Review and Analysis: Berserk - The Egg of the King

I have a confession to make: Berserk is in fact the best fantasy story ever written. Retire your Lord of the Rings, put Harry Potter to bed, throw Game of Thrones in the garbage. Berserk is the absolute cream of the crop. Deep characterization, beautiful artwork, gruesome violence and a fully developed dark medieval world with some of the most striking grey morality seen in comics. It's a true masterpiece, one which I can totally accept waiting years upon years for twenty pages of very little plot development just to get more. Well, unless you're a poor soul whose first experience with the series is through the Golden Age trilogy movie series. Please don't do this to yourself.

Because of the size of this review I'll be splitting it into separate posts for each movie. If you actually want to watch the film trilogy for some reason or intend to read the excellent Berserk manga, I suggest you do so now. If you're unsure of how to break into the series, that's the route you should take. There will be spoilers for volumes 3-13 of the manga and the entirety of the 1997 anime. If you're still here, then please enjoy.

The Egg of the King

The first film of the trilogy, The Egg of the King, kicks things off with Guts in his mercenary group laying siege to a castle. I don't want to harp on too much about the big omissions made in the movies and would rather judge most adapted work on their own merits, but this film trilogy has a bad tendency of cutting extremely important details to shove in very poor CGI set piece moments--as it turns out, the first movie opens with this exact issue. Let me explain: Berserk, in both the manga and original anime, begin in media res with Guts, as the Black Swordsman, slaughtering his way through the Apostles in his quest for vengeance.

Establishing a fantasy series with the extraordinary is not simply an aesthetic choice; it's designed that way specifically for the audience to know exactly what they're getting into. In the case of Berserk, we know Guts is on a murder rampage fighting enormous monsters with a giant sword before stepping back and building the world with the Golden Age arc. Note that this does cause tonal problems in the first movie, and not in a particularly interesting way. Game of Thrones has a similar set-up as the very first thing seen are the wights, even though they're not a plot point until nearly the end of the first season/book. A viewer already needs to suspend their disbelief enough as is with a fantasy series, and bludgeoning them with an even more fantastical element does nothing to help that. As an added bit of hilarity with this analogy, Game of Thrones also just introduced an out-of-place tone annihilator that I'm still coming to grips with because, after six seasons, it's throwing in new concepts that seem out-of-place in the story.

This isn't a new concept; in fact, the strongest example behind this establishment is from the grandfather of fantasy, JRR Tolkien. In an essay, Tolkien wrote "[an author] makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. ... The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed." So if you begin a story as a strictly low fantasy about orphaned child soldiers and medieval conflicts, throwing in evil Satan monsters from Hell out of nowhere ruins that internal consistency. It's like having a low fantasy in a setting where magic is dying and dragons are extinct suddenly introducing a convoluted time travel Grandfather Paradox. If your setting doesn't follow the rules established early on it becomes harder for the audience to suspend their disbelief; starting Berserk anywhere but the the Black Swordsman arc is a failure, in my opinion.

So when the first Berserk film opens with an irritatingly loud and ugly CG castle siege that drags on far too long and serves only to put Guts in front of Bazuso, expectations are justifiably low. These enormous battles occur often enough in the series and wasting too much time with one at the very beginning can only cause fatigue with later castle sieges. Considering the first two films are barely over an hour long, wasting time is hardly a great way to start the series. Then again, it's kind of hard to not call this thing a waste of time. The 1997 anime already exists and the movies begin with less content than that series, and by the end there's very little you wouldn't get otherwise. All the films needed to do was fill in the gaps but we're already wasting several minutes for a battle nobody ever wanted to see. As a comparison, the first anime opens with Guts as the Black Swordsman with his Dragonslayer sword laying waste to an Apostle before the scene flashes directly to Guts facing off with Bazuso. It's a better introduction to the story as a whole and wastes little time, unlike this thing.

Guts then just kind of leaves his mercenary camp, ignoring a vital character detail in which he hates being touched. That's fine though, because the film trilogy entirely removes that aspect of Guts's character. In fact, most characterization is thrown out the window in the film trilogy. Characters like Corkus and even minor characters like Gaston, who barely qualified as a character to begin with, are completely thrown in the background and do very little aside from fight and act like a one-dimensional cartoons. Part of the reason Berserk is so widely regarded as transcending its medium is its characterization; even if we see them very little, in the manga we can tell exactly how someone like Pippin or Corkus will act because their characters are developed. In the film trilogy Corkus just attacks Guts because he wants to and Guts just leaves the mercenary camp because he feels like it, there's no reason for any of these characters to be near each other aside from contrivances.

Guts easily defeats the Hawks before being handily beaten by Griffith, and in his ensuing feverish nightmare the viewer is given a tease about Guts's past. In my nightmares I'm not actually the best, smartest and strongest person who everyone admires. They're waking nightmares because it's every second of my life. What, Berserk? Oh, so Guts has these terrible nightmares that are apparently directed by an idiot who thinks the viewer can tell what this out-of-focus blurry mess actually is.

Can you tell what's happening here? Not

if you haven't read the manga!

So in a baffling display of complete ineptitude the film trilogy omits Guts's very tragic backstory involving patricide, the coolest tree ever, rape, and disease--although for some strange reason the rape is still shown without context. The only way to know what happens to Guts and why he hates being touched is to read the manga, but then what is the point of this film trilogy if not to fill in the blanks left by the original anime? I'd hate to posit the theory that it's entirely to get the viewers prepared for the disappointment of ugly CG in the upcoming Black Swordsman anime adaptation. Actually, I'm going to posit it anyway. This film series is supposed to replace the original anime, but all you get out of these first two films, at least, are a bad adaptation of the Golden Age.

The only people who have any idea what's going on in that above flashback are people who read the manga, but if these movies are supposed to catch up newcomers for the upcoming series then what is the point of including them in the first place? Guts also has nightmare flashbacks to Gambino and his past in Gambino's mercenaries, but there's absolutely no context. You can hardly tell what's going on in the flashbacks which entirely defeats the purpose. Maybe if they'd cut out the boring three minutes of fighting that started off the movie they could have left it in. Whoops. As an aside, in the manga this all comes full circle when Casca and Guts have sex, but we're not there yet. Just so you know, that's been omitted as well. Before we get there we have to parse a lot of elbow-deep stupid butt butter poopoo crap stupid

There's something I need to point out here after re-watching the film. There actually is some dialogue that gives greater context to the flashbacks, but I swear that you absolutely cannot hear anything because it's so muffled. So congratulations, Egg of the King. I finally deciphered your annoying flashback puzzle. I guess next time I'll watch the movies at three thousand percent volume with subtitles to make sure I don't miss critical plot details. Good job!

So after some annoying flashbacks with no context that are never, I seriously mean never explained during the course of the film trilogy, Guts is formally introduced to the Band of the Hawk. Guts is embarrassed to learn that he was kept from developing a fever with the help of Casca, a female member of the Hawks who was commanded to keep him warm after falling to Griffith in battle. Needless to say, she's pretty ashamed of having little choice in the matter and punches Guts in his wound before stomping off. He is forced to become a member of the Hawks after a second crushing defeat by Griffith, an ambitious young man who is given far more development than just about anyone in the entire series--at least, if you're only watching these movies.

At this point in both the 1997 anime and manga Guts is charged with leading a surprise attack on an enemy camp to judge his effectiveness, and after pleasing Griffith with his instinctual knowledge of battle Guts is promoted to captain of the Raiders, the Hawks' vanguard. Not only does this give the audience a great deal of character development in regards to nearly every member of the Band of the Hawk, what their roles are, how they interact and just how great of a tactical genius Griffith actually is, it also serves to give a bit of development to the Hawks who aren't entirely convinced by the inclusion of Guts in the group. It's a great character moment and serves as an interesting change of locale as the battle is largely a covert mission at night. Instead, in this movie Guts is just thrown into his spot at the Raiders and a few years pass.

I hate that this scene was cut, not in the least since it was cut to shove in another protracted battle scene in the middle of an open field with ugly CG. It's the same as every last battle in the Golden Age arc and after the first one they really start to blend together, and in the spirit of the films important character moments are thrown aside to show off laughable CG.

Casca nags at Guts--one of her few character traits--as she thinks he's reckless and is putting the Hawks in danger, and Griffith steps in to explain Casca's annoyance. At this time the larger conflict is introduced: Midland has been at war with Chuder in The Hundred Year War, and Chuder is gaining the upper hand. Griffith is knighted and his Band of the Hawk is semi-officially absorbed into Midland as the kingdom's premier army. As a quick note, the films at least do the honor of going into small detail over the different types of armies; for example, there's the Band of the Hawk, of course, but there's also the White Dragon knights, the Holy Iron Chain, Blue Whale Heavy Infantry, Black Ram Iron Lance--just about every army band has a specific title. It's a neat bit of world building that's so minor I'm surprised the film even took the time to bother, but it's all there. The Band of the Hawk, as it turns out, is perhaps the best of all of these army bands and the king of Midland is not lost on this fact. Many nobles take note of this and hold private meetings to discuss the Hawks' meteoric rise in power, although this really doesn't go anywhere in the films as the primary instigator behind the conspiracies, Minister Foss, is completely absent from the film trilogy. He's actually a very important character and without him, much of the undercurrent of the tension during Golden Age is entirely cut. Foss is a character that Griffith can't just deal with in battle, he's a tactical genius much like Griffith and it was always interesting to see the two moving their own chess pieces as the story progressed. But no, that's completely absent and it really does feel like something important is missing.

Before I move on, I want to bring detail to an annoying detail lost in the film trilogy: small moments with the Hawks that are mostly absent. These can range from funny to somber and the audience gets to really know the Band of the Hawk and all of its members, and you can really see the lack of development with them as the films progress. It's kind of a minor point and you get some of that as the films move on, but these movies are so down in the dumps and moody that a little bit of the tension deserves to be released every now and then. As it is, the films all have a problem with the plot being torpedoed into the next big scene from the manga, and watching a condensed version of a series I know so well does get jarring without any of these camp sections. Like many times these movies scenes are mashed together seemingly at random; for instance, right before Casca nags Guts and calls him a mad dog--a poignant detail you probably should keep in mind for later story arcs--an earlier camp scene is crammed here without much purpose and just feels terribly awkward.

During the Hawks' campaign, several soldiers are held up inside a castle and the Hawks are left without a word from them until one soldier escapes to tell them that a legendary warrior named Zodd is inside slaughtering literally everybody. In a frenzy, Guts charges inside and matches Zodd in blows. The latter suddenly mutates into a giant monster, tossing Guts around like a ragdoll. I like this scene. Zodd looks great and most of the scene is a direct adaptation of the events in the manga. There's good direction in the action and you can really see how intimidating Zodd is in his Apostle form. Griffith joins Guts and the two are injured; before Zodd can deliver the killing blow he notices a trinket Griffith wears and leaves Guts with an ominous warning of his death.

While I do enjoy this scene as a returning viewer, I just can't imagine what a newcomer to the series, whose first experience with Berserk is this movie, would think about this scene. It really is well-made and they translate the pages of the manga very well, but it's such a dramatic tonal shift that the stakes are completely shifted at once. More than that, it makes the Zodd moment seem like a complete swerve that seems to have little relevance to the story. Worse, this moment is essential to the rest of the story arc, so there's no way around it--so why not begin the movie with just a brief glimpse of Apostles like this? It's not like there's a shortage of them.

Just use this stupid loser, I don't care.

The shot at the beginning of the third movie would have been great to start this particular film, and it would definitely make the transition to the Zodd scene smoother. But whatever. I'm sure other people love this movie because of this. They're wrong, but it's cute that their brains still work.

After this Guts and Griffith have a quiet moment in Midland castle; Griffith finally shows his trinket, the Behelit (or, the Egg of the Supreme Ruler), which he received by a creepy old lady in his youth. He explains that, in exchange for something precious, the owner of the Behelit can achieve their deepest dreams. This moment also crams two entirely different scenes together, and all the details become difficult to parse with so much being thrown at the audience at once. There's also an entirely new scene here that I just adore: while Guts is inspecting the Behelit, its eyes begin to open. Horrified, he throws the Behelit in the air and falls back. Griffith catches the Behelit and, seeing Guts fall, turns around to grab him. Guts leaps up to grab his sword and sighs in relief.

Everything about this small character moment is unbelievably charming that I have difficulty determining if this was something Miura wanted to add or if the director had a moment of "not being an idiot" and created a masterful ten seconds of film on his own. Guts reacts with shock to the Behelit and, despite being at the peak of physical fitness, has a short bout of clumsiness. We see that Griffith is a capable leader who keeps the symbol of his ultimate goal, the Behelit, within his reach at all times. He has little trouble catching it in midair, and when Guts falls Griffith effortlessly turns and catches him despite both of their injuries. Griffith seemingly cares for his ambition and his soldier at the same time and, even though it could cause stress to his healing body, he still takes time to consider his men. Guts, on the other hand, has a negative reaction to the fantastical element of the Behelit and is nearly out-of-character in his clumsiness. While nearly falling off a staircase, he spurns Griffith's help (if he even noticed Griffith reaching for him at all) because the most important thing in the world to him, his massive sword, might fall to the ground and get scraped.

We see every single detail about both of these characters in a matter of seconds without ever having to be told their motivations or beliefs. Simply interacting with the environment, each other, and their belongings, we see through their actions and expressions what these characters cherish. Griffith grabs the Behelit out of the air first and even holds it close to himself for a brief moment before noticing Guts falling, and Guts ignores Griffith's help to reach out for the most important thing in the world to him. It's such a brilliant and poignant scene that I'm still baffled that it's in such an otherwise poorly slapped-together movie. This is the kind of stuff Berserk is at its best with: in a few seconds and with nobody speaking, we understand everything about these two. I'm a bit disappointed that the bath scene is omitted and much of it is halfheartedly grafted into this part of the film. That would have also helped to ease the tonal shift with Zodd's introduction since it occurs earlier, and up to that point we're given little knowledge of the Behelit as well. In any case, this is a great moment, and the rest of the film follows suit by actually following the manga very closely.

The king of Midland, a few noblemen, and Princess Charlotte pass by after the king exchanges words with Griffith, who at this point has been promoted to the title of Count. Charlotte trips and, seeing an opportunity to get close to her, Griffith catches her. One of the noblemen, Julius, takes umbrage with this act and chastises Griffith for laying a hand on the princess. Following this exchange, the Hawks are given an opportunity to assist in boar hunting with the royal family; Julius hires an assassin to poison Griffith, though this attempt fails when the Behelit mysteriously blocks the arrow. There are a few cute little moments with Griffith and Charlotte, but truth be told there's very little else between these two characters. I'll get into that more with the following movie, but in the film trilogy there are few interactions between Griffith and Charlotte and he really does go out of his way to charm the pants off her. Well...we'll get to that.

Griffith tracks the poison back to Julius and orders Guts to assassinate him in turn.While discussing the assassination there's also a funny scene omitted from the manga with Griffith passing Guts some Kama Sutra-esque sexual book and it gives the two some juvenile camaraderie, especially given that they're both still teenagers at this point. It breaks the dour tone of the series just for a little bit, and like the camp scenes you can clearly tell that something is missing. So Guts just decides to go murder Julius for fun and while there brutally murders Julius's son, Adonis. This is a defining moment for the character and begins the trend of his doubt for Griffith--it also reinforces that Guts is still a human who makes stupid mistakes. You can't really help but feel bad for Guts despite the fact that he just murdered a child; Guts is still a teenager himself despite looking like a bulking colossus, and this moment weighs on his conscious in fairly obvious ways as the story unfolds. Before he can collect his thoughts the guards find him and attempt to halt his progress, though most are slaughtered.

Another scene here that I absolutely despise being cut is Guts reflecting on Adonis and Julius's relationship before going in for the kill. Julius is a demanding parent who berates Adonis for being rather terrible at swordplay, and this reminds Guts of his past in Gambino's mercenary camp. He feels sorry for Adonis and empathizes with the little kid because he sees some of himself in him, so when he ultimately murders Adonis by pure accident he puts himself in the shoes of a monster. Guts dreams of himself as Nosferatu Zodd murdering a version of himself as a child, and it all comes back around to this one pitiful moment. The film completely skips all of this and I'd consider it a failure just for that alone. This is probably the most important development in Guts's character during the entire Golden Age arc and I can't help but feel it was skipped for some stupid CG battle. Hope you're happy, idiots.

I should mention here that the film actually rectifies one of my biggest pet peeves with the manga: in the original, Guts is one of the only people in the world who is shown effortlessly swinging around a weapon as huge as his sword. While he does clear out a majority of the guards, it should have been a no-brainer to connect the assassination with the only guy in the entire castle town who actually has a weapon that could cause such devastating wounds as Guts's sword. Instead they have him wielding a normal longsword and he's shown to be as proficient with it as he is with his normal greatsword, and I can't even begin to explain how grateful I am that they took the time to fix this small detail. In a world as consistent as Berserk, I always thought that Guts never once being questioned as the assassin was a massive oversight.

Who could possibly have stabbed Adonis

with a sword so massive it obliterated all of his internal

organs in one swing? Eh, whatever, guess we'll never know.

Guts falls into the castle sewers and interrupts the Hawks during a party. Casca begins to berate him for disappearing without a trace, but is visibly upset when she notices that Guts is covered in wounds and barely responsive. She tells him that Griffith is attending a party with nobles and attempts to stop him from going, but the barely-conscious Guts pushes on anyway. Griffith is courting Charlotte near a fountain and Guts nearly approaches the two, but Casca chastises him for potentially embarrassing Griffith in front of the nobles that are the key to his promotion; still, she tears her shirt to help cover Guts's wounds. Guts catches part of Griffith's conversation, in which he foolishly tells Charlotte that he could never consider his soldiers friends as they have no ambition of their own, and that a true friend would never follow orders blindly. Guts, crushed by the realization that Griffith only sees him as a tool, slumps away in defeat while Griffith grins upon hearing the news that Julius and Adonis have been found dead. Casca, overhearing the announcement, takes a final look at the wounded Guts as she realizes what he's just done. The first film in the trilogy ends with the expressions on the three main characters' faces: ambition with Griffith, concern with Casca, and defeated contemplation with Guts.

Verdict

I'm always okay with more Berserk, but this first film left a bad impression. Many scenes are cut and battle scenes are seemingly extended. The battles themselves are drab and ugly, consisting mostly of bad CG and overhead shots of generic mounted combat. It feels like a failed attempt at cashing in on the Lord of the Rings high fantasy war story, but Berserk has never really been about this stuff. Sure, fighting in Berserk is some of the best you'll ever see in the medium, but the merit of this being a long-running manga series is that there are no real time restrictions. In translating the hectic, sprawling political movements to a movie that's barely over an hour much of the depth is entirely cut away, especially in terms of small character moments that drive the Golden Age arc. The audience at this point should deeply care about the main cast of the Hawks, but there's nothing really here to grow attached to other than the three main characters. This movie is clearly intended to catch up older viewers and close gaps left by the cliffhanger ending of the original anime, but that doesn't mean it has to be a bad movie in the first place. This should have either been its own television series or the movies themselves should have been longer, because for this film there's nothing the viewer can gain by not watching the original series. Even small hints at omitted details, such as the Donavon subplot, are cut away so drastically that what should have been a defining moment for Guts is instead relegated to a blurry picture with muffled voices that make no sense without context.

This is a hard movie to recommend, especially considering it ends on a cliffhanger and serves mostly to reacquaint the audience to the series before the new anime begins later this year. If you can, just read the manga. If not, go find the TV show. This first movie, at least, offers very little for a returning Berserk fan, and for a newcomer, you're missing out on some seriously good fantasy drama.

The Walking, Shambling, Embarrassing Dead

The Walking Dead is an immensely popular television series, based on a graphic novel of the same name. While I admit to following the series since the early days of its paper publication, I absolutely cannot tell you if the last few weeks of episodes have been entertaining at all. At its best The Walking Dead is a shambling mess of overplayed tropes, stereotypes, barely-functioning heavy-handed thematic elements and one of the most brainless casts full of stock cardboard cutout characters ever seen on television. I don't dislike the graphic novel--in fact, taken on its own the comic series is a frantic and often very entertaining affair. No, I'm here to say my peace on the embarrassing schlock of AMC's TV version. There will be spoilers and borderline nonsensical rants for both the television version and the comics, but allow me to enlighten you on why this tripe is a special, insidious kind of bad.

Take note that I wrote a majority of this directly before the penultimate episode of season six aired, so much of this is frustration over the initial run of this season. After six years of giving the televised series an unwarranted amount of attention I will no longer support AMC's television show. I hope this gives you some insight into why you shouldn't return, either.

Empty Promises

The first season of The Walking Dead begins with one of the highest and most ambitious openings in recent television; on its own, the show's pilot episode is a harrowing zombie story about loss and isolation. Every last thematic element is presented and resolved in some way--Morgan's isolation involves the death of his wife and his attempts to kill her zombie while Rick's isolation is a separation from his wife and kid who may not even be alive. The episode itself ends with Morgan tearfully refusing to put his wife out of his misery while Rick stumbles into a situation which leads to another group of survivors, which then leads to the discovery of Lori and Carl. The first episode exemplifies what should have been the norm for a television adaptation of a comic book: comic book readers get new information and a new interpretation of the comic while TV viewers can appreciate the original story.

While the series was being announced many readers wondered how the show would adapt the comic, though the general consensus seemed to be that each season would likely--depending on the number of episodes per season--adapt one or two trade paperbacks of the comic. As of the air date, issue 78 (then-to-be-released trade 13) had just been released. Breaking it down further, the first season of the television series had six episodes: trade volumes have six issues, so the math would have definitely worked out. There's no way to tell how these things will turn out, but my own sinking feeling with the series began in the fourth episode of season one

To overly complicate the plot, one of the members of the Atlanta survivors is locked on a roof for the survivors to return to later. The survivor's brother, Daryl, demands Rick's group return to Atlanta immediately to find his brother Merle along with a bag of guns Rick had dropped. This is close enough to the comic to be an inoffensive change, but something happens in this episode--something sinister that nobody could have possibly interpreted as a problem. Well, I did, but I don't expect you to be as immaculate at critical thought as me.

At the end of the third episode Merle's amputated arm is discovered, and while I don't appreciate "filler" characters I was interested to see how this could be incorporated into the plot. If you've seen later season you know how it turns out, but Merle really compliments the Woodbury plot. It's fine, he's fine, whatever. The biggest disaster happens in the following episode, when a random group of thugs waylay Rick's group and demand his guns. What follows is an insufferably bland, useless side story that takes an entire hour to play out and by the end, nothing is resolved. Mainstream TV viewers likely don't know what the real problem is, but as someone with a passing interest in anime, I saw the seams immediately and realized that The Walking Dead was going to be utterly inundated with filler.

Filler Hell

Filler is the laziest tool a television writer can use and is absolutely antithetical to adapting written work. The entire reason to watch a television show or a movie adapted from a written work is to put less effort into absorbing the medium--with the exception of movies like The Godfather, The Shining, Jurassic Park or even Let The Right One In where a celebrated director cuts the fat out of a bloated novel most adapted movies or television shows are missing vital details. Months after The Walking Dead aired, HBO began airing their televised adaptation of Game of Thrones (from A Song of Ice and Fire). As of the time of this writing, season six of that show will be airing soon and spoiling a large amount of content in novels that have yet to be published. Opposed to The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones has not only cut vast swathes of content but also will be creating an ending that will be only remotely similar to what George RR Martin likely has planned. While characters have been switched around and events are somewhat different, Game of Thrones has avoided the drastic problem of filler in exchange for a tight, compact version of a story that, as a series of novels, goes into even minor details (many of which I feel make the novels overly bloated, but this is not a review of Game of Thrones).

There are two types of filler, and I've already described both of them. I genuinely enjoy filler like Morgan and his wife--it's in character, expands the story, and most importantly small moments like this don't eat into episode runtimes. While I enjoy having large amounts of episodes to go through, when it's all filler with no substance there's absolutely nothing to enjoy. Currently The Walking Dead has 16-episode seasons, and if they tried to make each episode correlate to one issue of the comic the show would catch up to the comics in just a few seasons. A perfect compromise would be to adapt two trade paperbacks per season, occasionally sprinkling in filler to compensate for the extra four episodes, either by adding in minor details or expanding upon subplots. I guess this is too intelligent for AMC, though, as season six ended with roughly the 100th issue of the comic series. Despite tons of filler, the showrunners have so little forethought that they sped through some of the more interesting story beats to rush the introduction of another major villain--but I'll get to that in a bit.

Long-time viewers of the show remember well the absolute disaster of the second season, but to give you a reminder, the entirety of the first half of that season involved a desperate hunt for Carol's daughter, Sophia. Sophia is still alive in the comic series, but as an interesting twist the AMC version kills off the little girl after the characters make several attempts to search for her. While I'd normally consider this an interesting twist, looking back on that season is almost entirely a negative experience. Entire stretches of episodes amount to characters just sitting around and moping while daytime soap opera-tier drama unfolds with characters who could solve all their problems by talking to one another like human beings, but even today most of the cast are brainless idiots who just watch as their lives crumble because each person has some stupid secret--in the zombie apocalypse. Where walking alone in the woods leads to disastrous results as exemplified by Sophia, who is revealed to have been dead the entire time.

While the twist was very welcome for the comic faithful, the truth of the matter is that the suspense was raised so high that it became utterly absurd. Half a dozen episodes for it to all end with "she was on the farm as a zombie the entire stupid time" might have made for good week-to-week tension, but the writers apparently either didn't know or didn't care that revisiting these story arcs would be a near waste of time. Compare that to the TV-exclusive quarantine story arc, which is rife with tension and meaningful character development. The most important twist in Carol's character happens here, which makes her arc in recent episodes frustrating as we've seen (especially in this case) that the death of Sophia has hardened her to a strong, while merciless character.

That said, even this story arc is marred by the presence of the Woodbury refugees, who make up a vast majority of the deaths when the flu hits. In trope terms, almost every death in the first few seasons are inconsequential "red shirts"--a term coined by the Star Trek fandom for no-name characters who are killed in order to create tension for the main cast. The Walking Dead always has a certain gravitas associated with the deaths of main characters, but having such an interesting story arc wasted by an entire army of red shirts ruins the suspense in repeat viewings. And that's not even to say say anything about the Governor, who AMC saw fit to completely water down to a point where he simply wasn't very imposing in the long run. The character of Merle is revisited here as the Governor's right-hand man due in large part to how completely nonthreatening the Governor ended up being portrayed. Rick's group lost everything by not agreeing to simply merging with Woodbury. Several important characters died and looking back, nobody has anything to show for it. The entire reason the Governor was such an interesting character in the comic series is because he was the first human shown to have become a complete monster from the zombie apocalypse while still retaining his humanity in the form of his (ironically) zombified daughter. In the show he's just a gentleman with a morbid interest in dead things stretched thin over uneventful episodes of negligible menace.

So why even have so many episodes per season anyway? Both Game of Thrones and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia run on ten-episode seasons and the best show in recent memory, Boardwalk Empire, ran on twelve-episode seasons (aside from the final season, which contained eight episodes and ran into severe time constraints). The Walking Dead has no reason to have seasons with so many episodes, especially considering so many episodes are absolute, pure filler. You (you, the reader) gain nothing from filler. It exists to waste time, both yours and the producers of the show. Filler exists entirely to kill time until the series can meander to its next plot points, which I still believe are genuinely well-done in AMC's interpretation of The Walking Dead.

Consider the loose adaptation of the Hunters story arc, embarrassingly fumbled into the Terminus arc in the television show. AMC could have easily turned this group into a frightening gang hot on Rick's heels, but they're almost completely wiped out within a few episodes' time. Why waste such high potential to then throw it away in favor of rushing to the next villain? It's complete, utter schlock.

Here's a recent example of pointless filler: episode 13 of season six involves the characters Maggie and Carol being captured by members of The Saviors, a gang extorting from The Hilltop and other nearby colonies. This episode contains zero plot development, opting instead to develop the characters. Character development is just fine, but this episode is an example of the bloated, pointless filler that serves nothing and just wastes the viewer's time. Several themes are explored which have already beaten the viewer to death: loss of humanity, survival at any cost, and nihilistic determinism. Carol's loss of humanity is a complete slog, especially given her dramatic character arc. Given characters like Michonne, Carl, Daryl, and especially Rick have explored this theme numerous times (as well as the theme of survival at any cost, for that matter) and at this point you, the viewer, should be sick of seeing it. You know what to take away from this theme, you know exactly what it does to characters. Seeing it happen to a character who has been dead in the comics for years and has come a long way to get to this point. Having her character flip means all that development has been a complete waste of time.

While it's interesting to see this unfolding with Maggie, especially given that she's pregnant, the viewer should really keep in mind that every single character on screen told Maggie to not come on this mission. This is the dumbest thing a character in her position could ever do, and her contribution is harmful at best. Maggie's development is "she is an idiot" and even after the episode is over there's no way to sympathize with her. Yeah, it's so horrifying that she can't listen to people tell her she's a liability and just has to get involved. Guess what? She's a liability and shouldn't have gotten involved. She gets herself and Carol captured because she wants to be helpful, and the viewer is supposed to sympathize with the fact that she had to mass murder a bunch of people who murdered, raped, extorted, and caused chaos across the countryside.

Boohoo.

Alongside this absolute slog of an episode is the most boring, cringey, edgy characters seen in the show's history. They laughingly throw around the most lame, hamfisted atheist insults seen in TV history (who thought that something like this could come off as so boring and one-note?); characters throw a fit, smoke, melodramatically talk about their history and act like actual teenagers. The entire motivation behind the leader of this small group is that she was a secretary whose boss just wanted coffee. That's it. That's all she ever says about him. Am I supposed to sympathize with a secretary who gets coffee for her boss? Is the implication that this is demeaning or evil in some way? She's forced to wait at her office when the zombie breakout occurs and it causes her to miss her son's death. And? Did she want to die with him? So she had to sit in an office with her boss she doesn't like because he likes coffee. Give me a break, Rick had to lay in a hospital while his wife was getting it on with his best friend. Comic Rick has to watch his wife and infant daughter get turned into paste! All I got from her was that she's a whiny, petulant idiot and nobody should ever have felt sympathy for her. This is all even more annoying given that the youngest person in the room, Maggie, is in her thirties yet acts like one of the few adults in the room. Wasting time with these characters is painful at best, and every one of them is killed in the episode's climax. What did we gain from this? Anything? Annoyance? Get out of here.

Compare to this to episode 14. Every single character gets development (especially Denise and Eugene), the plot dramatically moves forward, and some legitimately shocking twists pop off within seconds that even surprise comic readers. It's a great episode and I enjoyed watching almost the entire thing, more than most episodes this entire season. We learned things about some characters that weren't major revelations, but still made the character sympathetic (which made her death even more shocking). Before this, The Walking Dead was having a problem killing off pointless Red Shirts and for such an important character to die (at a different point from her comic death) was an interesting twist. Especially given that her death replaced a major character who died at this point in the comics.

So why does this make me so annoyed, aside from the obvious hour of my time wasted by s6e13? As soon as it aired I knew deep down it would somehow be one of the highest-rated episodes of the season, if not the entire show, because it tricks the audience into believing meaningful development and themes are being presented. And, of course, I was right--look at the Rotten Tomatoes scores for both episodes I mentioned. The "nothing happens" episode is sitting pretty at a 100%, while an episode with real character and plot development is barely over 53%. But it doesn't matter if you like it or not, because to viewers The Walking Dead appears to be a major critical success...because it's tricking you into this as well.

Critical Pandering

The Walking Dead has the curious (and dubious) "honor" of having complete media saturation, including its own hour-long pandering session hosted by the insufferable Chris Hardwick. As soon as every single episode ends this hyper idiot jumps around on camera screeching about how amazing and crazy and intense the thing you just saw was. For people who haven't developed critical thought, the first reaction they can ever have to The Walking Dead is complete adoration. But it's far more insidious than you might imagine.

See, the human brain is designed to make very fast decisions--typically, an opinion is formed after a first impression. Think about yourself; how many times have you argued against an opinion or stance merely because you were introduced to its counter-points first? Most people will say it's basically immediate: the first review you read for a movie is usually what you go into the theater expecting, for example, even if it's the unpopular opinion.

So you watch an episode of The Walking Dead and stick around for the credits to see a preview for the next episode. Your mind takes a moment to summarize what you just saw and forms an opinion based on that--but before you can critically reach a conclusion that vapid, obnoxious idiot immediately inundates the viewer with high praise no matter what happened in the episode, regardless if anything happened at all. Before most viewers can think of elements to criticize from the episode they're overwhelmed by this energetic moron convincing them that what they just watched was perfect, infallible high art.

Most people won't think any harder about The Walking Dead after the episode is over, and those first several seconds of "what an amazing/stellar/breathtaking episode" is going to be the point many viewers stop thinking critically. Even if you have no interest in the show's follow-up series The Talking Dead, it's very difficult to avoid the glowing critical praise immediately after the next episode preview. Take this and the immediate glowing reviews by websites such as IGN and The Walking Dead becomes this cynical, impenetrable wall of critical praise with very few outlets decrying its enormous shortcomings.

And that's not even the worst part. Beginning with season six Talking Dead has begun cutting into the main show's air time, particularly around the final commercial break, simply to plant those seeds in the viewer's head just in case someone with a brain criticized an episode before the credits rolled. To AMC, even the minute of credits is too much time for the viewer to form an opinion, and I won't be surprised if more commercial breaks are inundated with this complete schlock over time. Because of this The Walking Dead has met with very little real criticism, which is strange as the writers have taken every opportunity to indulge viewers with fanservice in regards to characters like Daryl.

Daryl.

I hate this character, and even worse I hate that I hate Daryl Dixon. Daryl is a fascinating example in a TV-exclusive filler character who has grown far past the source material; he's grown so popular, in fact, that Robert Kirkman has played with fan expectation about including the character in the comics (usually in the form of April Fool's jokes). Why is this a problem? Well, Daryl (played by the wonderful Norman Reedus) has a very big problem with being a huge Mary Sue.

For reference, a Mary Sue is a self-insert character who is seemingly flawless with an emotional past and is loved by much of their surrounding cast; if you want to be technical the male version of this is a Gary Stu, but let's not make this thing more convoluted than it already is. With few exceptions Daryl meets all these requirements: he's an unstoppable killing machine who is perfect at everything he does and compliments Rick as his right-hand man. Daryl is also met with the fan outcry of "If Daryl dies, we riot." As such, nothing of note has ever happened to Daryl. His brother and close friends have died around him, yet he's still an indestructible force of nature that everyone loves and at times pushes many of the show's numerous plots forward.

While I have my hopes for this character's demise, the truth of the matter is that I've never once felt tension when Daryl is on-screen because he is surrounded by the most ludicrous plot armor I've ever seen in a show this focused on keeping characters in constant peril. Carl can lose an eye, but Daryl can't even lose his leather vest or zombie-slaying crossbow for more than a few episodes. In fact, in the penultimate episode of the sixth season (s6e15) Daryl is ambushed and shot, point blank, in the chest. As soon as the episode ended I turned to my girlfriend and said "if Daryl isn't a corpse in the next episode they're outright lying to us." Not only is Daryl not a corpse, he's shown with a minor gunshot wound and appears in better shape than many characters who are sick or beaten. To have Daryl die at such a shocking and unexpected moment would have destroyed just about all of my points here, but instead reinforces all my complaints about the character.

Despite all this, I'll admit I was very excited when Daryl was pushed to the forefront in seasons two and three. I thought he had a great character arc and he contributed to the plot in a handful of ways. Over time, though, all Daryl began to stand for is massive fan outcry. The Walking Dead is surrounded by an echo-chamber preventing negative criticism from even forming for most of its audience, yet the show has cultivated fanservice in such a way as to be jarring compared to its main theme and Daryl symbolizes all of that.

After those first two or three seasons, Daryl became one of the main reasons I stuck with the series, but not because I have any particular fondness for the character. No, the interest in this character was that I believed that he would become a surrogate for another major character who meets a gruesome fate in the comic's one hundredth issue when Rick's party is finally confronted by Negan. You've seen most of this scene in the show by now, but I'll get to that in just a second. No, I was hoping that because Daryl had easily become the fan-favorite character after this long that AMC would dare brutally kill him off to punctuate Negan's arrival, a kick in the face to viewers who believed anyone was actually safe. But the season finale...oh, the season finale.

The Season Six Finale is Insulting Tripe and You Should be Outraged.

The season six finale is possibly the worst, most insulting thing I've ever seen in my life. Worse than the final episode of L O S T. It's worse than the Star Wars prequels. You know what, let's stretch this out a little further. The season six finale of The Walking Dead makes the ending of Mass Effect 3 look like a literary masterpiece. It's blatantly designed to be a spit in the face to fans, a cynical dangling-of-keys because AMC believes you, the viewer, are too vapid to think about what you just watched and you'll come crawling back to beg for their scraps.

So let's get into this. The crux of this episode involves the Alexandria group bringing Maggie to the Hilltop Colony; since Denise is now dead, there is nobody in town who can help her after she becomes violently ill. Fearing for her and her unborn child, Rick decides everyone needs to come along so not to be ambushed by Negan's Saviors and give some extra manpower. Or something. Frankly the premise is weak to begin with, but their journey is punctuated by some very menacing, very poignant threats by the Saviors. They're constantly blocked on the road by the armed gang, given harrowing death threats, and eventually are railroaded exactly where the Saviors want them. It leads to some of the most tense and striking visuals of the entire series so far, and I was almost prepared to give the show a pass.

I should also mention that the subplot with Carol and Morgan is somewhat wrapped up here, but the outcome is left to a cliffhanger. The entire subplot was a waste of time and will lead to nothing next season--aside from Morgan using a gun, but the only reason he wasn't using one in the first place is due to the influence of just some rando teaching him aikido (in an unintentionally humorous short span of time). We get closure between these two characters, but what's the use? Morgan isn't a pacifist now, but he shouldn't have been one in the first place. It's the result of a hamfisted filler subplot that went nowhere. All the characters involved in Morgan's pacifist phase are now dead (and all of them were filler, I should add), and Morgan's flawed reasoning is "Denise would not have been able to save Carl because she would have been killed by Walkers if not for Duane." Except she wouldn't have been out on the street at all, much less not in her clinic, if not for the fact that she had to cross the street and tend to Duane before he dragged her into the street in the first place. It's a complete mess of a story arc that contradicted itself in every single way and this was just a messy way to tie that loose end.

Then several minutes are spent wasted on Eugene, possibly the best of the main cast, as he tearfully forms a plan to have the entire group carry Maggie to Hilltop through the woods while he distracts the encroaching Savior party. This entire scene is set up to imply that this is Eugene's final stand, that his death is imminent and that we should prepare for the worst. Despite wasting a non-inconsequential amount of time on this brave sacrifice, he's captured by the Saviors and just gets a black eye from the ordeal. Why even bother wasting that moment and queuing up pointless "sad piano music" for this scene if it was going to lead nowhere?

That's not the real final nail in The Walking Dead's coffin, though. The climax of the episode finds Rick's group kneeling before Negan, played masterfully by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who calmly (but firmly) reminds Rick that he has caused untold amounts of damage by interfering with his business, and this just will not do. JDM commands this scene, an intimidating and effortless reminder that Rick might not be the baddest dude around. All they had to do was just play this scene as it appears in the comics and you'd have me hooked. Instead some bumbling idiot at AMC thought the viewers needed an extra incentive to keep talking about the show until its October season begins, but if the official Reddit thread is anything to go by the only topic of discussion between fans is "how many of us are boycotting this travesty?" I don't even use Reddit and here I am, linking to their discussion page just to show how absolutely pissed I am.

In probably the most amateurish, embarrassing gimmick twists seen in any sort of filmed media, the moment Negan chooses Lucille's target the scene shifts to a first-person perspective. I'd read a spoiler before this but was hoping it to be fake, and I'll mention my girlfriend again by saying I wish she'd been filming the look on my face: enraptured by Negan, completely taken in by his on-screen presence; then confusion, followed by disappointment and eventual seething anger. It was like I experienced every single stage of grief in a matter of seconds because I knew, deep down, that The Walking Dead was treating me like a chump.

What follows is perhaps the sloppiest death scene in TV history. Negan swings his bat flaccidly at the camera, which shakes a bit. He says a few words but the entire cast is completely quiet as they watch their friend beaten to a bloody pulp by this complete stranger (who, for no reason at all, they believed was a collective of thugs or some stupid contrivance) who is determined to leave his mark. Slowly, a comical 2D blood effect that looks like it came straight from a decades-old After Effects release covers the screen as it fades to black.

The television equivalent of gunshot, cut to black is the season finale of one of the most-watched shows in recent years, one which ended on a cliffhanger adapting the most anticipated, most iconic scene from the comic book. And here it is. The moment I'd stayed on board for to see if AMC would actually kill off a character as big as Daryl, and some corporate goon decided to pop up and say "no, actually you have to wait six months. See you then ;))))))))))))))))))))))))))"

Imagine if the the first season of Game of Thrones ended right before Ned was executed, that when Ilin Payne brought down Ice the screen cut to black and the last few seconds of the episode were just screams from the crowd. How many people would have stuck around after that? Instead, the show presents this scene tastefully and continues into its season finale following the execution. The stakes are raised, the protagonist is murdered on screen, and viewers are treated to scenes of the villains having a victory lap before leading us into the following season. No cheap gimmicks, no lies to the viewer. But The Walking Dead? The viewers are stupid, a follow-up would just alienate them! Or something. Or did an exec believe that the viewers were too stupid to realize this wasn't the series finale? Either way, this is entirely the result of belittling the viewer's intelligence.

No. Nope. Not having it. This season alone lied to the viewers on more than one occasion. Glenn, in an episode before the mid-season break, appears to be eaten by zombies but miraculously survives by crawling under a dumpster. As stupid as this already is, especially considering he's a very viable candidate for Negan's show of power, it also lies by showing a terrified Glenn watching as intestines are pulled out and eaten by a herd of zombies. Oh, nope, that was actually some stupid red shirt who fell on top of him. Fooled you kids.

The second time I already mentioned: Daryl should not have even been alive for the season finale. He was shot point-blank in the chest and the episode ended on, you guessed it, a cheap blood splatter followed by a cliffhanger. Then we have this ending, where character dialogue is cut out to create an illusion of tension--go to that Reddit thread, someone found leaked audio from that scene before it was all cut out. The character Negan murdered outright has their name shouted in the clip, but it was cut to continue the false suspense. Another theory is that the audio was cut because AMC wants to consider who to actually kill in the next few months leading into season seven, but what kind of poor planning and judgment would professional showrunners have to have in order to blunder so heavily?

See, the reason why Negan's reveal was so mesmerizing in the comic is that he appears and, in the same issue, brutally murders one of Rick's most trusted allies and then gloats about it. He beats this character to jelly, and readers will tell you frankly that it left a huge impression. Here's a guy we were completely underestimating, especially compared to the much more intimidating comic Governor, who treats our already ruthless cast of characters like petulant children and gives them a lesson in humility. With the TV ending, the tension is dropped in that it could be anybody. He might be murdering that one guy from Alexandria whose name I forget. I'm not looking it up, either. Don't even bother correcting me. Negan's first appearance, and one of the most unforgettable moments in the comic, is utterly butchered by some studio suit who decided to give viewers further incentive to come back in six months.

A season finale should be a momentous occasion for any TV show: it's the last big hurrah before bowing out for a few months, the final punctuation to a season to wrap up its core themes and possibly hint at things to come. This finale literally cut out its own ending so you can finish the season half a year from now; what if season one ended with the CDC exploding but conveniently left out Rick's group escaping? That's the biggest tragedy of it all: if this played out like the comic, I'd be absolutely and totally on board. I might even have shelved this obsessively long blog post. Jeffrey Dean Morgan was the best fit for Negan they could have possibly picked, and without that ending--which itself is like the TV equivalent of trashy clickbait--season seven would be as hyped for me as the approaching season premiere of Game of Thrones. But instead AMC decided that this powerhouse character was not appealing enough, that viewers would simply have to come back after half a year just to see the conclusion to an episode they'd already been invested in. That's not gripping, it's insulting.

A major comparison to make is the ending of season five of Game of Thrones. A very major character is murdered at the end of the season, left to die in a puddle of his own blood. A second character allows himself to be killed and while the scene doesn't actually show his death, it's more than implied that both of these characters are dead and won't be back for the next season (one of which had the actor flat-out say he just wanted his character to have a small, glorified death off-screen). If these confirmed dead characters come back then that will be an actual twist to me. I'm not hanging on to my seat to find out if someone stabbed five million times in the heart is actually dead or not, as far as I'm concerned that's about as dead as you can get. It's not nearly the same as merely being dishonest to viewers to keep suspense. And of the over 75 hours of my life I've spent on this show, all I feel at this moment is empty, lied to and kicked in the dirt by some exec who sees their viewers as simple, brainless numbers.

Where Do We Go From Here?

The Walking Dead is a show that, despite its roots as an intimate, humble independent comic book, has grown into a disgusting machine, churning out crap for you to eat like a slave. The show has no respect for your time, your energy, or your dedication. What began as an interesting experiment is now a massive example of the worst aspects of media: bloated with pointless filler, teasing the audience with cliffhangers and no payoff, outright lying just to get buzz for an unneeded popularity bump--seriously, is one of the most-watched shows in television history not good enough?--and expecting absolutely no critical response because they've since fostered a toxic echo chamber of undeserved praise and hype that is finally appearing to burst. The Walking Dead doesn't respect you, and you shouldn't have to put up with this treatment from a show that subsists off its devoted fanbase. You should expect more than Mary Sue characters and a fade-to-black first-person cliffhanger. You deserve better than literal dumpster twists. I've stuck around this long, and many of the old faces give the illusion that the show is doing just fine, but the most important departure of all is coming from season six: mine.

Just read the comic.

Mini-reviews: Zelda Remasters

The Zelda franchise is one of the most revered series of video games, and the first game was my personal entry into video games as a whole. The series has suffered from some mixed feelings due to a seeming need to innovate, but even a bad Zelda is a pretty good video game. I didn't really want to spend too much time on reviews for these remasters, but enough has been changed that I think a quick overview of them would be useful. These are not reviews for the original games, so if you want to hear a more detailed overview of one in particular let me know. Or don't. Who cares?


Ocarina of Time 3D

The first of Nintendo's 3D Zelda fix-ups and arguably the best, Ocarina of Time 3D fixes many issues of the original while retaining the timeless feel of the Nintendo 64 release. Many of the main character models have been completely revamped, although a negative consequence of this is that many NPC models look badly dated in comparison. Don't let this defer you, though: Ocarina of Time is the game which defined 3D gaming for many people and it is as good today as it was then. The game also implements many improvements seen in later games, a notable example being that the player can now assign the two boot items to a quick select. The touch screen allows for more items to be assigned to buttons than before; as an added bonus, the ocarina has its own dedicated slot. Including this, the player is allowed five items to be equipped at once compared to the original's three. When using the ocarina players are also able to take a look at all the songs collected so far, saving time for those who don't feel like memorizing the buttons. And, most important of all, the framerate has been improved from capped 20 frames per second to a solid 30. If you have a chance to play any version of Ocarina, this is it. If you have a 3DS, this game is essential.

You might want to take note of two specific complaints some players have with this release. I personally don't see these as issues, but it's enough for others to view as detracting from the original. The first criticism is aimed at the new lighting system present across the entire game. Some believe the new lighting detracts from the atmosphere of the original; while I agree somewhat, I don't know that it's as big a deal as is presented. This isn't Silent Hill, the brown fog in many areas of Ocarina is simply a relic of low draw distances and, personally, I didn't even notice it was gone until someone pointed it out. Another complaint is that the Gamecube version's Master Quest mode has been toned down dramatically, although I would argue that it is a bit less frustrating while still presenting a better challenge than the original game. The new Master Quest flips the entire world similar to Twilight Princess on the Wii, and this is going to come up a bit later but in all honesty, just trying to go through Ocarina in a flipped version of what I've grown used to for two decades now is a challenge of its own. Given that these are the only two complaints I can think of and how heavily subjective they are, I don't think many people are going to mind.

The Wind Waker HD

The Wind Waker HD is the second of Nintendo's remasters of 3D Zelda games, this time on the Wii U. Like Ocarina this HD re-release presents substantial improvements over the original with a few caveats. Wind Waker was always one of the more contentious games of the series; while I personally believe it is easily the best 3D Zelda, many were put off by the games cel-shaded art style, proving once and for all that style can be wasted on the masses. This version of the game offers improvements of its own that are equally as massive as changing boots to quick items in Ocarina of Time 3D: the player can now buy a sail that dramatically increases speed while sailing from island to island while cutting out the need to change directions of the wind, although this trivializes some timed events that require precise sailing. The infamous Triforce hunt at the end of the game has been massively overhauled, giving a far better and less time-consuming experience than the original. As an added bonus, Nintendo even fixed the original game's inverted camera. I hate inverted cameras and you should too.

Like Ocarina, Wind Waker HD "corrects" the visuals of the original release, although this time I'm not quite as enamored with the visuals as I was with Ocarina of Time 3D. The original's distinct, flat cel-shading has been replaced with a global, realistic lighting system that is a bit less appealing than the original. HD Bloom effects are in place and it's some of the most egregious use of this lighting that I've ever seen, even worse than the Xbox 360 version of The Elders Scrolls IV: Oblivion. However, this is a heavily subjective complaint and given all the improvements, it's not worth it to look over this version. I have to admit though, unlike Ocarina 3D not much has been done in terms of framerate; in fact, in some areas framerate is dramatically worse as visual effects begin filling the screen. The original wasn't perfect either, but given that so much work was put into this game I'm surprised Nintendo didn't try a bit harder to touch up the framerate. All in all though, if you haven't picked up Wind Waker this, like Ocarina 3D, is the version to get.

Majora's Mask 3D

Here we have a game that's not quite as impressive as the rest, and while I'd also say this game is improved over the original it's not by very much. Majora's Mask 3D adds several new features, such as a much streamlined Bomber's Notebook which makes many of the game's sidequests easier to handle--if you haven't played Majora's Mask before, this is definitely an improvement. Sidequests are the majority of the game, so being able to track them down with better frequency is a plus. This game also adds a tutorial stone like Skyward Sword, the rightfully-maligned most recent console game in the series. I used it myself for a few of the peskier hidden items in the game, but it's out of the way and you can avoid it completely if you want. Another improvement over the original is that the player can now save at any of the owl statues in the game; in the original these were presented as quick saves which were erased when you picked up the game again but in the 3DS release these statues are the primary method of saving, which is far better than having to reset to the first day every time you wanted to permanently save your file. The updates from Ocarina 3D are all present, and if you're playing with a New 3DS you can even use a brand new third-person camera. 

With that comes a few complaints that are much more present here than in Ocarina 3D. First off, that game's lighting really does affect the atmosphere of Majora's Mask. Notably the tonally darkest game in the entire franchise, Majora's Mask is actually hurt by the inclusion of brighter colors. Fewer characters were given radical model overhauls as Ocarina 3D, which means you'll see far more dated characters than in that game. Majora's Mask 3D is something of a less creepy game than its original release, which is kind of a bummer for people who are only going to play this version. Boss fights are tweaked in very weird ways, especially the third dungeon's Gyorg. The third dungeon, as well as the area around it, show off two of the more annoying changes in the game: in the original release, the player could use ice arrows to create a makeshift bridge across bodies of water. It was kind of a novelty gimmick, but players (specifically speedrunners) could use that feature to skip huge portions of water-based puzzles. In the 3D remake, players can only create ice bridges on designated sparkling areas in water for seemingly no reason at all. An even more annoying change that has absolutely no bearing on the game at all is that Zora Link could hop above water like a dolphin--you can still do that, but only by using precious magic to speed up while swimming. Why was this even deemed worthy to tweak?

All of this and they didn't even include a Master Quest or Hero Mode--yeah, once you beat the base game that's it. For the rest of these releases to have one of these two additional modes (even Skyward Sword and the absolute perfection of A Link Between Worlds had Hero Mode!) and Majora's Mask 3D to be missing it is a disappointing oversight that harms the remaster's appeal. If these changes to the game seem like a drastic overhaul then take note that they are, and in many ways it's less impressive than the original. However, the improvements to framerate and ease of use might be all you're looking for, so please keep all that in mind when deciding on playing this or the original version. If you want the original, do keep in mind there's a fairly rare Gamecube disc and if you're too lazy for that and don't want to dig up a Nintendo 64, that version is also available on the Wii (not Wii U) Virtual Console. Of all the re-releases, this is the one you might want to seriously think about before deciding on a version.

Twilight Princess HD

The most recent release in the Zelda 3D touch-ups, Twilight Princess HD is something of an anomaly as it adds very little to the original game. If you have forgotten, the Wii version of Twilight Princess was flipped on its vertical axis, making Link left-handed--if you couldn't tell, this is an HD re-release of the Gamecube version with minimal improvements. Textures appear to have been reworked all over the place and it's nice to see Twilight Princess in its intended form and in widescreen, but compared to the other titles there aren't a whole lot of improvements. The Tears of Light moments in the game have been reduced, but that's not nearly the same as Wind Waker's Triforce hunt. The rupee wallet has been increased in size and the game doesn't patronizingly remind you rupee size every single time you load your file, nor does it make you close rupee chests if you can't hold anymore in your wallet. A new item has been added to streamline the Poe hunting sidequest in the game, if you're into that.

All that aside, the game's framerate isn't quite as stable as the Gamecube or Wii versions. Some areas in the game have notable dips, although they're typically only in areas with a large amount of fog. They're not as bad as some of the framerate problems seen in Wind Waker HD, but they're curiously still present. This game is simply a case of whether or not you really want to play Twilight Princess again, as it's not exactly the best game in the franchise--it's not the worst either, just very by-the-numbers. Like I said, a mediocre Zelda game is still a very phenomenal video game, so if you want your fix this is as good a game as any. If you have the original version or if you're a masochist who has grown used to the Wii controls, I don't think it's a necessary upgrade. With its new textures, though, you might notice just how jarring the cartoonish character designs are as opposed to the overwrought dark new Hyrule. Wind Waker might have a cartoon art style, but characters in Twilight Princess look like cartoon characters dropped into a Lord of the Rings knockoff and it's frankly a bit ugly. Should have just keep the Wind Waker style and told the naysayers to deal with it.

I personally think it's a better version simply due to the unobtrusive HD remastering (as opposed to Wind Waker HD) and that, curiously, I have never been able to play the game without severe audio crackling. Thankfully, that's not present here. I hinted at this when discussing the earlier games but Twilight Princess HD has its own Hero Mode; however, much like the game's design it heavily borrows from Ocarina of Time in this respect. This game's Hero Mode is vertically flipped, so if you're used to the Wii version or if you want a challenge then it's available from the beginning. There's also some meaningless amiibo support, although the Ganondorf amiibo allows you to take double damage if you really want a challenge. The thing is, so little has been changed here that I would only recommend it for people who had gripes with technical issues of the Gamecube release--if you're fine with that version, this isn't going to do much for you. Unless you're picky about fine details, you can take this one or leave it.

The Verdict(s)

Nintendo has painstakingly tweaked every single entry in the series, although in some places they fixed what wasn't broken or went backwards in some respects. Ocarina of Time 3D and Wind Waker HD are dramatic improvements to games that were great to begin with, but Majora's Mask 3D trades nearly every positive for minor, though persistent, annoyances. Twilight Princess HD adds almost nothing to a game that really needed a few ounces of personality that would require a complete overhaul. Each case is different and almost all of them take away something from the original release, but Nintendo did their best with what they had and if want to revisit these amazing games or haven't played any of the originals, I'd say the remastered versions are the way to go.

Review: Gravity Rush Remastered [Script]

I just released an At A Glance video for the new Gravity Rush Remastered, a game which I have some fairly strong opinions about. I wasn't able to include all my thoughts I had in the video so I decided it would be best to repurpose the script into a makeshift review and post it here. Please check out the video as well, if this interests you.

I feel I should apologize. I meant to simply do an At A Glance video and give my impressions for Gravity Rush Remastered, but I fell so deeply in love with the game that…well, I accidentally got the Platinum trophy. Not a rare occurrence, given that I am the height of video game perfection. Gravity Rush is a third-person action platformer by Keiichiro Toyama and developed by Project Siren, the studio behind the survival horror series…well, Siren.

Gravity Rush began life as a Playstation 3 game by the name Gravite before being pushed over to the Vita for the handheld's launch window; in the process, the game was renamed Gravity Daze with the subtitle Gravitational Dizziness: The Perturbation of Her Inner Space Caused by the Repatriation of the Upper Stratum. As much as I like the subtitle, I can see it possibly driving away potential consumers. What a shame.

 This was remastered by Blue Point games, the geniuses behind the HD ports of the Ico games, Metal Gear Solid, God of War and recently the Uncharted trilogy. Some people consider Blue Point to be wizards, and I would probably agree. Gravity Rush Remastered offers a smooth, flawless sixty frames per second presentation and all of the game’s original Vita-oriented touch screen controls have been translated perfectly to the Playstation 4 pad.

The gameplay of Gravity Rush is a mix between simplistic third-person action and surprisingly Mario Galaxy-esque plat forming with a very unique twist. Add a vibrant, gorgeous open world an amazing cel shaded art style and you have what might be the most criminally overlooked titles in recent years. I personally got the game free from PS+ on the Vita and only got about a third of the way in before the PS4 port was announced, and let me be the first to say I really wish more people had given it a shot when it came out.

Everything here feels polished and nothing is left to waste, as can be expected of Project Siren. Challenge missions can be found to test your abilities and power crystals, a rather boring name for an item pickup, if I’m being honest, litter the open world. Power crystals can be used to open new challenge missions and, more importantly, level up your character, Kat. This can range from improving your attack strength to simply moving faster with the gravity mechanic.

The game‘s main, unique mechanic is the ability to shift gravity at will. Kat and her…cat…Dusty can manipulate gravity at will, which means you, the player, can move in any direction and fly anywhere as long as your gravity gauge doesn’t deplete. You can level up how slowly your gauge depletes and how quickly it recharges, which gives Gravity Rush a real sense of progression just through its intricate suite of light RPG mechanics.

Platforming has the same Mario Galaxy weightlessness to it, but instead of physically jumping around and maneuvering around areas of low gravity you’re using the absence of gravity to move around relatively massive areas. It’s not too challenging, certainly not as much as Nintendo’s games, but the plat forming is enhanced by a small, but functional, combat system. And this leads me to my only real complaint with the game.

In leveling up your ground combos you’re not really increasing your melee damage all that much--rather, you add longer strings to your basic attack. In addition you have a dodge that has a fairly liberal amount of invincibility frames, and on top of that you can attack in the air to do a dive kick. With all this in mind, the dive kick basically breaks the game while the ground combos are functionally useless. Much of Gravity Rush reminds me of the masterpiece action game Bayonetta, but Bayo has in-depth mechanics for every type of combo whereas Gravity Rush…falls flat. No pun intended. Bayo even has its own gravity mechanic, dive kicks, and an equally-powerful rival with similar skills--but I digress. It’s not fair to Gravity Rush to compare it to something with immaculate combat, especially since the primary mechanic here is gravity, not combat. I just can’t help but feel something is being put to waste here.

Let me use an example. In Bayonetta you have a mechanic called dodge offset, where if you dodge in the middle of a combo you can pick it up to finish that combo so long as you dodged an attack correctly. The fact that you have a dodge in Gravity Rush, one tied to the exact same button as Bayonetta, really made me feel like there was nothing stopping the developers from incorporating a similar mechanic. Of course almost every encounter in the game is aerial, but the problem with that is fights become very, very repetitive--dodge in midair, dive kick, dodge, dive kick, repeat until it’s dead. Gravity Rush 2 appears to fix this by having a basic version of Devil May Cry 4's style-switching mechanic which will allow for mid-air combos and heavier attacks, but that doesn’t negate my issues with this game's ground combat. I know I’m harping on this but it really is a sticking point for me.

Gravity Rush has enough forethought to have stun locking in combat. If you don’t know what this is, stun locking refers to keeping an enemy in place while stringing a combo together. Most games have some form of stun locking, and with stylish action games like the aforementioned Bayonetta and Devil May Cry, stun locking is your primary means of stringing combos together. I show examples of this in the video, including an example of how not allowing players to stun lock can seriously hamper an action title. Furthermore, games like Devil May Cry open combos by giving players more three- or four-hit combos; where Gravity Rush fails is that upgrading the ground combo simply adds more hits to your basic string.

While you have access to a ten-hit combo by the end, there's absolutely no way to ever fully implement it as monsters either die in three or four hits, wind up their own attacks by then, or are fully based in the air. For the latter, the only way to deal with them is by repeatedly using Kat's dive kick. It becomes extremely repetitive and outright boring after a certain point. For Gravity Rush to have a framework that so closely resembles these action-oriented games and drop the ball so close to the goal is very disappointing and I only hope the footage we’ve seen of Gravity Rush 2 means Project Siren has taken this into account.

Combat is not the focus of the game, however, so take all that as the insane ramblings of a guy who just wants another stylish action franchise. If none of that is important to you then consider it a moot point. Gravity Rush is a game which deserved to be seen on a big TV without any weird touch controls, and this port proves it. The presentation is phenomenal, the writing and story are absolutely engrossing, the gravity mechanics are flawless, and the open world is just small enough to be fun to explore while being big enough that you can stretch your proverbial wings and fly. The length is just right--it took me about twenty hours to get the platinum trophy, and the RPG mechanics are deep enough to encourage low-level play throughs for a harder challenge. Every last detail about Gravity Rush is immaculate aside from the combat. Even the music is a step above most games. The soundtrack is by Kohei Tanaka, a long-time anime and video game composer--and man, did he do a fantastic job.

The game is out now for $30 digitally, I picked up a physical copy through Amazon but currently that’s the only way to get one. Now that it’s left the confines of the Playstation Vita I highly recommend you try it for yourself.

The video:

Review: The Revenant

Alejandro Iñárritu seems to have come out of nowhere, having only directed a handful of movies before he dropped 2014's excellent Birdman, an experimental masterpiece that gleefully played with many film conventions like toys. His new film, The Revenant, was met with a fairly large amount of hype that I'm glad to say was completely justified.

The Premise

Based on a true story, The Revenant follows Hugh Glass, a fur trapper and navigator in the historical Rocky Mountain Fur Company. After their camp is laid to waste by the Native Arikara Tribe the survivors flee into the wilderness and attempt to return to their outpost; Glass is viciously mauled by a bear and the party debates his ultimate fate. Left for dead in the dead of winter, Glass is forced to navigate an unforgiving path while barely remaining one step ahead of the Arikara who want him dead and desperately search for the man who ruined his life.

The Evening Redness

While The Revenant itself is based on a book (which in turn is based on true events), the tone of the film reminds me of a different Western tale taking place in the 19th century. With its long, stark description of a sprawling wilderness, shocking depictions of brutal violence and heavy religious imagery, The Revenant takes (likely unintentionally) cues from Cormac McCarthy's Western masterpiece novel Blood Meridian. If asked before seeing The Revenant I would have said very emphatically that Blood Meridian was unfilmable--a work that could only exist as literature and nothing more. The Revenant has shaken that belief pretty heavily, to a point where I'd actually be very excited to see an Iñárritu-helmed film adaptation of McCarthy's work.

Very few films handle symbolism as well as The Revenant. The plot is less important than the experience of the protagonist: when we see his feverish nightmares, the point of each scene is less the impact to the plot and more of what we learn of this fictional version of Hugh Glass. Tormented by visions of his wife and wrestling with his faith, the audience grows to understand both his struggles as well as the viewer's interpretation of each carefully-placed symbol. I won't give any away, but more than a few scenes have left such a profound impact on me that I'm still puzzling away at not only what it meant to the character, but what it means to me. This kind of expertly-crafted writing alongside such striking visuals are very strongly something I'd consider art, and The Revenant is oozing with such talent.

Although it's been a major advertising point of the film, the specific filming method really does deserve mention. The lighting conditions add a subtle layer to the movie; nights look impenetrably dark and the brights, where the sun glares down on endless blinding whiteness, are stark and mesmerizing. The lighting isn't the only striking film technique in The Revenant. The camera work is often very slow, panning carefully across scenes to truly give breadth to every moment. That said, one criticism I would give is that due to the slow pacing of the film it can really feel its two-and-a-half-hour length. Every scene is essential to the overall experience but in retrospect many of the long takes feel like they linger a bit too long.

Regardless of the pacing the camera is very deliberate in its movements; even the famous bear scene calmly sticks to one angle before slowly panning around. The long takes and slow camera movement gives the film a distinct style which, while not as jaw-dropping as the apparent single-shot style as Birdman, works shockingly well for a movie as brutal and shocking as this. For instance, one scene may begin barely in focus somewhere in the sky and the camera will slowly sweep down directly onto a wandering character or group, pan over to an intimate shot of another character in the middle of dialogue, then continue panning down to focus on something like a stream or waterfall. For those of you who might take something from this analogy: if Birdman was Iñárritu's long, paranoid constant stream-of-consciousness Sound and the Fury, The Revenant is his far more accessible, larger-scaled As I Lay Dying. The style is very similar, but there are distinct merits to both.

(I have no idea why the line spacing changed for the upcoming paragraph but I'm not going to bother changing it.)

It should be noted that the film is very deserving of its R rating. There are big comparisons to be made between The Revenant and The Hateful Eight, another Western-themed film from this year (and one which you can read my review of on this very site) which is also noteworthy for its subject matter. These two films cannot be any different in almost every single way, but I want to point out the difference with gore and violence--a point which gave me a bit of annoyance with The Hateful Eight. With The Revenant the gore is very horrific in its own way; whereas Tarantino's recent film featured blood exploding everywhere and splattering all over the scenery, this film is soft-spoken about its brutal displays of violence and I found it much more tasteful. Even when some characters are completely torn open with bone and sinew exposed, the film never glorifies its violence. It comes off as a natural consequence of the horrific scenarios the characters are placed in, and it's not merely aimed at Leonardo DiCaprio and his (overly) dedicated suffering. The movie is very graphic in all aspects, from the environment to animal-based gore and even a scene of sexual assault. Unlike The Hateful Eight none of these intense depictions could have been taken out without impacting the film in any way. If you're sensitive to gore you might want to be cautious in going to see this movie, although I'd also tell you to get over yourself and go see it anyway.


Based on a Novel Based on a Tale Based on a True Story

The Revenant has nearly nothing in common with the tale it is based on, so please don't assume you're going to be taking away a sort of documentary experience from the film. Before writing off the film's deceptive marketing let me be the first to tell you this movie is far more interesting than the real story of Hugh Glass, not in small part due to the fact that some very heavy thought was put into creating a plot about revenge with its own symbolism and period-specific historical details.

Hugh Glass did not, as far as I can tell, have a Native American wife. Fitzgerald, the arguable protagonist played magnificently by Tom Hardy, was not a man bearing a grudge against natives undergoing a moral crisis. I've pondered whether or not it is dishonest to credit this as being based on true events and have come to an objectively correct opinion: The Revenant only benefits from the historical embellishments added to the plot. No, you're not going to be getting a heavily fact-checked version of true events confined to a two-hour running time. Instead The Revenant chooses to present a message, a story of subjective morality which never would have happened if it was simply the true story.

The film's poster acknowledges this perfectly: "Inspired by true events," and there aren't too many other words I would use to describe The Revenant than simply inspired.

The Verdict

The Revenant is not going to be for everyone. The film is over two hours long and sometimes feels its length, thanks in part to its slow pacing as well as its brutal subject matter. Not many films have successfully presented a tale so brutally honest in its attempt to create a hardened tale of survival and morality, but with a cast that truly brings out their characters (no really, I cannot do justice in describing how perfectly Tom Hardy fills the role of Fitzgerald) and the immaculate directing of Alejandro Iñárritu The Revenant drags itself through hell and back to create one of the finest, most hard-hitting movies in recent years. Your mileage may vary, but at the moment I have no clue how film could possibly top this for the rest of the year.