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Ace of the Diamond: The Best in Show

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 With the upcoming adaptation of Ace of the Diamond Act II's Second Season, I've been thinking about how this series has stood so tall within the sports genre. This thought came off of my recent viewing of Oblivion Battery. Mainly because they're both about Baseball, but also because they both handle their storytelling quite well. With Oblivion Battery, you have a more individualized story revolving around a team of misfits that featured top High School Baseball players. Whereas AOTD featured a top level High School and the structures within that make the machine run. So, Oblivion Battery ended up feeling like the product of modern sports anime/manga, while AOTD definitely harkened back to its older contemporaries. And this might just be more of a lack of knowledge on these types of sports series, but I have never really seen anything like AOTD before. The series has shown so many different characters and changing teams as the story progressed, while balancing them like no ...
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Perfect Blue: Awaken From A Dream: Am I Still Asleep?

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 Recently, I decided to slowly go through Yoshikazu Takeuchi's Perfect Blue: Awaken From A Dream. It's a collection of three short stories from within the Perfect Blue universe. This was a funny way to describe this collection as the first two stories actually preceded the Perfect Blue tale, according to Takeuchi in the afterword. But if you're trying to sell your collection of Idol-themed Horror, it would make the most sense to tie them to the most popular one. A move that most likely resulted in the translation of these in the first place. So, what compelled me to read these stories was the fact that they pertained to Perfect Blue funnily enough. A true win for this marketing decision.  Yet, my takeaway at the end of it pertained more towards my love of this style of Horror, rather than the Perfect Blueness. When I talk about that Perfect Blueness, I mean the reality-bending nightmare aspect. The Wake Me From This Dream and Cry Your Tears stories do have similar ethereal ...
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Media Remakes: Just Do It Again

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 The fast turn around of February means that I have less time to figure out what to talk about. But it just so happens that I do have something in mind. And that's Remakes in Media. This topic has become more and more prevalent in recent years as movies, games, and shows are recycled and redone. And to be clear, this is specifically about remaking, and not rebooting. But even the examples I have in mind skirt that line, so who really knows exactly. Regardless, while it's nice to get a shiny new coat paint on an old favorite. Sometimes I just feel tired looking at how the material gets treated. So, the goal for today is to talk about some media that I have engaged with and their remakes.  For some context, the reason I wanted to talk about remakes again revolved around the rejected Bloodborne Remake that the now defunct Bluepoint Games had pitched. Like, it fucking sucks that the studio got shutdown, but I can't understand wanting to remake a game like Bloodborne. If anythin...
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A Bay of Blood: If You Kill For Killing's Sake, You Become A Monster

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 Lately, I've been on a real Horror kick. Watching The Initiation, The House on Sorority Row, Curtains, and A Bay of Blood. While I enjoyed all of these movies for what they were doing, the one that stuck with me the most was A Bay of Blood. The 1971 Mario Bava classic that served as the template for the early Slasher Boom in the 1970s and 1980s. And when you watch it for longer than a minute, you really see how influential it was. Like, Italian Films, and Giallos more specifically, have been noticeably influential, but A Bay of Blood seemed to be the "It Girl". A title that I think it rightfully deserved.  A Bay of Blood landed in that sweet spot for me as a Slasher with its element of surprise. This part was important because when thinking about Giallos, the surprise aspects function a bit differently. It's what separated them from their non-Italian contemporaries. With Friday the 13th, the surprise will almost always be on the timing of the kill. You would hear the...
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The Howling: The Wolves Grow Hungrier

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 Recently, I decided to watch the first seven Howling movies. And the only reason I didn't watch the eighth was due to convenience. I didn't think it was very necessary when I started the series, and after going through seven of them. I was right. The Howling movies peak at the first film, and nosedive into a stream of bad or mediocre films. This surprised me because most film franchises don't even make it past two or three. So, to constantly ride on the coattails of the success of a single hit feels a bit odd. Until you realize that the series had a handful of people who still wanted to make Howling films. And that's how you get so many low budget sequels. Because someone with money wanted to make it happen.  But this isn't some grandiose takedown of a dormant franchise. This is about the positives and negatives that came out of the the Howlings. A series about Werewolves, sometimes. And that's the biggest issue that I have with the sequels. They mostly try to ...
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Watching Movies: Spin That Wheel

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 For this post, I was bouncing a few ideas around before I decided on watching movies. This isn't some comprehensive guide on the proper decorum or whatever. This is just about watching movies and how that act has broadened my palette. And it doesn't matter whether the film is "good" or "bad". It's about trying something different or unknown and seeing what happens, because sometimes your favorite movie happens to be a French Film about cannibalism, and the pressures to conform to society or whatever. Like, you just never know sometimes, and that's the fun of it. I love flipping through the catalogues, making lists, and just seeing what happens. So, I'm going to go through that process and give some anecdotes. Without further ado, let's begin. Before talking about the movie gambling, I want to explain the reasoning behind wanting to write this piece. And that mostly lies with Tatsuki Fujimoto's work, Chainsaw Man. Specifically Chapter 39:...
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