A Dredd review that might be too focused on its 4 top billing cast members.

Ah, Armored Core Six Fires of Rubicon! Aren’t you a harsh mistress? Not only do you yourself refuse to relief me, your makers chose market you in a way that made me want to watch 2012’s Dredd again. Why do they feel the need to cast Karl Urban in an ad? Is he a bad enough dude to give that prep talk for mercs in mechs so more English speakers would play this rathe niche game? Man, 2022 Keighley’s Best Game Direction sure went to that lot’s collective head.

Nearly DOOM

Suppose Karl Urban, as the titular lead of Dredd, is good as any point to start with that movie. One can say that he was just playing Judge Dredd in that AC6 commercial. with a kind of American accent that is too standard to be real and the serious tone. Of course, Mr. Urban has been familiar with the concept of acting for video games since one of his early starring roles was 2005’s DOOM.

He played a role the closest to DOOM guy in that action horror movie. On the action front, we saw he shooting dozens in a point-of-view shot (Hell no, I’m not calling it “the FPS scene”.). On the horror front, he played “the final boy” (But not “the sole survivor” mind you.). So even his role in that movie feels nothing like the player character in 1993’s DOOM, he came closer than all his dead squad mates. And the punch line here is that 2012’s Dredd proved that if Mr. Urban did play the DOOM marine of Romeo’s id days, he can still knock it out of the park until proper direction.

I don’t think the helmet thing is too big a deal. There are 8 Judges in the movie as active death squad members and except Olivia Thirlby as Rookie Casandra Anderson they all keep their helmets on. Urban got the credits for his longer screen time. Guess with Stallone’s refusal to do so back in early nineties, they did take anyone who agreed to not showing their faces.

What moved Dredd closer to the DOOM guy is Judges’ service weapon, the Law Giver. Being an arsenal with the size of a pistol. This movie did show how the gun is more than a peashooter by having Dredd first fire it with something called Hotshot, a bullet would melt someone’s head off.

Then there are the corridors, those can be seen as the movie’s main attraction when it came out as 3D movie in theatres back then. And there is video game like escalation in those corridors. First there are poor schmuck picking up guns for some extra bucks, mostly got shot by Urban’s Dredd. Then there is set-piece with the gatling guns. Finally there are the paid-off Judges similarly armored and better armed.

Psychic pass

Dredd came out in an interesting time. The month after its theatrical release, a little anime titled Psycho-pass came to smaller screens and by all means those 2 would make nice companion pieces to each other. On the one hand there is the dystopian future law enforcement where cops are authorized to play death squad yet the whole thing is not as efficient as advertised. On the other you got the vet and rookie story.

There was a time when I would love to see Hollywood adapting Psycho-pass, before I realized that Pacific Rim would be their best and it just would not do. I even had some fantasy booking: Tom Cruise as the antagonist based on Shogo Makishima, since he would just play his Collateral role again; Urban’s Almost Human co-star Micheal Ealy as the one based Zinoza, since he played a robot in that show, the “had a stick so far up his ass that his digest system is falling” type should be fitting; Then depends on which parent of the blue-eyed and light-skinned black man is white, the father of “Zinoza” with a cyber arm can be played either by Dave Bautista or Forest Whitaker, since both had played memorable bit players in movies with cyberpunk vibe of the 2010s.

But none of the above would occur to me if Urban as Dredd and Thirlby as Anderson could not be mapped onto Enforcer Shinya Kokami and Inspector Akane Tsunamori nicely. Psycho-pass’ first episode is about a young woman of “fresh out of college” age goes to a slum and hunt for a rapist. The entirety of Dredd is about Anderson getting her license to kill if she can survive a day in the field, which turned out to be all about a drug bust in a hostile slum. Both are seen as special girl, Tsunamori is a highly functional sociopath with the right amount of empathy for her to be copping while Anderson is psychic. They both got bad ass moments, but by the end of day only their archetypical action hero like male working partners got to take down the big bad.

The HBO rogue galley

The main villains of this movie are Kay played by Wood Harris and his boss Ma-Ma played by Lena Herldy. The casting here could be seen as “Oh, they did well on HBO, just cast them”. Harris played the drug dealing kingpin Avan Barksdale in the Wire while Herldy played the ruthless queen Cerci Lannister in Game of Thrones.

Herdy with a mean scar face and American accent is a fitting villain. Though Ma-ma does have other similarities with Ceric, including eye-gauging, though Ma-ma did so herself while Cerci had other doing her bidding and 2 years later than this movie. Both had “fondness” through towards slim young men with blond hair and apple cheeks. And the story would not end until both were dead. Then of course kudo to this movie for making people falling from high places and to their death into a art form.

Harris seems to bring that Barksdale hates cops vibe to the 2 science fiction movies I saw him in. There would be the Relipcant hating in 2017’s Blade Runner 2049 and here his character Kay hates Judges and mutants. Guess only the Wire’s length allow room to show what Harris’ character likes. Funny enough, we only had Ma-ma’s words that Kay is dead in this movie. Like how Barksdale would live like a king in prison by the end of Wire, I imagine Kay with one hand would stay alive and in the game with street cred of caught a Judge, trainee as she was, and fired a Law Give, ill-advised as that was.

Over and out

Overall Dredd is an enjoyable action flick even with its limited scope. The movie looks a bit monotone, but since that tone is warmer it still feels fresh. The mechanic like escalation of its action can still put all video game adaption to shame. And a note to video game developers, maybe keep the ultimate challenge in an earlier stage of your products and give us some freebie power trip by the end? Like how Anderson finally became part of a well-oiled killing machine in this move?

“Judgement Day” Double Feature: Oppenheimer and T2, 1991’s high-octane one.

(Spoiler for both movies I suppose. Then again, if foreknowledge can spoil one’s enjoyment of things then I doubt those things are actually good to begin with.)

Despite its rather epic length, Terminator 2 Judgement Day had been part of 3 double feature viewing I’ve done. First one being the theatrical cut after the Terminator in preparation for Terminator Dark Fate. The 2019 one was a mess but watching the only 2 good Terminator movies back-to-back on Blu-ray was nice. Second one being the longest cut before 2002’s Minority Report. I’d imagine the future Washinton DC in the Spielberg flick is the same one T2’s “happiest” ending is set in, likely with Senator John Connar advocating for drugged up psychics against thinking machines. Then there is Oppenator, mainly because both 1991’s Terminator 2 and 2023's Oppenheimer showed the audience harrowing nuclear explosion when there is still about one hour of movie left.

In many places where English is not the first language, there is no such thing as Barbenheimer. Here in the city where miHoYo global headquarter is located, Barbie came out on July, 21^st, while Oppenheimer did not until August, 30^th. It is an oddly fitting day for a movie about the father of atomic bomb to come out because that day was once Judgement Day when Skynet nuked us meat bags to a global wasteland or so Terminator 2 said. Well, technically speaking, that movie said “August, 29^th, 1997”, but if we take different time zones into consideration, somebody must be under attack staring at a daily calendar with “thirtieth of August” printed on it.

So, I said to myself why not walk into the cinema for Oppenheimer by day, watch T2 on Blu-ray by night and name the whole charade Oppenator. Things get nuclear.

Oppenheimer: more exciting than I thought

Through a rather cynical lens, Oppenheimer looks like nothing short of Christopher Nolan taking another shot at that Oscar baiting business. The Academy do like a “well-produced” Biopic or several. So, I went in excepting the worst. 2004’s Aviator was a movie that had bored me to tears, what’s the worst a Nolan pretending to be Martin Scorsese biopic flick can do? Actually bored me to death? Well, apparently it did not. Far from it.

One major difference here is that Aviator was the first Scorsese flick I viewed and it might be one of his slower ones, so I just couldn’t adjust to its pacing. While I had been keeping up with C Nolan’s filmography to find Oppenheimer on the more tightly paced side of things, as in contrast to er say the Dark Knight Rises’ meandering. Nolan was hellbent to put in as many tidbits along with Manhattan Project into the 3 hours he had.

Guess another thing pitched me against Oppenheimer was a viewing of Fat Man and Little Boy, 1989’s Paul Newman vehicle solely about the Manhattan Project. Though I think Nolan learnt to avoid some pit falls of that one. In the 1989 movie, Trinity Test was reduced to Robert J Oppenheimer jumping around as if he shitted his pants.

In the 2023 movie, a few people did laugh, a few people did cry, most of people were silent when the nuclear explosion was shown almost in a fetishy fashion from different angles at the movie’s 2-hour mark. Well, guess this summer blockbuster did meet its quota for explosive money shot. Of course, the titular character reacting to something is in this movie as well. Guess showing Hiroshima radiation victims might “earn” this move a NC-17 from MPAA, so Dr. Oppenheimer’s reaction to those during a slideshow is all this movie would give us. Well, aside from a vision of a girl getting burnt the good doctor had when he was surrounding by a patriotic fever.

However, the 3^rd and final hour of Oppenheimer is when the movie truly steps out of its Oscar bait trap and into the realm of exciting cinema. Like 2006’s Prestige, the so-called non-linear narrative of this one is framed as 2 separate occasions where events can be recalled. Instead of men reading each other’s dairies in Prestige, Oppenheimer has two hearings, with the earlier one being the infamous security hearing that kicked the good doctor out of benefiting more from the military industrial complex. After 2 hours of recounting one’s life, the sinister intention of the hearing was finally revealed in hour three and I was on the edge of my seat resisting a urge to pee.

To say Oppenheimer has an all-star cast is an understatement especially with Garry Oldman being there for a hot minute as President Harry Truman. I remember hearing Dan Carlin talking about how Truman and Oppenheimer met with the only f-bomb he dropped on Hardcore History. And Oldman basically playing his role in Slow Horse with American accent is rather fitting.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day for Naughty Dog

I first saw T2 at too young an age. Six to be precious. The movie was full of terrifying images to that kid already. By the time Sarah Connor was turned into a skeleton in her nuclear nightmare, I begged my dad to turn the movie off and missed out on the final action-packed hour. Maybe that just scared me in the right way. I had gone through the whole movie at the age of 13 by which time I became the weirdo prefer immersive horror experience in literature form.

Looking at the latest 2 Nolan flicks, I found it hard not wanting to watch Terminator 2 Judgement Day again. Dear old Christopher found it fitting to cut that 1991 summer blockbuster in halves and fit into two of his movies: the action flick with time-travel part into Tenet and the “We should not stop worrying about those giant bombs” part into Oppenheimer.

I got to say, setting the fictional and retconned Judgement Day in the year nineteen ninety-seven Common Era is somewhat fitting in hinder sight and regarding my view on James Cameron’s career. Mr. Cameron was likely too eye-ball deep in Titanic’s post-production on August, 29^th, 1997 to think about a movie he made years before.

And boy wasn't that Titanic a threshold for my view of Cameron, before that one he was a good director of science fiction action movies, after that one he just became another “pretentious motherfucker”. And 2009 was an especially ill time for he to put out a movie, with District 9 reminding people of Cameron’s the Terminator and Aliens days, while Avatar sure felt like one came from the director of Titanic, because the word “epic” can only be used ironically on those 2.

Anyway, this was my fifth time to watch Terminator 2 on Blu-ray. The first time I saw this movie on Blu-ray was back in early 2015 and not long after my playthrough of the Last of Us. It was back when I was still on the thumbs-up and “good video game story” side of LOU. Then a viewing of T2 on crisp 1080P had shaken my view on that well-acclaimed. Here it is, one of best science fiction story ever put to film, yet it was snubbed by the Academy for being both sci-fi and action. Still, it got more to say than well-rendered yet vanilla zombie story.

Terminator 2 Judgement Day might be seen as an example of marketing fouled up a plot twist. The theory had its merits but it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger at his peak we are talking about here so we all know his character is the good guy in the movies those days. Sometimes is not just about good and evil.

One year before T2 there was the more farcical Total Recall where everything might just be in Quaid, the Schwarzenegger character’s head. In fact, during audio commentary of the movie, director Paul Verhoeven said that the movie was not subtle at all about its swashbuckling adventure is not real. Down to how both times the plot thickened, someone was there foretelling how the plot would thicken. But since it’s an action flick starring Schwarzenegger, the ending was kept ambiguous enough to have an actually “hero won and got the girl” read in. Hollywood always relies on brand, “starring Arnold Schwarzenegger” is just the one they got protective about back then.

Anyway, this is not like Schwarzenegger as the titular assassin turned bodyguard being the good guy is the whole story, it got out of way before the first act is done. How the Connors viewed them as a better father figure than any potential man Sarah might sleep with and John might call “dad”. It can be seen a paradox, the lack of emotion led to Skynet nuking the whole planet to Kingdom Come, yet lack of emotion would make a re-programmed killing machine a better care-taker than any potentially abusive human being. Funny how this re-programmed killing machine had more sympathy from yours truly than that dead inside Joel Miller.

Well, it might be too late call Linda Hamiliton’s Sarah Connor in T2 a potentially abusive mother. For A her son was already taken to a foster home and B the boy was allowed to reload weapons during the daring escape from the mental hospital implying the prepper childhood he had. Which is my chunky way segway into talking about the action. The short of it is “yeah, those are great”, but it’s more due to the stun work back then, Schwarzenegger and Patrick had to sell punches differently aside. Now it seems like a lost art. Though this movie does add to the tension by showing people reloading their guns. The taped weapon training Linda Hamiliton and Robert Patrick went through was included in almost all the special features this movie’s home release had and it certainly paid off.

Conclusion and comparison

While all movies are products of their respective times, Oppenheimer and Terminator 2 Judgement Day are almost products of polar opposites in a timeline. By 2023, CG fest became such a dirty word that Oppenheimer’s marketing can rely on “we only used practical effect here” plus the all star cast. Back in 1991, T2 did not likely have the best action as it had the most action during its over 2 hours run time. I mean a whole floor of Nakatomi plaza blown up in Die Hard is kind of identical to Cyberdyne System blowing up here. Using CG to have T-1000 move is more of necessaire since other methods like say animation just might undercut the movie’s serious tone.

Yet both movies are about people’s fear of not able to control the technology they have. While the latest time point of Oppenheimer was a flashforward to late 1960s, it ended with a conversion between the titular character and Einstein shortly after World War Two, when the future with more nuclear weapons was bleak and uncertain. Well, as much as I like the fact that the original happy ending of T2 could have nailed the coffin and stopped all the lousy continuation, the certainty of the night road is the better ending.

In short, both movies can be described as powerful, and it’s actually rarer than we would love to think.

Personal tidbits on Micheal Mann’s Heat

The time of writing is mid-August, 2023. One would consider it as late summer when the heat would wind down. Yet here in the city where miHoyo global headquarters is located, this year’s dog days have seemingly just begun. Taking advise from the formerly behind paywall Waypoint Plus podcast, I am fending off this renewed wave of summer heat by watching Micheal Mann’s Heat. Or maybe it’s just time to crack open that 2-disc blu-ray set branded “Director’s Definitive Edition” I got way back in 2019.

The Waypoint Plus episode on Heat certainly make the movie’s appeal to video game critics of different walks quite apparent. Its host Rob Zacny was working for outlet still quoted by Metacritc back then before Vice shut it down recently as the time of writing. Then there were already Nextlander’s Alex Navarro and free-lancing Dia Lacina. Of course, Randy Pitchford’s desire to make a Heat video game was mentioned, giving me flashback to his terrible presentation at Gamespot’s E3 2009 stage. The boss of Gearbox was supposed to promote the then new Boarderland, instead he just would not shut up about Heat even though he could not decide the genre yet.

As the title says, this is not a review. Just random thoughts popped into my mind written out after a recent viewing.

Old men and their long wars

My 18 years old self first watched Heat back in 2008, when pop culture could make a college freshman want to watch a 1995 movie. First there were Grand Theft Auto the Fourth and its bank robbery mission modeled directly after that particular Mann movie. Then Christopher Nolan listed Heat as the inspiration for his more city crime epic take on the usual Batman versus Joker tale. In between there was Hideo Kojima’s “swam song” Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of Patriots, where two old men waging war on each other not unlike Vincient (Al Pacino) and Neil (Robert De Niro) in Heat. 15 years after those, the year twenty twenty-three Common Era sure feels like a year of old men’s wars when it comes to American action cinema.

There are two aging action stars in Keanu Reeves and Tom Cruise, along with their collaborating directors for the last decade respectively in Chad Stahelski and Christopher McQuarrie. Both duos trying to bring their action heroes back on the saddle by having them literally on the saddle in the sand shooting people. Run time wise their collaborations for the year would have given the 170 minutes long Heat a run for its money, with John Wick Chapter 4 clocked in at 169 minutes and Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One at 164 minutes. Don’t mind the mere minutes long gaps, since John Wick 4 has an extended cut of toughly 180 minutes planned while Dead Reckoning has a “To be continued” dangling by its end promising yet another feature length globe-trotting adventure.

While Reeves and Cruise are both still in the raven-haired swashbuckler mold, in fact they were already older than Al Pacino and Rober De Niro back when Heat was filmed. Pacino was 55, the same age as Reeves when filming started for John Wick 4 though it was likely the latter celebrated his 56^th birthday before the filming wrapped up. De Niro was at the “tender” age of only 51 on the set of Heat despite Neil McCauley’s overall grey presentation in Heat. Then that daredevil Cruise can out-grandpa all 3, being already 57 when the long and troubled production of Dead Reckoning began in early 2020 and celebrating his 60th before all is said and done. Suppose that’s just the difference between high-octane action rides and Prestige film for the holiday season: the former would not show or focus on the milage of a dangerous career while the latter would be mostly about it.

A thief bidding farewell to his wife

It would be fair to say that Heat did not break any new ground in terms of story. For Micheal Mann himself this was already a second chance for doing a cops pursuing robbers in Los Angels story. As a heist movie, Heat simply went through the full circle of the genre. A full circle involving crime committing cool guys eating shit by the end, arrested, killed or maybe worse. A full circle that got ignored by action comedies like Once a Thief of the world, where dashing thieves can drive into the sunset with their loot as the credits roll.

Well, only “killed or maybe worse” in the case of Heat with all robbers gunned down except one got away heart-broken. The one got away is Chris Shiherlis played by Val Kilmer and there is a weird link to John Wick there. Keanu Reeves was cast in this role, though I do think Kilmer was the better choice since Reeves would not have acted well in that scene where Chris had to say good-bye to his wife. Still, it’s hard not see Chris Shiherlis here as a proto John Wick.

Scott Adkins, underrated action star and cast member of John Wick 4, started a video podcast series titled Art of Action in the last couple of years interviewing people working on action movies. The latest as the time of writing is a feature length one with Reeves himself. Whenever Adkins gets to talk about cinematic firefights, he would list the following 3 as milestones: John Woo flicks’ high style, Heat’s realism and John Wick’s “gun-fu”. Seeing Kilmer’s performance during the famous LA street shootout after 4 John Wick flicks sure makes one wonder if Reeves signed on to the Wick series simply because of the weapon training he could have received 2 full decades earlier. Though one can argue against Adkins’ statement by pointing to Linda Hamilton and Robert Patrick preparing for Terminator 2 way back when.

Shiherlis firing three bursts into the direction he needed to retreat to, then one burst opposite that and finally moving to a better cover is certainly tactics that makes sense. And Killmer’s reloading was so spot-on that it was shown to Marine recruits. Heat’s realism also came from the sound, since the echoes gunshot made in the street of LA or any other open space is hard to reproduce in the dubbing.

This realism also comes from the fact that even though this heist crew is seen as efficient without deadly violence, they would kill with the drop of a hat. According to Heat’s IMDB trivia, the total body count is 21 across several killers and scenes, making after bank hold up shootout more of a threat to public safety instead of a massacre. 21 is chap change compared to even 100 minutes long first John Wick’s still-in-the-two-digits body count. The under 10 minutes Red Circle shootout in the 2014 movie got 24 confirmed shot, 3 confirmed knifed, 1 implied knifed and one little shit named Victor killed with bare hands. High body count in relatively short time is the threshold between real and surreal here.

Ironically, the lack of blades in Heat does lead to some more disturbing results. Waingro in this movie got a side of a psycho-sexual serial killer, and his not using a knife can make things rather messier. Hell, if De Niro’s Neil had a knife and stab this psycho to death within the first act rather than not able to shoot him since there were patrol car around, this subplot can be cut out entirely, pun not intended.

A gift that keeps giving to the Chrises and one Donnie

Nope, not those 3 “stooges” of Marvel Cinematic Universe plus Pine. Just the aforementioned two writer-directors, Nolan and McQuarrie. One can pretty much say that those 2 had made heist movies under the disguise of spy thriller.

By the time Tenet came out, I think it’s fair to say that the twist of “man meeting his future self without knowing” is C Nolan’s shtick more than signature. One wonder casting another Robert to play another character named Neil is an homage to Heat. Well, using several different vehicles to box a mark in during Tenet’s Talin heist does look like something taken directly from Heat’s opening now I have watched both movies in the same week. As for McQuarrie, I think he fully embraced Mission Impossible’s heist movie nature by having 2 American spies in the mold of beat cops chasing Ethan Hunt’s dashing thief in Dead Reckoning.

But to have closer copy of Heat in these roaring twenties of ours, we must move our sight towards Chinese language cinema. Raging Fire is a 2021 copaganda summer block starring Donnie Yen. Yen is also credited as Action Director for this flick. Spoiler: a gang of ex-cop and ex-con Jokers along with their fence would be all be killed by the end of this one. The movie is directed by the late Benny Chan and released after his passing. The man did not have the habit of making sequels when he was still with us.

If you ever wonder how well would Heat’s storyline mix with material art action, stop wondering and just watch Raging Fire. Yen’s physical performance in John Wick 4 is actually bit disappointing to me with his usual more fanciful strike-based style, while in Raging Fire, he played a cop who throws down all the time. Well, I guess they just could not have he rehearse with Reeves like Common or Mark Dacascos.

Heat’s 170 minutes have been devoted to family lives of its cop and crooks, which is something none of its shorter copycats would ever do. Though Raging Fire managed to keep Heat’s focus on one single cop. Yen as Bang is only cop Raging Fire’s screentime shine light on, like how Heat’s murder-row of character actors were just there to pull the plot forward while Al Pacino as Vincent Hanna got a marriage and a step daughter to figure out. It’s not to say that the performance is not there especially compared to how one can only learn the nick or code names of cop through credits in Raging Fire.

Funny enough there is one thing the 2021 flick addressed better than Heat. Rob Zacny did wonder why weren’t Major Crime Unit members on suspense after that big shootout in LA street. In Raging Fire, Yen’s hero cop does come under the thumbs of Internal Affair afte some similar fiasco. Though the inquiry board gave him a stay of execution so the movie’s home stretch of action set piece can happen.

Bygone and remain

One could pretty much call Heat a reminder of bygone ears back in 1995. Its “no good deed goes unpunished” ending among heist flick of yesteryear and the fact it’s a remake of a Mann script already. Yet almost 3 decades later, certain features of its had since become product of bygone era.

In this digital age of post-producing blood and gunshot sounds, Heat’s terrifying echoes might never be repeated. And of course the final chase of Pacino after De Niro in an airport with gun has not been possible for more than 20 years now. Well watch it while you still got it I say. Or maybe the recent strikes can make things go full circles yet again.

Double feature Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Reflection and Detonation

2017’s Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Reflection and its 2018 sequel Detonation were never 2 separate movies to me. Personally, I did not see those things through until Detonation’s Japanese home media release in June, 2019. Apparently, editors over at IMDB also mixed those two up, including but not limited to putting Detonation’s “1h 51m” run time on the page of Reflection, which only lasts 106 minutes.

“Only” is a funny word to type in the last paragraph. Reflection’s being a “Part one of two” is a practice that not one but two Hollywood movies partook in the summer of 2023. Namely the 140 minutes long Spider-man Across the Spider-verse and 164 minutes long Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One.

Spider-verse’ style-over-substance approach does damage to its pacing, problems including but not limited to jerking the audience around for dozens of minutes before some obvious twists. And fuck all those time cops for telling Gwen and Miles to stick to the script. As for MI7, the heist comedy could have wrapped things up with 40 more minutes instead of another feature length move. At least the 2017 animated flick is leaner and meaner compared to those 2.

To many with keen ears, they don’t have to sit until Reflection’s 101-minute mark seeing the Aliens cut to black just as Ripley appears in power loader ready to fight the xenomorph queen style cliffhanger. They might suspect things at the 18-minute when a ballad sung by Yukari Tamura playing over a visit to a not fully operational theme park.

The music arrangement of those movies usually goes like this: Nanoha’s voice Ms. Tamura would sing a “ending theme” playing over an “all is well” epilogue while Fate’s voice Nana Mizuki would sing a “theme song” playing over the end credit. “All is well” epilogue would not appear until the next movie so Tamura’s musical contribution needs to be moved to an earlier part of the movie.

At the combined run time of 210 minutes (Not counting the 5 minutes long end credits of Reflection and the 2 minutes long recap at the beginning of Detonation), this is very much a 24 feature movie. The date “July 22nd” is showed throughout the first half of Reflection with a time by its side.

Even though the clock is dropped as action heats up, it still feels like the whole thing takes place during the 24 hours between July 22nd and 23rd from the titular character’s perspective. Weapon repair takes hours not days being in the lines. Sun literally rises as Nanoha takes out her final enemy in Detonation. While 24’s action cinema lunch got eaten by lousy comic book adaption nowadays, some anime did run with this concept of someone’s longest day.

“Scientific” gunners from another planet

Upon its announcement, Reflection was marketed as an all-new story with no connection to any of the Nanoha tv shows. Ironically though, the script seemed to evolve into something closer to a tv show script with all that extended back story about new characters. Not to mention how 24 the whole thing feels to yours truly. If some montage extended to 20 minutes long episodes and hijinks thrown in, this could have been a 12 episodes long series. Either way, this all-new story starts on the planet Eltria basically facing an Interstellar dilemma: terraforming or go to space.

The Florians are a family of 4 living on the planet surface for a seemingly lost cause of regenerating their homeworld. Kyrie (“Ki-ri-e” not “Ka-i-ri-e”), the youngest of the Florians, along with her shady machine intelligence friend named Iris set out to visit Earth and recover an energy source for Eltra’s recovery. Unknown to her, Iris is planning an invasion while her elder sister Amite Florian is in hot pursuit. In front of them the trio of 11-years-olds, Nanoha, Fate and their future commanding officer Hayate, plus the magical time cops backing them. It’s going to be a long day during the height of summer in Tokyo.

The 3 above do not use magic, instead they use a nanomachine technology called Formula. Nanomachines that can make mechas out of scraps and give them a suite of video game player character perks. Such as regenerating health through food instead of medicine, bullet-time like Accelerator and rocket jump.

What Arthur C Clarke said about tech and magic, heh? While I think Kojima might steal A’s ending of only purge bad code out of a corrupted system for the weird and bitter-sweet ending of Guns of Patriots, Reflection and Detonation’s tipping into nano tech is more on the ripping off Turn A Gundam side: how weaponized nano tech would just create wasteland after wasteland.

Copycats, focus on the “cat”

Iris’ invasion does not truly begin until she has the copycats of the Nanoha trio commanding a three-front assault. Those copycats, or the titular reflections if you may, are the new addition of those movie since the Florian sisters were in one of those PSP games. They are also nice double-casting for voice actors Kana Ueda, Yukari Tamura and Nana Mizuki.

Introducing Dearche, king over this pride of 3, as she being chased by her counterpart Hayate Yagami during combat. She led the air force of one mecha. If Hayate is Mass Effect Paragon then Dearche is Renegade. I think someone is on the joke that Hayate would outrank both Nanoha and Fate when they work at magical time cops’ homeworld, so Hayate’s copycat bosses over the other 2.

Introducing Stern as she locked into hand-to-hand combat with her counterpart, Nanoha. She led the invading army of one mecha. Nanoha being the loud and thinking out of the box while Stern is the stoic do it by the book, which led the former beating the latter by charging through an explosion.

Introducing Levi as she waits for her counterpart Fate to arm up. She led the invading navy of one mecha. Fate is the quiet and considering one while Levi is a bull in a china shop with a mouth. Clearly better weapon and a opener field is what the former require to defeat the latter.

Those 3 are copycats, literal in the cat part as flashbacks in Detonation shows them being three wild cats taking shelter in the terraforming program. The Japanese joke of someone is so busy that they would take help from cats might be intended here.

Those flashbacks also show Iris in her happier days caring for the cats. So, yes, the trope of “save the cat” strikes again to foreshadow a face turn. Given the most surreal yours truly saw in Japan. I do think their storytellers actually tend to embrace the whole “save the cat” charade.

It was my twenty-fourth birthday and I was a tourist in Ginza. I saw a crowd surrounding something taking pictures and it turned out be 3 cats laid on a rug. It must be a tourist trap since someone moved their 3 pets somewhere for more exposure. Guess this much affection for them little felines can be folded into stories about someone cannot be that bad if they care about the cats.

They got guns, we got guns, yet she still needs her bigger knife.

Introducing the guns “they” got:

Then the guns “we” got:

And finally, a mixture of “ours” and “theirs”.

This is how Rasing Heart is enhanced, a mixture of magic and Formula nanomachine. The gunshots sound just like Gundam’s beam rifle in Detonation. I would half-jokingly call this kit “Aliens’ Ellen Ripley in a power loader ready to throw down with the xenomorph queen”. Just look like her first target.

But not everyone is happy to see guns, they prefer knives. Such as the blonde stoic in black Fate Testarosa Halaown. Now adopted as Lindy’s daughter, she still could not call her new mother “mom” until said mother gave her a refined light-saber. Well, one of the secretly best shot of Reflection is she fencing with Kyrie presented in profile.

I found the screenshot surprisingly Arthurian when I took it from Reflection. They are surrounded by water, Lindy has water-like green hair bit Lady of the Lack looking and Fate got her favorite sword. It could be said that Fate closed out her emotional arc there so she can be the constantly worrying love interest to the titular character in Detonation. A very cute moment before the epilogue of forcing the deranged back to a hospital bed while piling an apple menacingly.

From daughter cultivator to daughter collector

With all the heels (Sometimes wrestling terms are just not enough for discussion about anime with mostly female cast) drawn with typical anime saucer eyes having face turns, Reflection and Detonation do have a mustache twirling male villain that is unredeemable. His name is Phil, Phil Maxwell.

Director Maxwell made Iris as a weapon under the disguise of terraforming use and saw Yuri’s magic as another obsession. He is voiced by Koichi Yamatera in Japanese. Those who watch Cowboy Bebop along with JeffJeff’s Bizarre Adventure in sub would know him as Spike Spigel. Mr. Yamatera is in another thing English speakers love: he is the Japanese voice of Joel Miller in the Last of Us. By “the Japanese voice” I mean he dubbed over both Troy Baker in the game and Pedro Pascal on HBO. I do consider it quite feat given how much more man-explaining Joel had to do about the wasteland to Ellie in the show.

If Joel is a daughter cultivator then Phil is closer to a daughter collector, something many naysayers of LOU (yours truly included actually) see Joel as. His final showdown with Nanoha is intercut with his fascination for someone wields both magic and Formula. Of course, he asked her if she wants to be his daughter and of course she just attack him without commenting on the whole itchy affair too much.

What’s the rating again?

Then of course Phil is not Joel. Phil’s suite of player character perks is not something Naughty Dog would even added to a LOU. And Phil’s purge of his research are all gruesome civilian gunned down while Joel seem like an one man army fighting an actually army in both the game and the show.

This is a screenshot of Detonation during Maxwell’s purge of his terraforming research center. The blood on the wall alone would guarantee an instant R from MPAA, yet the Japanese movie rating board known as Eirin gave Detonation a PG-12 rating. No trick, just MPAA’s PG-13 but one year under. I had the blu-ray for 4 years now and just discovered by looking at the bottom of the package. Aside from this, the movie contains the usual punch to face that makes moving target into stationery target and the fabled stabbed through the torso that almost got 2012’s Avengers a R from MPAA.

Japanese movie rating can be that. PG-12 cast quite a wide net catching lots of potential Rs. Two examples come to my mind. The based on visual novel “erotic thrillers” Fate/Stay Night Heaven’s Feel trilogy has “yes, they sure are fucking” sex scenes not to mention blood and violence. Thunderbolt Fantasy is a written by Japanese Wuxia puppet show with limbs and blood flying in its action scene. Yet both got PG-12 rating in Japan. Maybe it’s because none of above got so-called “naughty language”.

Graduation

On my thirtieth birthday, while I was playing Tokyo Mirage Session on the Switch and tried not to cough my lung out, a concert called Lyrical Live took place in Japan to celebrate the then 15 years of Magical Lyrical Nanoha franchise. In its encore, the whole cast joined in a choir to sing Tamura’s epilogue song for Detonation. In some ways, this is the final words on Nanoha as the time of writing.

After the pandemic and some sea change in the industry, things like the Nanoha movies might become a rarity. Record company like Kings got into the anime game partially for home media release revenue after all. Detonation left things in a closure enough note as Eltria being regenerated and the trio on Earth graduating elemental school. That’s just a happy enough note to leave things.

However, a mixture of Lethal Weapon 2 and 4 could be the vibe this ending intended. Nanoha was knocking on heaven’s door while seeing her younger self telling her about friends. Unlike Jack Bauer who going into almost everything with minimal support, Nanoha usually got friends following her into the fires. Now her adventuring days before she moved to time cop world is over, normal and better days is in shop for her while Bauer remain in the limbo of fiction.

(The End)

Reviewing Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha the Movie 2nd A’s

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha the Movie 2nd A’s is a 2012 animated action movie based on the 13 episodes long series of almost same name aired between October and December, 2005. “The Movie 2nd” and “the Movie 1st” bits make one think they really should have English speakers doing double check on those movies’ title. When A’s tv show aired in Japan, Shane Black, a white guy best known for his screenplay of Lethal Weapon, made his directorial debut with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and the A’s movie some share some threads. All three are buddy cop flicks setting during Christmas time. Not on Christmas eve like the first 2 Die Hard movies, but during the weeks leading to that second most important festival for Christians. “Buddy cop” comes in garden variety though. Lethal Weapon has an ex-military nut job and someone weeks from retirement, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has the unlike cooperation between a thief and a private investigator. The A’s movie has a couple of child soldiers deputized by magical time cops.

Swordswoman wearing black and self-cocking gun

My most recent viewing of A’s movie came after I drunk a small can of Bud and reading through 41 volumes of Berserk, not in that order. The combination led to me to take the following screenshot.

The only cool thing about being child soldiers in Berserk is that they can wield weapons way larger than themselves. So, I guess designer of A’s movie gave their resident blondie wearing black a light saber with a “handle” already as tall as she is to nail the whole children go to war business.

As sequels, both A’s tv show and movie go for that action comic for boys style of ever escalation. As the duo face off against more powerful opponents, they are going to need more fire power themselves. “More fire power” in this case comes in the form of guns that cock themselves.

Yours truly first watched the A’s tv show back during early 2010, a couple of weeks after playing through Mass Effect 2. Bioware’s decision to have manual reload in their space sequel looked suspiciously lifted from that anime. Though the bullets in the anime are not just for offense. For one Nanoha used the first round just to generate a stronger energy shield and for two Fate get her gigantic light saber with three of those magical bullets.

2012’s A’s movie might have come out during a time it would not get recognition it deserved. In 2011, novelist and screen writer Gen Urobochi came on the map with Puella Magi Madoka Magica, a series can be seen eating some of this movie’s lunch.

For starter, Abnormal Mappings of this world tend to call Fate’s “stoic wearing black” archetype a Homura like after the same archetype in Madoka. Then for many, Madoka along with its screenplay writer were the ones giving magical girls guns, while the original Nanoha tv show did so seven years earlier. One thing Madoka could not take is the buddy cop vibe. Urobochi’s non-liberal mentality did not allow him to have two people doing governments’ bidding in happy go lucky do fashion.

The A’s movie being a designed-by-committee (a description, not criticism mind you) flick certainly embraces the tropes set up by Lethal Weapon, down to how different attention paid to the duo’s families.

The “Riggs” in this case, Nanoha being the star of spinoff from the Takamachi household, her family does not get much screen time at all. And to continue the first movie’s copgenda er, agenda, Fate’s, more or less the “Murtaugh” here, relationship with the cop mom adapted her took up quite a chunk of screen time. Well, mama copper’s link to the case is another reason. Still Fate’s relationship with her new mom would continue to be a storyline in the sequels after this one.

“Dark” knights rise

With that third Nolan helmed Batman movie came out less than a week after the A’s movie, I could not resist the wordplay of moving that one letter “s” around. Of course, we cannot have cops just standing around without heads to bust in an action movie. As the poster implies, there are at least five heads: Guardian Knights of the Book of Darkness, Dark Knights in short.

There are several ways to call this colorful bunch: Power Ranger; role-playing game party member or even visual novel potential love interests and other roles. If you don’t think all 3 descriptions can be applied to one same bunch, you just don’t know about Sakura Wars.

On the most top we got Hayate Yagami, whose unfortunate encounter with wheels led her into the mad world of magic. Well, she suited up after a car accident in the sequel as well. Funny enough, she outranks both Nanoha and Fate in the 2007 series strikers.

On the second line from left to right we got Zafila, Reinforce and Shamal. Zafila is the only man of the bunch and usually appears as a big dog with blue fur. Guess calling the family pet “good boy” is irresistible. Reinforce is the interface of aforementioned Book of Darkness. Don’t let this poster fool you, she is drawn with the usual anime saucer eyes in the movie so she would not stay bad guy by the end. Shamal is the healer of this party. With everyone else wielding magic with gun, spear, hammer and sword, her rings of power make her the most mage like character of the bunch.

On the third line there are two heroines of this movie usually dual against. Signum on the left is the leader of this bunch and by Power Ranger rule she fights with a sword. A sword one would guess Platinum lifted for their Metal Gear spinoff since there is a mechanism to make it more deadly coming out of the sheal. Vita on the right is a hammer wielding berserker, do not take my word for it, they drew her eyes differently in the heat of battle.

In the 2005 tv show, this lot were assisted secretly by some crooked magical time cops. But for more or worse, that subplot was cut out of this 150 minutes long movie. The knights’ function is to protect Hayate then that function led them to literally fry a bigger fish with the good guys. The focus is solely on action here and the production value of different scenes showed it. The movie has an “all are fine” epilogue and it is not fully animated like the first movie’s. Most of time and money were spent on action set-pieces before, one would assume.

There was blood

Yours truly first saw this movie back in March, 2013, as part of a double bill with There Will Be Blood, the Paul Thomas Anderson film. Cannot remember the order. Unemployment at the age of twenty-three led to many a sleepless night. I spent another one of those playing through Bioshock Infinite on Hard in one sitting.

Or maybe it’s the stark contrast between those 2 cinematic epics (158 and 150 minutes) that made me going through both in one sitting. There Will Be Blood is a drama about a man tolerating everyone and everything around him, with a few set pieces peppered in for good measure. A’s is an action movie about people fight against then for each other.

This A’s movie might be the one with closest link to video games of the bunch since the 2 Ace Combat “clone” they made for PSP both got “A’s” in the titles. Though characters wise, games’ original character would appear in the 2017 and 2018 sequel movies. Oh well, why not end on a video game joke then.

11 years old Nanoha petting Vita in the epilogue. Does this look like Nintendo Switch patronizing Playstation Vita or is it just me? Well, it's just how late the third movie came out actually.

(To be continued in Eat your heart out, “Jack Bauer”)

Reviewing Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha the Movie 1st

No, Bayonetta 3 and its multiverse madness got nothing to do with this title. While it’s clear that Dan Ryckert is not as anti-anime as he was about a decade ago, invite him to watch this movie might still require some Clockwork Orange style restraining measure. With this movie’s infamy of getting 9 years old girls butt naked before they can suit up in typical transformation scenes and whatnot. Regardless I think he should at least get past the 4-minute or 10-minute mark to hear Donna Burke basically doing I-driod before Metal Gear Solid Five was ever a thing.

Having gun for operation

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha the Movie 1st is based on the tv series with almost the same title aired back in the last 3 months of 2004. A contemporary with the Wire’s third season one might call it. The show spined off from a visual novel titled Triangle Heart 3: Love Song Forever where a couple of Takamachi siblings take swords to gunfights and hold their own. Guess it’s only fair that their younger sister Nanoha becomes a novice witch with a gun.

The show had 2 sequel shows in 2005 and 2007 plus a bunch of comic book side things. Maybe the “creeps” among its audience complained loud enough about how 2007’s Strikers aged their beloved 9-year-olds into 19-year-olds too quickly, the patron behind this whole joint King Record decided to “streamline” the first 13 episodes long series into a 130 minutes long movie. Or maybe it’s because Anno’s new EVA movie already got a lot of attention back then.

Nanoha along with Precure, another thing debuted in 2004, were seen as magical girl shows laying towards this tricky thing we call “action”. Though it would seem hollow taking the thing Nanoha stole a lot from into consideration, I’m of course talking about the stone cold CLMAP classic Cardcaptor Sakura and its equally adored Madhouse animated adaption. Especially in the latter, Sakura Kinomoto would go on swashbuckling adventures on a weekly basis. The created in the 1990s one just had a more evasion and defense mentality as its heroine went through the action mainly to avoid being crushed by monsters and the havoc they caused.

So, yours truly would say that the 2 things started in 2004 laid towards action at all. The girls in those just go for offense earlier and more frequent. Precure being a Toei production and wholesome affair sharing Sunday mornings with Kaimen Raider laying towards the hand-to-hand aspect of offensive action. While Nanoha, taking the infamous After Dark time slots, had something more shocking: 9 years old girl shooting a gun.

The gun is called Raising Heart, voiced by none other than Donna Burke. Since Raising Heart is a machine intelligence, yours truly will use “they/them” pronoun. Their name is pretty ample since they do function to raise little children into child soldiers. Only the scholarly young wizard before Nanoha did not fare as well.

Save the cat and do so with a straight face

Playing the “save the cat” trope with sincerity is one thing making this first Nanoha movie more in line with many Hollywood flicks. I mean even John Wick got a “save the cat” moment when he saved a dog instead of shoot said dog’s owner in the fourth movie. Japanese media toying with such trope would get more acclaim in among English speakers if they add some salt.

Take 1999’s Gamera 3 for example. The titular giant turtle would step away from humans if they are aware. However, if a bunch of humans are between they and their sworn enemies, they would simply vaporize the humans along with the other monster. Thus, the whole movie is about a human, something close to a cat from a giant turtle’s perspective, questioned why that bigger thing only saved her while let her folks die. Then there is the Chainsaw Man chapter titled “Save the Cat”, in which Denji saved a white puss while let a bunch of his fellow men fall to their death symbolizing his still ongoing odyssey towards getting laid.

While 2010’s movie along with 2004’s tv show did not treat saving cats as bad trope, they embraced it so hard that they even let go a magical girl genre trope: the Animal Companion lawyering to force the poor girls into a crisis after another. Yuuno Scrya in ferret form fulfilled 2 roles in this story: the animal compain of the titular magical girl and the first “cat” she got to save. Maybe add the child solider candidate failed a sentient weapon’s er trail of fire if you may.

The thing is, Nanoha is not the only one who got to save the “cat”, her rival Fate first appears in this movie saving cats. In an attempt to lure new viewers into liking her instantly. And then revealing to you that her familiar Alph was a pup she picked up.

Mama crook equals bad and mama cop equals good

With saving cats coded into its DNA, one can make a strong argument that Nanoha is copaganda. Even though its action might seem similar to Gundam’s dog fights among 18 meters tall robots, that long running series’ usual “fuck the police” stand does not apply here.

For one thing, the main storyline of this movie for Fate to realize that her biological mother, a scientist turned time bandit Presea is not a good mom to her. And the a lady time cop named Lindy Harlaown is just a better guardian to her.

While those 2 are both presented as pretty anime lady, one can tell Presea is evil just because of the way she is drawn. For one thing she does not have the typically anime style saucer eyes all the other women and children in this movie have. And her story of crime plus child abuse would be lifted wholesale by Gundam’s first show with female lead Witch From Mercury. Both have cross shaped Death Star things for starter. One major difference being the abused child was voiced by someone born in 1980 in Nanoha’s 2004 and 2010 outings while the abusing mother in the 2021 to 2022 show, the titular Witch From Mercury if you may, was voiced by someone born in 1980. And the different kinds of abuse those 2 kids endured were caused by the fact that the old show had a After Dark time slot and the newer one had to air at five in the evening.

Queerness unintended

Well, I guess I cannot hold back the talk about voice actors any later. Nanoha Takamachi is voiced by Yukari Tamura. Ms. Tamura is somewhat a favorite for miHoyo, you know the company now known for not paying their English voice cast. She was in their first polygonal outing Hokai 3^rd Impact. Then she played not one but two whale bait in Genshin Impact. There is not point in putting up pictures of the 3 poor 9-year-old since I think someone at miHoyo is just one of those aforementioned creeps or they would not have let the born in 1976 playing little girls in mini-skirts.

Fate Testrosa was played the born in 1980 Nana Mizuki and along with Donna Burke, you can say there is Kojima connection here. The same time this movie was being made in 2009, Mizuki and Burke contributed vocal to Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker on PSP. Burke would of course voice the I-droid in the 2 MGSV titles. Then Mizuki became the latest having a decade long collaboration with the so-called video game auteur assuming she would return to dub Lea Seydoux in Death Stranding 2.

I mentioned before that Nanoha stole a lot from Cardcaptor Sakura. By “a lot”, I actually meant nearly everything from the first half of that book. From the same type of magical McGaffin to the rival turned friend storylines. Of course, Sakura Kinomoto befriended a boy from Hong Kong with the latter’s family seeing her as a way to continue their bloodline. Nanoha befriended a girl and by the time they are both 19 they would be police officers sharing a bed.

It's funny that King Record founded shows feeling queer with things they do not do rather that the thing they intend to do. Take Ms. Mizuki’s filmography for example, she would go on to provide voice acting to Symphogear (2012 to 2019) and Crossange (2014 to 2015) both paid by King Record.

Symphogear is another magical girl show with a rainbow variety. By which I mean there are 7 high school girls and no male love interest. Except one lone wolf with parent issue, all other 6 can be seen as 3 different couples with different shit to work through. Of course, men were there, they just got other roles.

Cross Ange is wild ride combining women-in-prison bullshit with big mech that you all at least got to hear about. Ms. Mizuki played the titular Ange and Ms. Tamura played her rival-turned-admirer Hilda.

Cross Ange is something fully embracing the R-rated action flick tropes with people excepting to see a steamy sex scene or two in. One would assume after Nanoha being not aiming at those tropes, at least there is something sticky with a show starring people in their late teens. But no, someone insisted on a male love interest for this one while the 2 girls share a kiss that would go nicely with the Army of Darkness line “Give me some sugar, baby”. Kind Record can only create image of queerness when sex does not cross their minds.

Equal measure

By the end of day, yours truly would give this movie equal measure of recommendation and caveats. To people who love action movies of the fireworks factory variety, this one has fireworks but more colorful. They just need to check their masculinity preference at the door.

To people who prefer magical girl affair with some more flair for the dramatic, you lot got more stone-cold classics in that field. And to the real creeps, stick with the Strike Witches and Prisma Illya of this world. I thought I was having dark thoughts about 9-year-olds getting close to each other, then the shit Prisma Illya just grosses me out in term of 9-year-olds getting sticky. Implication is better left alone.

(To be continued in “Mimicking” Shane Black)

Eternights hands-on preview

（I have been toying with the idea of doing this tricky thing we call “hands-on preview” for a couple of months now. First in March with Bayonetta Origins demo and Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw Demo, but those products came out before I got around to write previews so I just wrote reviews instead. Then there were the couple of 15 minutes long demos of the Ludonarrative con, not much meat on those bones other than making me think “Those sure ain’t no Muv-luv”. Finally, there is another Steam Next Fest here and a chance to try out the obviously by-weebs-for-weebs Eternights. A “Mass Effect style” we-will-give-you-an-action-game-in-our-visual-novel-free-of-extra-charge kind of game that won’t come in 3 months as the time of writing, so why not preview this one.）

The Escapists Youtube channel has been a new favorite point of mine when it comes to crystalized cynical criticism of this industry. One rather early Extra Punctuation there coined the term “Ghost Train Ride” for them tend-to-be-linear polygonal extravaganzas.

A Ghost Train Ride usually have 3 different sections: queues, thrills and gift-shop. Queues usually mean the walk-and-talk segments. Thrills are set-pieces to break up the walk-and-talk. I thought the gift-shop meant menus for stats or something similar when I watched the video but the term actually means arena fights, aka the real meat on those shallow bones. About 2 hours after I heard those terms, the demo for a not-quite-triple-A polygonal game fits those ruts rather nicely.

Eternights is marketed as a hybrid of dating sim and character action. Its release date and Steam demo were announced during Not-E3 2023’s PC Gaming Show. And yours truly just wanted to see how well it can run on the Steam Deck. Funny enough, on the game’s resolution selection menu, big letters say [STEAM DECK] are next to the 1200X800 option. The developers are clearly aiming for Playable if not Verified on launch. It just might get Verified since the text is comfortably visible.

I played the game on Story difficulty with both Japanese text and voice. Voice acting is fine on that front though it can be immersion breaking with the Korean Hangul in the art assets and the English text on them phones during the animated cut scenes. But as a native Chinese speaker who started learning English since as young as 8, over-the-top anime style in English dubbing can still do enough psychological damage.

The about 50 minutes long demo is dubbed Act 1 and it does feel like a glorified tutorial. The player character is a boy in a white shirt. He got dragged into setting up profiles on dating apps by his friend Chani. Here comes the only time for customization in this demo: putting in your name. The game has the Fire Emblem Three Houses kind of not-quite-fully-voiced, by which I mean it’s fully voiced except for skipping a few beats around player character’s name.

The player character then has a nightmare that day. The nightmare serves as combat tutorial, left face button for strike and down button for dodge. Well timed dodge slows down time, Bayonetta style, Right bumper is for heavy attack but the enemies need to take enough damage before this can be triggered. Do not except air jangling, the 2 arenas in this demo can be top-down and it would be fine for the “grounded” approach.

A new day came then all hell really broke loose, like we-have-to-rush-children-into-underground-bunkers-and-lock-them-in kind of hell breaking loose. Player character and his friend Chani happened to share a bunker. Then the door unexpectedly unlocked and the Ghost Train Ride truly began.

First the Queue, in which player character walking in pitch dark corridors with Chani whining all the way. This game certainly earns its M rating for blood and gore in spades, for the joke before horror imagery also involves the red fluid flowing in our veins. Player character literally ran into his first potential love interest, the stone-headed pop idol Yuna, and his head hurt. Yuna saw he bleed from the head and dropped the punch line “You all right”.

From then the game threw in the Thrills, if all breaking points can be seen as thrills. The first Thrill is mandatory stealth, piss easy kind. The monsters are all glowing red, it’s sharp contrast to the dark corridor. Not pushing the left stick too far is the tutorial given here. Then a clearly not on the poster NPC got killed a monster, a chase ensued. Click the left stick and run through an obstacle course is what the tutorial said, and yours truly died once here for not clicking the stick and caught up by the monster.

The chase ended with the “party” hiding in lockers, the choice here is share one with an old friend or the potential lover. Yours truly chose the latter, since that’s the goal for this type of games isn’t it? As the monster passing by, there is a rhythm game style QTE to hold one’s breath. The game’s Playstation priority is on display here, since the tutorial video clip shows the shapes of PS controller face buttons instead of letters everyone else use. Another thing being the game just refuses to let you leave menu by pushing right face button, menu button in and menu button out.

Dialogue options were peppered in, some went nowhere. Others added to different stats, which does not mean much in this short demo.

Eventually the 3 young survivors were told by a drone with nice lady voice to get on a train. The heavily armed vehicle on rails is likely a hub in the full game, but this demo does not show any hub function there. Other hubs were shown in the game before the ghost train took off, the player character’s apartment with special attention paid to a box of tissue and the underground bunker with special attention paid to a bunch of porno magazines. This game seems to think masturbation is essential…

The train platform here is the Gift Shop. Player character got his left arm cut off, met someone could be either a goddess or a she-devil and gained the weapon to fight back. The main event is a boos fight. One must time the dodge well then got enough hits in to break the boss’s shield, which led to QTE activated by the left trigger. Both timed button push and button mash are involved, thankful no stick pushing in the demo. QTE is not mandatory like them old God of War. The boss life bar is reduced to zero mid QTE in my playthrough and it just jumped to the end screen “encouraging” people to pre-order the game.

Well, I cannot say I’m in any rush to pre-order this game. Friction-less first act of any game won’t prepare one for some late-game frustration and RPGs are usually the worst offenders on that front. Yet if this game gets nice buzz after launch, maybe the first week discount could be worth it.

“Reviewing” Muv-luv Altered Fable

My almost two months long journey through the Muv-luv series had reached its more or less natural conclusion with Alternative’s fan disc, Altered Fable. Of course, there is no such product titled Muv-luv Altered Fable on Steam, only a little thing subtitled Photomelodies including a mini game less version of Altered Fable.

The point-of-view character Takeru Shirogane had gone through the arc from happy go lucky do gamer boy to a real military man before. Now he had a decent into fuck boy hole for this farce.

The time of writing was also near the reveal of Snake Eater remake, the tenth anniversary of some MGS 5 reveal and the twentieth anniversary of MGS3 reveal during E3 2003. So, the back half of this would have some bullshit about when was the better time for Snake to sound like Jack Bauer. I started to swear, but for games where “shit” and “fuck” appear in the dialogue, why restrain oneself talking about them?

Ghost Parade, A Second “Saber” and… From Russia with love?

This screenshot is not taken from Altered Fable. Instead, it’s Alternative’s main menu after the credits rolled. Alternative has an epilogue titled, tongue-in-cheek style I might add, Muv-luv. Developer Age software seemed to fear that their Users walking away on a down note, so they gave out a taste of the sweet after a grand tragedy packed final chapter. POV character waked up in a peaceful October, 2001 again and even some minor sadness in Meiya’s backstory was wiped away here.

As much as the dev wanted to present this as a happy ending, I can still see a lot of ghosts here. Characters are introduced left to right and up to down.

The girl with braids and glasses is Chitsuru Sagaki, the tsudere class representative. Rest in peace to her counterpart in Alternative, for she self-destructed her mecha after it was overrun by those alien bastards there.

Under Chitsuru is Mikoto Yoroi who might be a boy or girl in drag in Extra. So they are dateable anywhere except there. They are pov character’s gamer friend no matter what gender they are. RIP to her counterpart in Alternative, for she died destroying a key enemy target there.

The girl with blue pony tail is Meiya Mitsurugi. Hi, honey, glad you made onto an alien planet fine in Unlimited. RIP to her counterpart in Alternative, for she died defending human’s super weapon there. Strange that there is also friendly fire involved, it weirdly feels like Honor Killing thus I facepalmed a bit when read it.

The girl with purple pony tail is Yuhi Mitsurugi, dateable for this fan disc only. She is Meiya’s twin sister. RIP to her counterpart in Extra, for she was killed along with her parents at the age of 4 there.

The shorty with fair purple hair is Kasumi Yashiro, dateable for this fan disc only. She is the quiet one some weebs really into. May her counterpart in Unlimited find some peace for she would suffer a fate worse than death there regardless of route.

The red head is Shirogane’s childhood friend Sumika Kagami. RIP to her counterpart in Alternative, for she died twice there. First time unwilling to alien invaders, for ESRB did warn you about the tentacle porn here. Second time for she was revived to get intel from enemies but ended up with two way street on that matter, so she chose death after her mission was accomplished. Just a little cherry on top of a layered tragedy cake.

The girl with raven hair and a noodle sandwich in her mouth is Kei Ayamine, a stoic jockey. She is the subject of a mandatory up skirt shot in the first Muv-luv. RIP to her counterpart in Alternative she died along with Sagaki there.

Last but not least, the shorty with pink hair is Miki Tamase, who is basically a cat. RIP to her counterpart in Alternative, for she was overrun by those alien bastard after holding down defense position. The enemies should have showed some more respect to her broken dead body.

Guess I would stick to my gun about this being the afterlife. Or at least that would make me feel better about going down the Kasumi route. For her age is never given where she looks and acts like she’s twelve. Oh, well, at least the scene where Shirogane almost fucked her was presented as a Total Recall parody. Fun fact, her counterpart in Unlimited and Alternative is a Soviet bred ESP. The name reflects it for it is how “Russia” is spelled in Japanese reversed.

A thing Muv-luv series does well is that the branches where one gets to choose the girls are well telegraphed. Altered Fable does one better by having the girls’ names are in those branches, so one can choose their poisons labeled.

Ages decidedly did not go open world with this one, for the choose places menu is menu shaped, not map shaped like them Type-moon fan discs. Maps are important in depicting combat operations in Alternative, so I consider the lack there of in Altered Fable a choice.

Other than 2 brand new potential love interests, Altered Fable also has some military adventure elements and a dumb as brick spy plot peppered in. This is expansion pack to Alternative after all, so a school ball game tournament is changed into a school war game tournament. The sad New Year Offensive of Alternative is changed into a comedic one as well.

Foreign to Japan spies are after a Mitsurugi device, but a plucky and sassy high school physics teacher Yuko Kotsuki kept them at bay in proper farce like fashion. To be fair those spies, the counterpart of Ms. Kotsuki in Alternative is a mad scientist who scored humanity’s first victory against an alien invasion. Well, she managed to miss one out of five mainly because the counterparts of other four did work for her in Alternative.

A Thorn in the This Little Slice of Paradise

Introducing Chuck Sauber. Yeah, yeah, I can already hear you asking “Who is this Kiefer Sutherland looking motherfucker? And what’s he doing in a farce for weebs?”

Well, I was not thinking “Who is this Kiefer Sutherland looking motherfucker?” until I saw the image below. “Is that Rikiya Koyama?” was what I thought. Then the 24 parody began.

Literally using the clock for chapter heads up is something Alternative already did during its combat operations. Though going this hard on being a 24 parody. For starters, the aforementioned Rikyiya Koyama did do Japanese dub over Kiefer Sutherland, including all 206 episodes of 24. I am counting the feature length prologue to seventh season here, that Guild sure loves to go strike.

Sauber in this farce would talk impatiently into a phone then hang up and yell “DAMN IT!” just like 24’s Bauer. Well, technically he yelled “KUSO!” in Japanese, something can literally be translated into “shit” or “crap” depends on what letter does one want from ESRB. Sauber has a partner named Sheryl Turner, whose character spite is just Sherry Palmer in 24, not weebed up at all. She only calls the pov character “David”, probably as in 24’s David Palmer.

Muv-luv Altered Fable came out in 2007, the same year Simpsons’ 24 Minutes aired. Sutherland of course contributed voice work there, so I guess after 24’s fifth season won an Emmy for best drama, the stick up that series’ ass loosened a bit and its cast members started to participate in parodies as long as the paychecks cleared.

Speak of voice work, yours truly really think if Hideo Kojima really wanted to cast someone played Jack Bauer as the voice of Snake, 2003 would be a much better time than 2013. But I guess with MGS3 being a reaction to the Raiden backlash, he couldn’t. The E3 2003 reveal of Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater already had Akio Otsuka voicing the player character, simply known as Snake back then. Back then whether David Hayter would be back for the English version was not set in stone.

Otsuka was great as every playable Snake of course, the less experienced in spy craft Naked Snake in Snake Eater was no exception. But if Kojima wanted to put focus on a younger Snake, Koyama would not be too bad of an option. Yours truly first knew Koyama’s voice work through 2011’s Fate Zero animated adaption where he played a sad killer who had to kill his mother figure to save the world. Naked Snake is almost, the same.

The “ever innovating” game auteur turned out to be a creature of habits like the rest us, huh? I mean by 2013, both Hayter and Otsuka were inseparable from MGS series’ playable Snakes, yet Kojima thought Sutherland phoning it in can satisfy his English-speaking patrons? It’s decade too late and way beyond the point of no return, if you ask me.

Some Final Words

Altered Fable finally decided to show its Users what Game Guy looks like, and of course it looks like Game Boy Advance, something sold like hot cakes back in 2001. It might be the first handheld I remembered with the promise of reliving some decade old classics on the go. Just like Playstation Vita one decade after it and Steam Deck two decade after it. Takeru Shirogane sure popped in a 16-bit classic and had the girl go “Oh, it’s so cute”.

I sure am glad to go through a series of visual novels “sold at full price” in handheld, mostly. Though to take screenshots for this piece, I reinstalled Steam onto the Surface Pro I am typing right now. As someone who lost most of their interest in new releases, having handhelds to relive or even discover some classic in the decades past is my cup of tea when it comes to gaming recently. I am glad that Muv-luv acknowledge the interest on that front as well.

On the Stars My Destinations by Alfred Bester

“In fact, before Blade Runner, I’d only read two novels in the entire field of science fiction.” One of these books was Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destinations…The other was Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep?

---Hampton Fancher, co-screenwriter and executive producer of Blade Runner.

Interviewed for Future Noir, with the book’s author Paul M. Sammon clarifying which “two novels”.

To Bester and Clarke, who got us here.

---James S. A. Corey, dedication page of Caliban’s War, the Expanse book 2 of 9

(It’s funny to hear that not only does an amateur like yours truly feel more inclined to cover books while referencing video game these days, professionals do as well.)

I first saw Blade Runner in 2004, three years before the Final Cut came out. It was the Director’s Cut included in a collector’s edition of 1997’s Westwood adventure game with the same title. Dubbed in Mandarin, Deckard’s voice-over narration did not sound as bad as Ford phoning it in.

There was a sense of déjà vu, as I felt like I’ve read something where the future was this fascinatingly fouled up. Yet I could not name it. What I could be sure of was that it’s not from Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep, the Philip K Dick novel that movie was based on. I read it in 2004 as well, and Blade Runner’s fascinatingly fouled up future is nowhere to be found in that book.

Fast forward 15 years, I got to the part where Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner covering the movie’s script, read the passage I quoted up there and it all made sense. When Ridley Scott encouraged Fancher to think about the world outside those windows, the latter was clearly lifting things left and right from the only other science fiction novel he had read by then.

But the decidedly not science fiction aficionado behind the bafflingly beloved sci-fi film noir was not the only professional loving this book. Out of all the SF Masterworks on my shelf, the on-cover praises for only this one all came from sci-fi novelists: Robert Sliverberg, a successor to John W. Campbell; William Gibson, who needs no farther introduction among this crowd I believe; Samuel R. Delany, whose work video game critic Cameron Kunzelman would pick over Assassin Creed lure any day of the week; and Joe Haldeman, whose Forever War will be mentioned somewhere down the road. And nods towards this book can be found in and around video games.

Standing on the shoulder of a giant while having Supergiant stand on its

“A fifties SF classic which reworked and reset Alexander Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo in the far future” was how Paul M. Sammon summed up the Stars My Destinations (referred to as “Stars” later) in Future Noir. Though my experience with the ninetieth century French revenge swashbuckler was only through that 2002 Hollywood movie, the plot about a man thrown into jail, escaped, got filthy rich by chance and then revenge is unmistakable. “Far future” is not something I would agree, since the book take place in a speculated twenty-fifth century, as far as so-called “near future” can go.

But revenge tale was not how I first knew about this book. On an early 2003 issue of Science World’s regular semi-monthly, there was an article about teleportation and the Bester novel was mentioned in it. Jaunt is how teleportation is called and is not due to technological advancement but rather human evolution. One Mr. Jaunte first teleported would be how it all began by the end of twenty-fourth century and when this story picked up in the mid twenty-fifth century Jaunting had a decades long history of regulation and rebellion against that regulation.

Among many proper nouns in Stars, PyrE, capital P and capital E, is another one stands out. In many thrillers like this, people from opposing factions are always after one single McGuffin. PyrE, as a new type of super weapon, is that McGuffin here. And if my fellow Supergiant Games appreciators think they have heard those 2 before, here is my guesses.

The dash move in 2014’s Transistor is called Jaunt, and much like the first case of teleportation in this book, it’s merely going from one end of a relatively large room to another in an instant. Then the stylized title for 2017’s Pyre only has its y in lower case. It’s hard to imagine the well-read lot at Supergiant Games have not read, enjoyed and taken things from this book.

Of course, a couple of proper nouns are not the only thing one can draw parallel between Supergiant and Bester. Both obsesses with world building yet never let that tricky aspect getting in the way of action. The volume of Stars I read is “only” 240 pages long, a pamphlet compared to many phone book size epics, yet it describes the stages, actor and then they went nuts without feeling rushed.

Universe composed of planets instead of stars

Stars takes place in a twenty-fifth century when human has spread across the solar system. A sometimes cold and sometimes hot long war is fought between 2 major factions, Inner Planet and Outer Satellites. The former refers to Venus, Terra and Mars while the latter includes seven moons of planets Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune.

Yes, my fellow Expanse readers, I heard you loud and clear. The writer duo known James S.A. Corey did admit that the United Nations of Earth and Lunar, the Congressional Republic of Mars and the Outer Planets Alliance in their books are modeled after things in the Bester masterpiece. Though it’s about it since the newer books take a quite different approach than the older one.

Let’s get what the older one did better out of the way first: its McGuffin has nothing to do with the Ancient Alien trope that plagues games and high fantasy. The Expanse was once visioned as MMO and then table top role playing or even a fantasy novel if the duo took some ill advise from relatives, includes Ancient Alien relic is almost evadible. But then Expanse series would more often than not takes some borrowed concept and turns things on its head. The solar system wide war story is one of those.

In Stars, residents of Outer Satellites might as well be unknowable space aliens. Not one of them is seen in person in that book. Protagonist Gully Foyle, as much as he hates the Inner Planet rich people who wronged him, still consider Outer Satellites people his sworn enemies. Once he learns that he was made bait by those enemies, and the Terran vessel Vorga was in the right when it ignored him, he gave up on vengeance and the rest of the book is more about this new-found sense of enlightenment of his. It’s almost as if the men wrote under the pen name James S.A. Corey read this and thought “Our stuff would not fly today if it goes like this.”

In Leviathan Wakes, the opening volume of Expanse, there are only 2 point-of-view characters and both are hellbent to give readers a more sympathetic look at the life in deeper space. There is of course the Paladin we all love to hate James Fucking Holden who born into a rich family on Earth but prefers to live among those less privileged born and raised in deep space. Then there is the cynic born in that deep space Joe Miller, who would give readers a “first-hand” account about psyche forged by that harsh life.

I’m not judging one against another here, you all should read and compare on your own.

Homefront in the future

Stars is considered as a precursor to the whole Cyberpunk subgenre. Mr. Gaiman’s piece included in more than one edition of this book has dedicated one whole paragraph to the similarities between the 1956 novel and its successors in the 1980s. For my money though, it might have a bigger impact on military science fiction. Joe Haldeman, author of the Forever War, had obviously taken cues from this book for his first Hugo and Nebula winner. Though it might be more of a rediscovery than invention.

The Forever War is a book so influential that people might use its title without reading it. American military posting overall the globe is referred to as a Forever War after all. However, the book’s forever warriors are not always on the battle front. After all it is one visit to the so-called home front that makes them prefers to remain on the battle front of a forever war. They just choose the devil they know over the one they don’t. It’s not something new, since this early Academy Award winner and the book it was based on tackled the same issue.

The Forever War’s home front is of course a fascinatingly fouled up near future that is not unlike ones seen in Stars and Cyberpunk stories. The Forever War was published in late 1970s, those started to write in the 1980s were obviously influenced by it. Though I do wonder. Haldeman could have sticked to the future military formula of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and just added sorrowful reflection since the forever warriors do mourn those killed in training exercise, the book might still be considered the next step in military sci-fi, with mentality changed from the triumph of World War Two to the guilt of the Vietnam War. But war efforts had better not be viewed in a vacuum.

Stars did not shame away from the fact that everything will be conscripted into a war effort and how an already fouled up society would end up worse for it. Bester dedicated most of the whole volume of Stars as a window into a dystopia created by a long war. Haldeman, who fought as a combat engineer in the Vietnam War, just flipped the script a little bit, dedicated one single chapter as glimpse into a dark future ushered in by the forever war and latter science fiction might be very different without him doing do.

Stars was among the first science fiction novels I’ve read. The 13-year-old who first read it had since grown into someone older and not necessarily wiser. The book can still give that person some joy despite some issues, like how violent and horny the book’s leading man can be at times, the book did try to mediate that by making him saying some enlightened bullshit by the end. The 1950s, heh? Still, if the modern phone book size standard of genre novel is too much for you, this little pamphlet just might be what the doctor ordered. It certain offered yours truly more than all five volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire combined ever had.

“Reviewing” Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

Sometimes I wonder if Hideo Kojima even likes video game. Throughout the pieces collected in Creative Gene, the man never mentioned one single video game that is not branded “A Hideo Kojima Game” as a point of reference. Meanwhile, Vinny dropped video game references left and right during Film & 40s. The podcasters over at Abnormal Mapping, feed up with the industry as they are, would at times refer to video games even when criticizing non-interactive media. Then yours truly just got to start a review of a 1967 science fiction like this. Or maybe it’s the twenties anniversary of Matrix Reloaded coming up got me thinking like that.

For my money, Keanu Reeves is the Mr. Video Game when it comes to Hollywood leading man. This statement got nothing to do with his involvement with Cyberpunk 2077. He just had starred in 8 movies across 2 series, the Matrix and John Wick, that incorporate video game elements into their stories better than almost all video game adaption out there, while Tom Cruise only got Edge of Tomorrow to point to.

Matrix got that in a good way (Morpheus saying how the rules of Matrix are to be bent or broken in the original), a bad way (That Smith Musou bullshit in Reloaded) and something in between (Thomas Anderson being a video game developer in the fourth one). Meanwhile, the John Wick sequels all have contemporaries, big or small, to point to.

2017’s Chapter 2 has a before-hit-job/pre-dungeon preparation scene where Wick gets weapon (The hotel provides on demand free of charge), armor (Tailored suits with bullet-prof fabric) and intel (Counts as 4 coins for 4 flavors.). This is somewhat uncannily to the one Divine Beast yours truly managed to clear in Breath of the Wild. Before the water one, Link gets armor (Provided by the fish people on arrival free of charge), weapon (A quest to pull 20 thunder arrows near a dangerous creature) and intel (Upload to the Sheeka tablet at the dungeon entrance). Then both Wick and Link throw useless-to-them weapons at enemies more than once in their 2017 outings.

2019’s Chapter 3 came out between 2 Devolver side-scrolling blood bath, Katana Zero and My Friend Pedro. All 3 feature motorcycle chase and mayhem. Then in 2023, Chapter 4 and that new Resident Evil 4 came out the same day. John Wick 4 ended on a down note (By which I mean the final pistol duel simply drained all the energy out, not that Wick seemingly dies in the end. The latter is great, no better way to close out a series than to kill off the titular character if you ask me.) so I am more than ready to shoot up then throw down a torch and pitch fork mob in Capcom’s new old game.

I can hear you asking, what do all those have to do with a 1967 science fiction novel? Well, yours truly had read the said 1967 book four times, all with Keanu Reeves kicking ass in movies as vivid memory in their mind. So, I can’t help but face cast characters in Lord of Light as Reeves.

The first 2 times were not even in English. The year was 2006, and the ultimate Matrix DVD collection, one with a Neo bust, hanged around a book store I visited regularly. I jokingly called it the Buddha statue due to the not-entirely-accurate news that Reeves is a Buddhist. Thus, I imagined Lord of Light lead, Sam the Buddha imposter as Reeves.

However, that was because the Chinese translation did not keep all the wits Sam showed in the original text. I finally read the book in all its punny glory in English early 2020, shortly before the earliest lockdown and a back-to-back viewing of John Wick 2 plus 3. And I could see Reeves as the no-nonsense Yama while another John Wick and Matrix cast members as the titular Lord of Light.

In a very distant future on a planet far, far away, Matrix gets reversed.

If Vanillaware dares to make a darker, slightly more depressing and sort of direct sequel to 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim, then Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light would give them an adequate blueprint to work with. In a far future when Common Era calendar has become meaningless, humans has left Earth behind for reasons too ancient to matter for this story and settled on an alien planet originally habited by pure energy life-form. Well, none of this is revealed to the readers when they open this book though. Instead, they will be treated to some tongue-in-cheek poetic about the titular Lord of Light and something lifted from Frankenstein into the Matrix through the so-called Bollywood lens.

Mad scientist Yama adjust the machine he made, located something resemble the soul of the revolutionary Sam and upload it into a new body. Sam woke up, recovered and was asked to finish the revolution he had started. Sam eventually did and became a legend and myth, just not before he pondered on his life as a revolutionary in a 5-act structure.

I still recall how 2006’s first issue of Science Fiction World All Translation Bi-monthly introduced this novel. In its world, humanity had achieved immortality through magic like advanced technology but the story is not about that. In this world, a pure energy life form has to be conquered so humanity might live, but the story is not about that. In this world, gods and mortals mingles like in any myth, but, yet again, the story is not about that.

Instead, Lord of Light is a story of revolution, it’s about the eternal war between the Haves and the Have-nots. Or more preciously and realistically like in any real life revolution, a war between the Haves who want to share more with the Have-nots and the Haves who do not. The former is known as Accelerationism and the latter self-proclaimed gods after the Hindu pantheon. Then of course there are those who simply grab and keep what can be theirs in the chaos. But I’m getting ahead of myself again since none of those would be lay bare until the fifth of seven chapters.

Like any fiction renowned for this tricky thing we call “world building”, Lord of Light feels like a sequel. At least the fifth volume in a long epic series: book one about why humanity left earth then a trilogy about how they settled on this world. Does encountering a pure energy alien life form make the recantation technology possible or is there some other reasons? It doesn’t really matter for this story, it just is like this. The internal works of technology is not Lord of Light’s focus, its external effect on society is.

As Chapter 2 of this book shows, Sam thought the police state would be easier to topple than it’s since he was not aware of the technological advancement in the tools of suppress. Then he learned of the genius Yama and tried to get he to rebel until the latter had a face turn in Chapter 6.

All right, it’s time for fun

None of what was described above matters if Lord of Light is not a fun book to read. Yes, there is hard to process poetic, but Frank Herbert’s Dune looks like one long dry stick in the mud compared to this book, yet that Desert book just keeps getting visual audio adaption from Hollywood. Clocked at 280 pages compared to Dune’s more than 700, Lord of Light is a lean and mean exercise in two cinema genres yours truly adore: comedy and action.

Roger Zelazny was fond of puns as Martin pointed out in his afterword. So despite all the color, style and myth in the book’s narration, those under the banner of Accelerationism all talk in a witty that had been done to death by the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Joss Whedons of the world. Well, none of those has the serious narration to balance things out after all.

Then, there is the action. This thing called New Wave in the 1960s is about Style, by which they should mean everything would be written more vividly compared to the dry text of the so-called Golden Age. Some went for sex, and Zelazny seemed to go for stylized violence, since the text in Lord of Night would provide people doing audio visual adaption adequate blueprints.

Speak of audio visual adaption, with a heavy Hindu mythology favor, one might think the best way to do audio visual adaption of this is just sell it to Bollywood. I wholeheartedly disagree on the ground that the sense of humor simply would not have worked outside any other language than English. In fact, for five characters in this book, I could not see them other than those 5 or 6 cast members of Matrix series, John Wick series or both.

For the protagonist Sam, I can only see him as Lawrence Fishbourne, with Clarke Peter plays the old Sam in the second chapter. The ever-sharp detective Lester Freamon in the Wire can be seen as a revolutionary looking for information. Sam’s interaction with Yama in the book contains both Morpheus’ purpose to enlighten in Matrix and the meaness of John Wick’s Bowery King.

Then of course Yama can be played by none than Keanu Reeves. The deathgod in this story has some more grounded action where “pace” was used as verb. Yama threw down a lot like Neo or Wick, he fires only once in the book to no effect much like how Neo gunned down a dozen then did not pick up any gun in the Matrix sequels.

To throw down with Yama wearing Reeves’ face would be Rild played by Mark Dacascos. Rild was the killer of Kila’s, sent to kill Sam but ended up helped and enlightened by the Buddha imposter. Dacascos and Reeves still had the best one-on-one in all of the John Wick movies, so I can see those 2 in the first detailed duel in Lord of Light.

Speak of Kali, the goddess of destruction, Asia Kate Dillion the gender non-binary is definitely a fit since the same person eventually became Brahma, the counterpart to Zeus in the Hindu pantheon. To think Reeves acting up affection for them is fun enough for yours truly.

Carrie Ann Moss would be fit for Ratri, goddess of the night and somewhat of a third wheel in the late stage of this revolution. She was said to be switching between a full bodied look and slim look in the book, so Moss being slightly out of shape when she did voice work for Mass Effect sequels and her in shape form in the Matrix movies were all I can see. Yeah, yeah, I know the book ain’t too kind on the women, but what can one do.

Tabletop role playing is another thing Roger Zelazny was fond of according to Martin’s afterword, so I guess he would have been happy to see someone “face cast” characters he wrote all those years later. And that would be how I close this out.