay the ransom and save the boy is obviously the right thing to do, yet it means Gondo’s gambit to buy his company “back” will fail. So many eager him to do the right thing for more than one reason. The chauffeur himself rightfully wants his son back, Mrs. Gondo wants her husband to take the moral high ground and Gondo’s assistant in the company want Gondo’s secret gambit to fail so his position in the company can be secured.

Of course, Mr. Gondo finally caves in and decides to pay the ransom. And after 54 minutes spent solely in the Gondo resident, action finally moves upon a train, where ransom will be dropped and kidnapped boy is saved. Policenauts contains a similar scene in a museum, though without details like the bags for ransom, view of the hostage, the drop spot and the kidnapper’s getaway vehicle.

From there, the focus switches from the blackmail victim Gondo towards Tokura, the cop in charge of this case. Tokura was played by Tatsuya Nakadai, who did play villains against Mifune’s Sanjuro in both Yojimbo and Sanjuro. In some way, his roles in those movies were getting more “boring” by installment: from rock star like bandit in Yojimbo; then a crooked samurai, focus on “samurai”, in Sanjuro. Tokura in High and Low is practically how the Wire’s Jim McNulty would imagine himself in the mirror.

Also regarding Sanjuro, that one originally had a shot of partially colored shot with flowers. Then High and Low has a partially colored shot of pink smoke, something the cops planted in ransom bags to keep the track from going cold.

The police work in this movie is painstakingly detailed and mostly about surveillance versus counter-surveillance. Given that the kidnapper demands the blackmailed not to call the cops, police detectives enter the Gondo resident disguising as apartment store employees. Since the Gondo resident is a house on a hill overseeing a slum, view is key. And cops would only identify the kidnapper after 2 big meetings of laying out clues and narrowing down their tracks.

The perpetrator in this movie does not have a speaking line until the 134th minute mark. He can be seen reading newspaper, observing Gondo hill house from his slum department and up to some ill deeds under police surveillance all without the need to utter a word. Or at least not a word the audience needs to hear. Without going to details, let’s just say that Tarantino sure stole a lot from this one for the first third of Pulp Fiction.

It's said that Kurosawa and his 3 co-writers did change the end of King’s Ransom. While Gondo in the movie does get the ransom back, it is not soon enough for him to buy the controlling share of his old company. The money would only support his family, then he as a shoemaker found employer who would give him a blanker check. It’s not hard to imagine Hideo Kojima rewatching this one after Kojima Production reopened under Sony and felt something. Gondo was against his old pivoting from quality to quantity. He failed, voted out of the company and had to find a new job. Then he got a blank check off the screen and told the man who blackmailed him.

Final thoughts

While undoubtedly an Akira Kurosawa film, the seven kanjis read “Kuro Sawa Akira Kan Doku Saku Hin” meaning “An Akira Kurosawa Film” are nowhere to be seen in the movie. Instead it’s just listed as “A co-production of Toho Pictures and Kurosawa Productions”. “Directed by Akira Kurosawa” is the last piece of credits before the story starts, so I guess it’s fitting to credit a film about team work with the team rather than the individual leading the team. Either way, this one is all fans of cop film ought to see for themselves.

Reviewing Fate/Samurai Remnant on Steam Deck

(About 36 hours to see the full credits for the first time according to the save file. 1 hour into the New Game Plus as the time of writing. Played in Japanese text.)

Yours truly almost gave up on playing this one after a failed attempt to start a wiki page for it on this very site. Then on the day this game came out, a rather earnest fellow published his favorable review of it on Destrutoid. Since I had nothing for fun planned for the 8 days long national holiday here in miHoYo’s country of origin, so I dived in and rather glad that I did.

Fate/Samurai Remnant is not the first time the Fate franchise went to the so-called Musou land nor was it the second for that matter. But it was handled by Omega Force, the part of Koei “guilty” of creating the action game subgenre generally called Musou. And they certainly brought that Koei favor to this game both in terms of story and gameplay.

Old Tokyo is about to EXPLODE

The time is 1651 common era and the place is Edo, where would not be called Tokyo for another couple of centuries. Iori Miyamoto is a samurai who could not get a bureaucratic position in Tokugaka shogunate. Instead, he lives by taking odd jobs from local police so frequently that he is practically deputized. One night he got involved in a seven-sided magical battle royale not called Holy Grail War (Nor Clash for Chalice as yours truly would call it.) but the Waxing Moon Ritual. From then on, he is forced to work with a loose canon partner called Saber.

The amount of Type-Moon tropes contained in Samurai Remnant can warrant a Bingo game. A white-haired nice girl despite all the murders in her mind towards player character? Check. The game is rigged? You bet your ass it is, since it’s about the only way to make 7 sides in the 2, good versus evil. A girl next door needs protection because player character wants to keep her out of the game but then a plot twist reveals that she is in the game earlier and deeper thus needs more protection? Yes, and Bingo!

What Koei Tecmo brought to the table is dream and comedy more curated towards fans of historical fiction rather than fantasy. But what yours truly took away from it is something else entirely: a Lethal Weapon style buddy cop dramedy, with player character Iori being the “Murtaugh” and Saber being the “Riggs”.

Iori Miyamoto of course is based on a historic figure, adapted son and student of the more famous Musashi Miyamoto. The young man sure got a case of being Scott Eastwood: he can stand on his own all right but cannot help be compared to his icon of a father. To stay in icon town, the Berserker of Waxing Moon is a lady Musashi from a parallel universe that can be played by Marilyn Monroe.

“Grasscutter” is what people dislike Musou call it around my neck of the woods, which is ironic since this Saber’s sword was named that though not in this game. “The prettiest girl one can lay their eyes on” according to Type-moon’s Takeuchi is composed of oval face, pointy chin and saucer eyes, this Saber is no different on that front. Though, if you allow me into A Song of Ice and Fire town, the usual Saber faced characters all got fair blonde hair and green eyes like a Lannister, while this one being from Japanese mythology with dark hair and yellow eyes like a Stark. Actually, one can call this Saber an Arya Stark like since she fought with water element while Arya is trained in a fence style called Water Dance. While there is no term like “Arthurian” named after this one, yours truly did read two comic books about this one by Osamu Tetsuka and Stan Sakai respectively.

Despite the long cut scenes, the story of Samurai Remnant goes down a lot smoother than Stay Night without all that forced romantic plot and tabletop game rule lawyering. No one same would not except Iori and this Saber kiss throughout the game. They are buddy cops. In fact, one early jokey ending having Iori pulling sword and Saber holding out a badge on behalf of none other than Gilgamesh.

There are loose ends in the story though. Some might be saved for the trilogy of expansions promised by the game’s season. Other, like Type-Moon’s trademark mysterious prologue might be resolved in the New Game Plus your truly has yet beaten. Either way, old Tokyo is about to explode and it’s up the dynamic duo the player is part of to stop it.

Not quite like a dragon

Samurai Remnant is marketed as an Action Role-playing game. One might call it open world though I would certainly not. The so-called 808 streets of Edo are organized into a dozen of hub areas with shops, side things to do and dangerous back alleys to grind on. Those hubs usually switch between friendly town and hostile dungeons whenever the story demands.

The combat starts like the usual musou affair, there are hordes easy to cut and mini bosses harder to cut. Then there are monsters. While in the cut scenes, Iori would tell Saber about the difference between killing enemies and knocking out thugs, it would not be reflected mechanically. Then there are the Servant fights. Servants got regenerating energy shields that can be quite a grind to fight. Though the fights here are walks-in-parks compared to 2023 releases like Resident Evil 4 and Fires of Rubicon. For one thing, healing item or take-out food can be horded in this game, so yours truly only died twice in combat throughout 36 hours.

Iori is the only Master one got play in the game though one can play as Servants freely or when the story demands. Fighting as Saber is practically the super mode with time limit in this game. Then one can recruit the help of the so-called Rogue Servants by completing their side quests.

It might be fair to say that the way this Saber is handled here is not unlike Elisabeth in Bioshock Infinite and Ellie in the Last of Us ten years ago. This doe-eyed lass would run off to place interesting to her and ask the player to keep up even when they are engaged in some city wide magical urban warfare. The upside of this is the skill points one can use on her skill tree.

Speak of “city wide magical urban warfare”, this might be Omega Force and their usual Empire expansions of Warrior games come in. It’s a digitalized board game where one move city block by city block through Leylines. I would call it a mixture of Go and Monopoly. The goal is to get to one particular block of the city within certain number of turns and take as many power spots on the way. Of course, when one take the same city block as an enemy, the usual beat’em up action commerce. Or one can beat enemies by simply cut them off the leyline. Since Iori is stated as someone too poor to invest in real estate, this is the game’s only way for him to think about real estate.

Verdict?

Mid seventeen century Japan is a weird place to set a Fate story in. More than anything else, the setting would cut off the series’ Highlander façade with people melee dual in a modern city since hand-to-hand combat is the apex of police action back there and then. But I guess the player character being a material arts nuts happy to whack anything made up for it.

Licensed ARPGs are tricky to make. RGG studio’s attempt with Fist of North Star was somewhat disappointing to yours truly, so Samurai Remnant hitting the right spots is a pleasant surprise. Guess one should not write Musou off too easily.

Reviewing RESIDENT EVIL 4 (2023) SEPARATE WAYS expansion

(6 hours to beat according to “kill screen” on Steam Deck)

When Resident Evil 4 remake came out in March, 2023, it was rather refreshing to see an expensive looking polygonal extravaganza sold at the “low, low” price of 60 us dollars. Turns out Capcom is more than ready to raise the price to 70 with the remake of Ada Wong campaign called Separate Ways sold as add-on expansion with a 10 us dollars price tag.

Since I had never touched the Gamecube version of 2005’s Resident Evil 4, all the versions of RE4 I have played came with Separate Ways, whether it’s a borrowed a PS2 copy on a borrowed PS2 console, the HD Remaster on Xbox 360 or the Switch port. Yet, I never played through this Ada Wong campaign added as bonus for the game’s PS2 port. I was a couple of chapters into the Xbox 360 port, but gave up after getting too trigger happy with the submachinegun and went out of bullets.

Turns out paying extra is sometimes incentive enough for one to beat an additional campaign. Separate Ways expansion for Resident Evil 4 remake is a neat coda for an excellent game. While I found it hard to getting back into playing 2005’s RE4, the six months between the remake and its expansion did not demolish my muscle memory of the more modern control.

Putting some camp back

In Separate Ways one plays Ada Wong. While Leon S Kennedy was busy with resecuring Ashley Graham, Ms. Wong was there to acquire a piece of ancient bioweapon on behave of Albert Wesker. Mercenary as Wong was, Wesker’s sinister plot might prove to be a bridge too far even for her cynical heart.

It would be fair to say that 2023‘s Separate Ways expansion can be marketed as delete scene added back. Capcom put the laser defend grind in the trailer, though no random button combination here, right face button aka the game’s contextual dodge is all one needs in those. Throughout the expansion’s first 5 of all 7 chapters, Wong would be chased and haunted by one hard-to-kill xenomorph look like. The final form of the nasty thing resembles a boss fight cut out of remake from the 2005 game. Still no boulder, lava room and “giant robot” here though, unless you count villagers and village chief as human form of those during a mandate chase set piece.

While the main campaign of this remake began with Leon brooding, the opening cut scene of Separate Ways set the tone towards the tongue-in-cheek direction. Of course, cut scenes are recycled here and the final boss fight in the expansion can be seen as the off-screen first phase of main campaign’s final boss. Though the developers twitched things around those enough to make them feel like rewards for those beat the longer main campaign rather than signs of laziness.

What goes around, comes around

2009’s interactive Die Hard “rip-off” with Batman subtitled Arkham Asylum did wear its Resident Evil 4 (2005) inspiration on its sleeves. So maybe it’s only fair that now things came full circle with one piece of RE4 remake took cue from it. Well, it’s not like 2019’s Resident Evil 2 remake have not taken the radio frequency matching puzzle already.

Grapple hook is what mainly separate Ada Wong from Leon Kennedy, since arsenal and skill set between the 2 are rather identical. The grapple points here are shown on an augmented reality lens Wong wore (called “I.R.I.S” fittingly enough), which is like Arkham games’ handling of grappling. Though Wong cannot pick monster off one by one from higher points. Grapple hooks does have a role in combat though, the textual melee can be used on staggered enemies from a distance thanks to it.

I.R.I.S cannot be triggered manually like Arkham games’ detective view, which can be incontinent for yours truly after Fires of Rubicon. I was used to scanning for enemies in the sixth numbered Armored Core game, not as responsive as it was in that game.

Instead, the AR lens can only be triggered in selected puzzle areas, mainly following finger prints and foot prints for puzzle solutions. And I should focus on “selected” since searching areas for files containing puzzle solutions is well and alive here as well. To tell which is which can be troubling as times. I.R.I.S only activates after a long enough stare. So, one late game puzzle involves key pad lock. I would only gaze at the pad, step back and start to look for note containing the passwords. But the puzzle only requires one looks at the pad long enough for AR scan kicking and enter the passwords according to the finger prints on the keys.

Perhaps there are something outside of this tricky thing we call “gameplay” reminds me of Batman Arkham Asylum as well. Albert Wesker appeared twice in the cut scenes sharing physical space with Ada Wong. Turns out his “bat cave” is not located somewhere far from Spain but rather in a yacht he charted and parked nearby. Just as the “kill screen” appeared after end credits, Wesker’s laughter can be heard and a stinger starts to threat the world with a Resident Evil 5 remake. Turns out Capcom thought the plot summary of RE5 on Wesker’s “bat computer” by the end of main campaign is not enough. Oh well, what’s a zombie if it does not keep hopping, I suppose.

Verdict

An open castle area in the expansion does not run too well on the Deck, it looks fuzzy and runs funny. Other that that, the Deck is still good for this game.

In many ways Separate Ways is what Resident Evil 3, both the 1999 original and the 2020 remake, should have been. Numbered installments in a series always bring in high exception, while add-on expansions can do so much more with so much less. Expansions cost dev less, cost consumers less and tighter connection to beloved numbered installments make them much more appealing. I guess with Mercenary Mode of 2023’s RE4 being, well, mercenary in that cynical sense, they felt more pressure to make Separate Ways a grace winning practice. And I for one is pretty happy with how things turned out.

Continue to review Armored Core 6 Fires of Rubicon after New Game Plus

In his review of Armored Core 6 representing IGN, Mithcell Saltzman wrote that the game has a 15 hours long campaign. I thought he was taking a piss at first since I saw credits after 37 hours. In all fairness, the man did review Elden Ring for that site as well, so maybe he is just too good at this From Software action game thing to point out average play time. Then it only took me about 14 hours to see credits for the second time and 9 for the third time, minus the prologue the game skipped and some cut scenes I skipped, so I guess Mr. Salzman was on the money.

The way Fires of Rubicon unlocks its NG+ is straight forward enough: after one sees credits roll in this game and hears one of two NPCs expressing their hope for the player character’s choice of the future, the game simply loads up the hangar interface between missions with progress “rolled back” to Chapter 1 Mission 1. Well, all the weapons and Armored Core parts are present one unlocked are present, so are the all the missions one played through once before on Mission Replay selection. I guess the idea is that one plays a much better armed and more experienced stowaway to Rubicon 3 in NG+.

And much better armed should one be. The game presents branching points as early as in Chapter 1 Mission 3 in NG+ during one titled “Attack the Dam Complex”. The mission has a shot of being crowned the king of milk runs (Internet has another idea, though.) even for those with less powerful arsenal during their first rodeo: there are 2 allies, the targets are nailed to the ground and opposite side mostly has MT, a type of mech Armored Cores can play One-punch Man with. I mean one can start the mission unarmed and one-shot kill those little guys with fists.

This is when the plot thickened in NG+. The opposite side known as Rubicon Liberation Front (RLF for short) offered to double the pay if player can take out their “allies”. Should player take this offer, this is when that later game arsenal comes in handy since the player now has to face probably the most formidable enemy type this game has to offer: other Armored Cores.

One’s own worst enemy

Armored Core 6’s difficulty spikes are even listed as cons in the Gamespot review. Balteus and Sea Spider are 2 brought up on this forum, reportedly nerfed by the 1.02 patch. However, the mere size of those becomes disadvantage against player’s much more powerful late game arsenal. I am going to stick to my gun about how under armed player is in the first 2 chapters, since online PVP mode the game calls NEST would not unlock until one finished the second chapter. No point in having one’s severely outgunned ass chewed on the internet, heh?

Enforcer, aka that “transformer” those filth cops hid in the basement by chapter 4 while they were defeated in chapter 3, marked the end of big boy season in Armored Core. An enemy Armored Core with Moon Light Sword and Chapter 4 end boss Ibis would usher in the time of peer pressure. Ibis is technically not an Armored Core, but it can self-repair like one.

Enemy Armored Cores and this Ibis are around the same size as player, which makes them hard to hit at a distance. Armored Cores all have 3 repair kit as well so just as one thinks they are done the enemy would have another chunk of armor. They can move better than player, which allow they to hit player while player might not even have them in sight to fight back. They are better armed and armored so player must switch up builds to catch up.

The bots behind those Armored Core can behave reasonably according to arenas. As one late game boss in my third succeeding playthrough showed, they would move to the far side of the relatively big arena after all their repair kits used up. The true final boss would do the opposite, keeps pouncing on the player with the last half of their life bar, even the mastermind behind them would yell “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

“Destroy Tester AC” is another early game milk run, actually listed as Chapter 1 Mission 3 B as to "Attack the Dam Complex" listed as Chapter 1 Mission 3 A. Player is tasked to take out an enemy Armored Core. It’s a mission with only an enemy and that enemy has paper thin armor even against a player’s outgunned ass of the first playthrough. And it’s misleading since no enemy Armored Core goes down that easily after the “real” game began.

Garden variety?

Armored Core 6 has variety, in enemy types though not so much in mission type since “all you need is kill” covers the latter. Well, what one kills for besides the payment can be different stories.

The first all-new mission in NG+ is doing escort for RLF’s effort to save prisoners of war. Thankfully, the only escort mission in the whole game. The key to win is of course the ability to kill fast. The RLF craft would stop at 4 points on a map, the player’s task is basically going there ahead and clear the area. And which area is harder to clear out than the one before, with firepower upgrades and eventually an enemy Armored Core to take out.

There is an achievement/trophy called “Stargazer”, partially based on the song played over the real end credits, that is about unlocking all the missions for the Mission Replay selection. For those who want games to remind one of the previous choices one made, Mission Replay in Armored Core 6 is a not as streamlined way to do so. Mission Replay has all the mission names but no chapter numbers, so there is a lot of scrolling down to do if one wants to make sure that they are going to take another path.

Red vs. Blue vs. Green

3-way choice is a cliché for both video game and science fiction before the media form even began to have decent narrative. Mass Effect 3 ending fiasco back in 2012 certainly put a spotlight on that trope and colored the whole thing red, blue and green. Yours truly had traced this back to the early 1980s when Isaac Asimov caved in and wrote Foundation’s Edge. That book won him a second Hugo rocket for best novel and had a similar 3-way choice by its end. Funny how Fires of Rubicon’s 3 endings can be more or less colored red, blue and green as well.

By the end of Foundation’s Edge and its interstellar road trip, the protagonist was offered 3 options. Option one, give reign to Foundation’s fleet, which morphed from a beacon of hope into the most powerful military in the known galaxy, so one would just aid a warlord with this. Option two, defect to Second Foundation, who is a sworn enemy and secret cabal, so it would not feel right to say the least. Enters option three, which is giving in to a third unknown faction in hope of a united galaxy. Those are basically Destroy, Control and Syn of Mass Effect 3 and the three endings of Armored Core 6 are not too far.

Yours truly went for the blue one called “Liberator of Rubicon” first, since it’s the path of listening to the voice inside one’s head. Coral is resource people kill for in the world of Fires of Rubicon and turns out it’s an energy life form, quite old hat for science fiction. Ayre is a wave represented as a female voice addressing the player character by their callsign, Raven. She calls herself a Rubiconian and against the plot of someone who wants to burn her planet. So as much as this ending seems like “Go nuts” on the surface, its “Do not commit a war crime” goal is nothing but sanity itself.

Okay, here is the war crime ending. Turns out, Handler Walter, the man who brought player character to Rubicon 3, was planning to burn it all since the very beginning. Though maybe the “Fires of Raven” ended up bigger than any anticipation, since not just the planet Rubicon but the whole solar system is roasted to the point of unhabitable. To end the endless conflict surrounding Coral might seem noble enough, but it’s genocidal nonetheless.

I need to pause and talk about the final bosses for those endings respectively first. Those 2 bosses’ parts will be unlocked in NG+ after their defeats. Before liberating Rubicon, Handler Walter would get behind an Armored Core and make his last stand. His mech is surprisingly paper thin that the fight turns out to be a milk run. In the other ending, Ayre would get into a mech called Alba to stop the player from burning her people and planet. Alba is a harder nut to crack, it took me three tries.

The specs of those 2 seems to consistent no matter who is in the cockpit. Walter’s mech is quite useless since it can never bear the weight of heavy firepower I went for in NG+ while Alba can take hits and pack serious heat. Guess that voice in one’s head is picky.

Back to the ending, finally there is the green but not that green ending with that Latin saying meaning “Dice have been cast”. The mercenary support AI All Mind turns out to be up some shit of their own, something called Coral Release Project. Ayre in the player’s voice does agree with the project but not want to be absorbed by All Mind. So, the final battle here is for one’s free will.

This “true” ending does have its exclusive anime usual suspects. All Mind first posed as a lady merc named Kate Markson, voiced by Lynn, a regular cast member of Mobile Suit Gundam Witch from Mercury. All Mind themselves is voiced by Megumi Han. Young Megumi is an anime usual suspect of her own right, but her mother is more famed since Han Senior was in 1979’s original Gundam at a recuring capacity. Han Junior is also the Japanese voice of Ellie in the Last of Us series, dubbing over both Ashley Johnson and Bella Ramsey. Guess she is pretty good at this “up to no good” type.

The fight before the true end is hard though not outgunned by Balteus hard. It does have the nasty habit of having a cut scene in the middle but no checkpointing. All Mind has the ability to put dead merc’s er mind into mechs, so they put one especially antagonistic towards the player into 2 different mechs and offers additional helps. The wise thing to do is focus fire on the one big life bar of the boss. The second phase of this fight might be when the 1.02 patch helped me out, since the help is two floating Sea Spiders.

After the player’s victory, Coral spread from Rubicon and found bodies in Armored Cores. They became a new people, and maybe on a warpath since the last line of this game is “Combat mode, initiated” said by Ayre. It’s the same line uttered by player Armored Core’s computer whenever control is turned over to player at the start of missions. Maybe in the unnumbered continuation to Armored Core 6, this lot can be seen invading Earth, trading in one more complicated trope for a simpler one.

Let the last cinders burn

60 hours of playing and thoughts summed up in more than 3000 words later, Armored Core 6 Fires of Rubicon and yours truly are finally relieving each other. I’ve spent most of my spare time playing and thinking about this game for the last 2 weeks. Thanks to its checkpointing, I finally see credits roll in a From Software joint and sadly its appeal seems more niche than those dark fantasy epic. Hopefully my effort can feed this particular fire.

A Hard-boiled review in celebration of Tony Leung winning Lifetime Achievement Award from Venice International Film Festival

Yours truly pretty much came to the spotlight of this good community by talking shit about John Woo Presents Stranglehold. Guess it’s time to bring thing full circle by talking that game’s supposed prequel, 1992’s Hard-boiled in 2023. This year seem an eventful for the movie’s cast member Tony Leung, between an adultery scandal exposed and Life Achievement Award at Venice International Film Festival. So, I’m joining the parade by reviewing the action movie that marked the actor’s career pivot from comedic to dramatic.

The two Tonies

Regarding who are missing in Stranglehold compared to Hard-boiled, I would answer “the two Tonies” referring to aforementioned Leung and Anthony Wong. To be fair though, the characters played those 2 were probably both dead by the end of the movie.

Hard-boiled was the second time Leung being in a John Woo movie. The first time was Bullet to the Head, a pretty boilerplate Hong Kong crime drama with a harrowing venture to war-torn Vietnam in the mid of it. Leung switching between cool as cucumber and terrified by the horror of war marked him as a drama actor while he was only known for comedy before.

Wong’s is a sadder story. The man can be seen as the Robert De Niro of Hong Kong cinema, by which I mean someone with acting chops yet willing to get hands dirty with genre pieces. Then he just got to talk dirty of post-1997 Hong Kong politics on behalf of British colonists. Guess one call it civilization advancement since he simply got blacklisted while doing so in say the Qin dynasty would got you executed.

Anyway, back to the movie. Leung played an undercover cop named Alan while Wong played his mark, an illegal arms dealer named Johnny. Leung is praised for his performance as a struggling killer switching between obviously forced smiles and seemingly real tears when he was forced to kill his former employor and co-workers. As for Wong, the way Johnny trying to recruit Alan to his cause is certainly homoromantic.

John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow is known for having the good versus evil struggle between crooks. In some ways, Hard-boiled got rewritten into a good versus evil struggle between cops, with the bad guys being cop wannabes arms dealers who thirty for the power of a badge. “.38” was Johnny’s reaction to cops sneaking into his arsenal referring to the caliber of Hong Kong police’ service weapons. He does not exactly despise the badge just that he should hold it since he got the bigger guns.

Then of course this is a director famous for making crooks looking cool, so there is cool crook named Mad Dog in this one, signature being lighting cigarette with something not as common as match or lighter.

Leung and Wong would reunite a full decade after Hard-boiled in Infernal Affair, a movie partially inspired by Woo’s Face/Off. All the cops and crooks are alike drama, none of the science fictional bullshit. In that one, Leung played a much less romanticized version of undercover cop while Wong played a much meaner version of a handler, the type threats instead of comforts undercover agents. Less romanticized as in one can see Alan’s last appearance on his boat in Hard-boiled as ascent to Valhalla while in Infernal Affair Leung’s character was just dead with a bullet in his head.

Some punks do feel lucky

Another thing Stranglehold done fouled up was following Missing in Action 3’s step of sequel: introducing a love interest the audience never heard of, killing her off and the hero having to fight to protect his child he never met. With Chow Yun-Fat’s Tequilla being more of homage to Clint Eastwood, who most famous for men with no names, that’s certainly not the right way to do sequel. Or maybe they followed later installment in Dirty Harry series a little too blindly.

Chow’s Tequila would be his last role under Woo’s direction while Leung would be in Red Cliff, the historic epic marked Woo’s return to Chinese language cinema. The big T is also the only time Chow played a cop in Woo flicks yet this one might be the most murderous crooks of them all. The man shot suspects fleeting the scenes with deadly intention twice. The man pointed gun to the heads of suspects and pulled the trigger twice.

“Do you feel lucky, punk? DO YOU?” is a line said by Dirty Harry and the characters played by the two Tonies might answer “As a matter of fact, I do.” Johnny was harassed by the cop during the movie then Alan had to step in so the investigation can go on. Then in a truly “Did he shoot 5 or 6 rounds” situation, Tequilla pointed a gun to Alan and the latter return the favor in Woo flick fashion then the former pulled the trigger and turned out he shot six. Well, there is still more than a hour to go in this movie so they still needed both the spook and the grunt alive I guess.

Excuse my English

The name Tequilla was something a Chinese language review of Stranglehold had issue with, to which I say the writer certainly had not seen this movie with the original Cantonese track since the man was only referred to as Tequilla in the dialect. There was a joke in which Alan called him “Vodka” when talking to his handler.

In fact, when a Hong Kong citizen talking to residents in other parts of Guangdong province, the amount of English words in the former’s lingo might be hard to understand even though both are using the dialect known as Cantonese. I think it is to hide curses. The police officer, who is both Tequilla’s superior and Alan’s handler, ordered Chow’s character to stand down in Cantonese between saying “YOU SHUT UP” and “This is a FUCKING order” in Queen’s English.

Chow’s character being a loose can also be seen in his dating a woman outranks him in the police force. The woman is just called “madam” throughout the movie, even the SWAT members near the end of movie just call her that. How Hong Kong citizens pronounce the word would certainly separate them from the British colonists, since the latter would say it like saying “mum” while the former say it closer to the French pronouncing “Madame”. To think this part almost went to the Academy Award winning Michelle Yeoh would make me want to see that parallel reality.

Video game movies

One can say Face/Off was Woo finally comfortable with Hollywood since structure wise the 1997 flick is quite similar to Hard-boiled. Both movies have 4 major action set-pieces each and separate relatively evenly throughout the runtime, especially compared to Mission Impossible 2 confining all its gunplay to its second hour. One can say both got “player character” active in all the shootouts, whether it’s Chow Yun-fat as Tequilla or Sean Archer played by both John Travolta and Nicolas Cage (Those two are practically the Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung of mid-1990s’ Hollywood wouldn’t you say?).

Those action set-pieces all take place in different places that can be seen as video game levels: Face/Off has airport, prison, penthouse and sea-side church while Hard-boiled has tea-house, warehouse, pier and hospital. The third ones are both about hero being ambushed, and the one in Hard-boiled is rather brief. Though Hard-boiled’s hospital is arguably half of a Die-hard rip-off, taking up the whole second hour with lone heroes, hostages and the whole works.

Hard-boiled being a hasty production can be seen in the action. Wires are visible in scenes when people were blown away by explosions. Though environmental destruction of those days seem like a lost art now. Even John Wick Chapter 4’s top down shots seem lacking in that department. Whenever a shotgun was discharged in Hard-boiled, how some objects got blown up seemed to play more effort to set up than some people got killed.

People in Woo’s Hong Kong movies usually do not drop one-liners. No point talking to dead and what not. But this is a movie sold on Chow’s character saving a baby. So as mayhem taking place around the infant, Tequilla do speak softly to kid. One of those is after smash a glass and 2 round into a man, “Don’t look, kid. It’s rated 3.” I am guessing Woo and team looked at the amount of fake blood they need for this one then came up with the line.

Movie rating in Hong Kong is mixture of numbers and letters: 1 the same as G; 2A something covers PG and soft PG-13; 2B covers the hard edge of PG-13 and the softer side of R; then there is 3 unfortunately associated with pornography. I mean I got 4 Blu-ray discs on my shelf rate 3: both Raid movie plus John Wick 3 and 4. Raid 2 gave one a glimpse into porno shooting but let’s face it, violence is key. I’m more baffled that John Wick 2 was only rated 2B, someone must have blinked at that brain on pencil business.

I did feel that stairway grinding makes no sense in Stranglehold and after seeing Hard-boiled I knew why. The only grind-and-shoot in the movie was Tequilla laying on the stairway after dodged a bullet then proceed to shoot someone fleeting the scene in the back. Plot-armor is a funny thing in this movie, it tends to protect people in their front from pistol shots, though not shotgun shells. But shot in the back usually led to sever injury and even death. Then of course, no Woo movie is complete without dodge rolls.

Outro

This is one I started and restarted several times over the last 3 months. And it finally materialized after Leung held that trophy in Venice. Like I said in the beginning, I just wanted to bring full circle to a negative game review with my appreciation of a great action movie. Thank you for reading.