Steven Universe: Not This Generation's Teen Titans

Ahhh, Cartoon Network. I grew up on cartoons and Cartoon Network was always there to fill the desire for toons for me when I was still in primary school. I still think the old stuff they used to show like “Dexter’s Laboratory”, “Teen Titans” and “Samurai Jack” is going to be the best stuff they will ever air in their life span so it should be no surprise when I say that their newer stuff has definitely been hit and miss for me. I will try not to mention the bastardization which is “Teen Titans GO” or that new “Powerpuff Girls” reboot but their newer IPs like “Adventure Time” was definitely one of those misses although I do like what they are doing so maybe one day. “The Regular Show” was closer to a hit but still missed since I feel like it lost some of its adult charm from its original concept video “2 In The AM PM” but “Steven Universe” was a hit for me right off the bat before it slowly became a miss and no, it’s not because of the lesbians that form Garnet. We will get to why I think this show is worth talking about and why I consider it a hit but first, we need to give that basic as plot rundown so if you haven’t seen the series yet, go watch at least the first season to have an understanding of the show and plot because this is going to be full blown spoilers as per usual with these reviews. Now with the spoiler warnings out of the way, let us move onto that Garnet Rule Thirty-I mean plot summary.

I’m about to summarise five seasons worth of “Steven Universe” for you all so prepare for this. “Steven Universe” is about a kid called Steven Universe who is part of a group of gems known as “The Crystal Gems” who consist of Garnet, Pearl and Amethyst with Steven also being part gem. A gem is alien humanoid being from a different planet who are based on a gem and have superficial powers like weapon creation and fusioning with other gems to make bigger and unique gems. The series follows these four as they protect the earth from hostile gems but for only 20% of the time because the remaining 80% is boring slice of life crap where they have to do some form of character development with Steven being a childish idiot. Most of the series up to season four is just Steven learning new gem powers, telling backstory through flashbacks or fleshing out characters, important or not. You can actually probably just skip a lot of these episodes because most of them is just pointless filler for side characters because it feels like the series’s creator, Rebecca Sugar, has a serious allergy to plot development and deliberately avoids any form of progression in most of the earlier episodes. Around to the end of season 2, you can see there is bit of a shift to more the plot side but still has a massive inversion to it and when it does do some form of plot progression, it’s mainly so the writers has a new character to use as an excuse to procrastinate do more character development with. When it actually decides to stop procrastinating and actually continue with the plot, it’s not boring but it’s not really exactly interesting but it’s still the best part of the series since it builds the universe the series is set in, which is the best stuff in this series and is the only way I can justify having the flashbacks padding out the seasons. Worldbuilding is an incredible tool if used properly and I am fortunately able to say that “Steven Universe” gets it right. While some of it is the fluffy backstory for characters, there is a lot of little worldbuilding moments scattered across the series, through either interactions with other characters or in plot progress and although this method is slow, being a tv show does have its benefits so they can afford to take the time to establish this “universe” (hehehe). The only time the worldbuilding moments bothered me is when they take up the whole episode or it’s done through heavy handed exposition and while the latter is rare, the former happens a lot more often and it’s usually just more pointless character backstory. I do have more complaints about how the plot is handled but let’s move onto the characters that they so love to flesh out.

Contrary to my previous paragraph, I don’t mind the characters or their backstory junk that much but that’s only when it’s for the main cast. If I was to praise anything character related, I would begin with how Garnet was handled. If you didn’t get it from my intro, Garnet herself is a fusion of two female gems known as Ruby and Sapphire and it’s both heavily implied and said out loud that the two share a romantic relationship. You may call this “SJW bait” which I’m not deny the possibility of it but I think it’s a remarkably large step for progression in our media culture. We are allowing far more progressive social trends not only in our kid shows and I think that’s a good thing at least. If I was to say anything else, I do like how Garnet was handled with her being the makeshift leader of the group and pseudo mother to Steven since his real mom gave herself up to give birth to him. Pearl is also good but my gripes with her are simply the fact that pearls aren’t gems since they aren’t minerals found in the Earth’s crust and the fact she acts a second mom. We already have Garnet being the cool and trusting mother to Steven so we don’t need her being the opposite to that and she loses even more purpose in the group when Peridot joins and takes over the role of engineer from Pearl, leaving Pearl with “weapon instructor” which she can’t even do right as we see in the episode covering that topic. Pearl ends up just being there so she can act as the “accidental hindrance” which is taking another role from another character known as Amethyst. What I like about Amethyst starts and ends with how she acts as a older sibling figure to Steven to complete the figurative family cliche. She is the most carefree of the Crystal Gems and because of this, she becomes the other cause of problems in the slice of life episodes just like Pearl. There is Peridot but after they befriend her in season two, she goes from an asshole villain to an asshole midget helper who serves as nothing but more characterisation fodder. I also nearly forgot Connie is a thing but she is simply love interest and the foil to Steven’s stupidness so just think Pinky and The Brain but Brain is replaced with a tanned loli. There is other characters like Steven’s dad who is fun to watch on screen and Lars who is not important until the newer seasons but the only character I liked was Lapis Lazuli. Well, admittedly this was before she was rescued from a forced fusion with a Jasper in Season 2. She was pretty much a generic depressed, sad archetypal character but I found her relatable enough but after the obligatory “character development” episode, she turns into a sarcastic asshole and as much as I am a sarcastic asshole, it just ruined the character for me. It just feels like each character was written by someone who had zero contact with the rest of the character team so it leads to unnecessary and sometimes, conflicting character designs and this wouldn’t be such a problem if most of the show focused on the action and plot side of things but the writers want us to feel for these characters most of the time and that’s just a flaw that leads into another flaw. Conflicting characters aside, I think the characters are still kind of likeable and I guess they can be relatable enough for their target audience but as a seventeen year old with a slight nostalgia for cartoons, it doesn’t cut it for me.

Animation and style wise, it’s fine. I don’t find the art style interesting or cutesy but it’s definitely an improvement from the older days of the network and I would say it definitely looks better than Teen Titans but that’s because the Teen Titan look was pretty much a western anime look so it’s easy to beat it. The animation is pretty smooth and there isn’t any weirdness throughout the series. I honestly don’t know what else to say because it’s the standard Cartoon Network look. If it’s not done in CGI, it’s this look. Should I just stop here and just roll out rest of the criticism because I think I should. I mean, what else is there to say apart from it's kind of colourful and I do like how the characters are designed but that’s about it so let’s stop floundering about and just get the rant section out of the way.

First, let’s talk about the run times. The average episode length for a “Steven Universe” episode is ten minutes and I am not a fan of this decision and this mainly because I feel like the episodes are too short because of this. I feel like they were to do the standard thing and extend the runtime to twenty minutes per an episode, they would be able to have their character development moments and still have time to advance the main plot but I guess if they did that, they would exchange the main plot section and stuff it with more pointless sub plots and talking about pointless subplots, I hate them. They serve no use to the plot most of the time and when they do, it’s very little setup things and it’s just contrived at points and there is so many subplots I hate. The first one that comes to mind is the one with the watermelon Stevens. The first episode, “Watermelon Steven”, only served to go “Look at Steven’s power to give life” as he made an army of sentient watermelon lookalikes which of course turns into chaos but don’t worry, it’s gets worse with “Super Watermelon Island”. This episode is just a mess in my opinion because it just raises so many questions around the watermelon Stevens like “Why is there male and female Stevens?”, “Why are they growing baby watermelon Stevens in fields?” And “Why is there a watermelon dog?”. It’s just a mess of an episode and only serves two purposes: Bring Lapis into the main cast and actually seeing the triple gem (or quad gem I guess) fusion of Alexandite do some combat this time since the last we saw Alexandite in “Fusion Cuisine” which was also pointless filler and only serves to introduce Connie’s parents and talking about Connie, let’s move onto “Beach City Drift”. Why am I talking about this? Because it’s an example of absolute pointlessness and plot filling. It would of served a purpose if they didn’t reveal the Stevonnie fusion in a much earlier and slightly better episode “Alone Together” but it serves no purpose to the plot and therefore it’s simply just stupid filler. There is so more things I rip into in terms of pointless, horrible filler but then we would be here all day and all the Steven Universe fans would be either crying tears or wanting my head on a pole depending on how much I offended them with this review so let’s just move on before I also become very frustrated.

I feel like there is nothing else I can say about this series. It’s certainly a Cartoon Network cartoon but I don’t like it and I guess my nostalgia can be to be slightly blamed. To me, it just doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel like it’s has that same brand of quirkiness the older cartoons like “Samurai Jack” and “Teen Titans” had but yet again, this is made for a new generation and not mine so I guess there is that appeal for these younger kids and I could probably recommend it them but someone of my age, I’m unsure about it. When one of my friends heard that I was planning to talk about this show, he was excited so I guess there is an appeal for this in my generation but I guess it’s just not for me. Despite the criticism I gave it, it’s still a solid cartoon show so here’s your 5/10, Rebecca. You deserve it but please, stop with the fillers because you are making me go insane here with them.

Next week may not be the start of the “Saints Row” reviews mainly because I did get my hands on a copy of the original “Saints Row” game and after playing ten minutes of it, I threw my hands up in the air and gave up on it. What does this mean to anything? Well it simply means I’m delaying the review for a week for “Atlas Reactor” because with another friend of mine being interested in the game and how small the player base is, I think it’s worth talking about if it would help promote the game so I am sorry to zero of my readers who were looking forward to me talking about “Saints Row” and frankly, screw you, I’m gonna review Atlas Reactor and you aren’t going to stop me.

Berserk: The Beauty Of Gore Filled Horror

I think I had enough of sitting on this. I wrote the initial review of this nearly a month ago and I made myself sit on it because I didn’t want my blog to be overflowing with manga reviews but “Berserk” is too good to sit on plus “Berserk” has gotten a more recent anime adaption with a very controversial animation style so I think it’s prime time I talk about the cover boy for gory violence and dark imagery.

“Berserk” is originally a manga that started back in 1989 which is only two years after the debut of anime’s memelord, Jojo Bizarre Adventure (don’t expect me to talk about Jojo for at least a couple of years) and spawned two anime adaptions with the first one being in 1997 and ending in 1998 and the second series still ongoing since 2016 and yes, that is considered recent. In this review, I will only be talking about the manga and the second series since I only want to talk about these because the manga is the original source material and I think the second series does have more to cover. Also, I am completely aware of all the other stuff that falls under the Berserk umbrella but I will not be covering them here. Maybe at a later date but for now, I want to focus on the manga and its second outing as an anime.

“Berserk” follows Guts, a mercenary since birth who has been marked as a sacrifice by the “Godhand”, a group of demonic gods, and we follow him as he slays chasing demons with his arsenal of weapons, including his massive sword “Dragon Slayer”, in absolutely utter gore-ious fashion (yes, I’m bring back the puns) and gains the infamous title of “The Black Swordsman”. On the way, he ends up getting new allies and eventually the pseudo name sake of the series, “The Berserker Armor” as he fights his old friend, Griffin who has joined the group of demonic overlords known as the “Godhand” and if that didn’t sell you on Berserk, I don’t blame you. When summarised, the plot seems simple but in reality, the plot is just more than a guy slaying demons with a massive sword. This manga might as well have defined a genre in how dark it can be from demonic sex orgies, religious crusades and oceans worth of blood being spilt. This is a horror manga for a reason and although the imagery isn’t exactly scary, it’s full of dark and creepy imagery and the series is more representative of “Gore Horror” (although some could say it’s more seated in the monster subgenre of horror) which comprises of 80s Slasher movies or if we were to use anime references because we are good little weebs, Hellsing except with a lot less of whatever Hellsing was doing. It’s just brooding with a dark, gloomy atmosphere and love it just so much. If you ask me, Berserk is more then just demon guts being splattered across the floor because there is much more like when Griffin reveals his new Band Of Hawks turns out to be demons in front of all his human followers which includes the pope of the series’ religion, they aren’t exactly shocked but being subdued by the idea that Griffin is their equivalent of Jesus Christ, they see the demons as the servants of their saviour and accept the demons as their friends and I love this because it can mean so much in the context of the series and to a degree, our real world. There is so much other philosophical sub text to cover in this series and it’s just hard to touch on when I’m so pressed for time so let’s just say there’s two themes of religion being used as a farce for evil and the nature of beauty in violence which the latter was the subject of a video on this YouTube channel called “Wisecrack” so I suggest watching that if you want to get into this series and want a deeper understanding of the series’ deeper messages but let’s move onto the technical sides of things.

Visually speaking, the manga probably one of the greatest looking mangas to exist which I can’t say about the anime but we will get to that. The manga might as well be an art book in manga form since the manga uses the limited colouring mangas have of black and white and use it effectively. While some mangas do benefit from colour, I feel like colouring this would do injustice for the material since Berserk is at its best when it comes to the many spreads where we can see how many points come from this. These spreads is the reason why the topic of “Beauty In Violence” is a underlying theme, they are the reason why the world depicted is terrifying and they are the reason why Guts looks like a badass. The spreads also takes the rough yet gore-gious art style and runs with it which is just wonderful in every way and I will use Berserk for now on to tell people who say manga isn’t art is that they are wrong and that anime not only just hot anime girls doing erotic stuff. Manga and anime do have their more edgy counterparts and Berserk is representative. Yes, this series does still have erotic scenes but it’s usually because it’s representative of the nature on demonhood and I think they add to the world building of the series. The only real complaint I have about the art style is how smooth the later chapters look. Earlier chapters had this subtle roughness in how it’s drawn and now with the more later chapters, everything looks far more clean, which is ironic considering it’s Berserk we are talking about but with the far more smoother look does make it feel like it has lost some of its charm but it’s a barely noticeable thing if you are reading the series from the very start and since I already started with the complaints early, I might as well roll out the remaining complaints.

Let’s start with the massive prologue. The prologue known as “The Golden Age Arc” is about 94 chapters long since it covers all the backstory you need to know. We get to know the conditions of Guts’ upbringing, the relationship he had with Griffin, how Griffin turned into a demon god and why Guts fights these hell spawned demons. Unfortunately, as much as I love how they did that instead of using rather intrusive flashbacks during numerous chapters to serve as padding out in chapters, the prologue takes forever and is without a doubt, the most boring point of Berserk for me. The Golden Age Arc is disappointing because it feels like Guts isn’t at his peak of awesomeness and performance during this arc since he hasn’t gotten his arsenal of weaponry and his unique brand of berserk (Hahahaha) isn’t in this arc until the last chapter where we see him slay his first demon with Dragon Slayer. What also doesn’t help is the fact that this is following up after another prologue which is pretty much just set up for the world and the character of Guts which does a much better job then the actual prologue at being a prologue. For me, the first prologue should of been the actual one and the series carry on from there since I feel like Guts should of been a lone wanderer type who just wandered town to town, killing demons as he got closer to killing Griffin so we wouldn’t have this whole Scooby gang which just seemed just to be there for character development but only one of them only really helps him which is the witch who makes sure that the Berserker Armour doesn’t fullly consume Guts but yet again, I feel like Guts’ sheer force of will should of done the job without some magical plot device. The only other one who I think serves her purpose is Guts’ love interest since that’s just more motivation for him to go out of his way to kill Griffin but that’s all she is, motivation. She does nothing else but be a motivation and occasional handicap and although the latest chapter is following her and may lead into making her into a more useful character (at the time of me writing this, of course) but she still feels useless.

I am quickly tacking on the anime section but this is mainly going to divulge into more complaints. So the new anime series starts off at the “Convection Arc” which happens right after the “Golden Age Arc” and there’s our first problem. This new anime acts like the viewer has been reading the manga or at least watched the original anime because there is no flashbacks. It’s just straight out of the source material and it expects you to know what’s going on. What I also hate about the anime is the art style or rather, lack of one. This incarnation of the anime is done in CGI like RWBY and just like RWBY, it’s a piece of crap. I hate it when anime does CGI because they usually don’t have the budget like other animation companies to make it look nice so it’s usually just really stiff and lifeless in terms of animation. The only benefit that CGI has for anime is adding more depth to the fight scenes which is the only praise I will give to both this and RWBY when I eventually want to die from outraged fans.

You should know what goes down by now. This is the part where I talk personally about how I feel about the overall series but I have really injected that into my other paragraphs so there isn’t much. If my “Hellsing” and “Drifters” review hasn’t got the fact that gore makes me a very happy weeb, let me say it again for you. I love gore and Berserk is just that but now also soaked in some horror elements which makes Berserk my ideal dark fantasy manga. There isn’t much else to add apart from that so overall, Berserk is without its flaws but I still think it’s a stand out amongst both manga and anime as proof that the anime culture doesn’t just revolve around hentai and harems. I’m giving the manga 8/10 even though it’s so tempting to give it a 9 or even a perfect 10 but that’s would just be my inner weeb talking then. The anime is getting a solid 5/10 for the horrible animation but since it’s the closest we are going to get to a Berserk anime in this generation and it’s still the same Berserk story without any needless stuff attached so I guess it’s passable.

That’s my thoughts on Berserk so just go watch or read it, I don’t know anymore. I should really stop relying on manga reviews to fill up the weekly slot so next week, maybe I will talk about either movies or a game, depending on what one I finish first or maybe I’ll just get around to uploading those old reviews I keep mentioning and for the next manga review which might be a while, I might be talking about a certain pirate with the series that seems like it never wants to end but next week is Steven Universe because I felt like it and for anything after the Saints Row reviews, might be a movie review if I can find anything interesting but I will admit, “Black Panther” is lining itself up for a ran- I meant review. I mean, the movie has a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes so maybe it’s time I pull out all the stops and just see if this movie is really worth that 97% or maybe it’s just the fandom culture hyping nothing again like they always do.

The Muppets: The Nostalgia Connection

Well, I wasn’t expecting two reviews in a row covering my nostalgia but circumstances led me to this. I write these reviews in at least a week advance and occasionally two weeks advance since it usually the structure of the review I write out first and then I just edit it if my thoughts change on the subject or I have more to add to the initial review but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to upload last week’s review of “LiEat” on a week earlier as planned since my internet company decided to cut all of our connections for a week with no reason at all. Now, it doesn’t mean in this dilemma, I have the right to slack off so I gave myself the option of doing my school work or watching movies and if it wasn’t obvious, I chose the latter (after I did my school work) so I got a stack of movies and spent the spare time watching DVDs that we have stashed around the house and writing reviews to see if I can get anywhere and you are looking at the result of it. Yeah, “The Muppets” was the only one to inspire me to write something and that’s already a lie. “Mama Mia: The Movie” also inspired me to write on the basis that I have seen it so many times that I can talk about anything in the movie but I don’t believe my audience consist of 40 year old women yet so I’m stashing it for later down the line but for now, let’s go fishing for some nostalgia with puppet bait and WARNING, there is going to be numerous callbacks to “The Greatest Showman” so be prepared for more bashing as well spoilers but who would care about spoilers for a seven year old movie.

“The Muppets” is a live action Disney film and with this being a live action Disney film, you bet this a musical with a childish plot and characters because this was pre-Frozen Disney so they haven’t realised that their musicals belong in award winning animation and everything should be said with a sense of ironic self serving and not in horrible live action and whoops, I just showed my hand too early. Yeah, I’m not going to give this movie that much praise because this is flimsy and seems like an excuse to try and see of the old Muppet boat will still float or in layman’s terms, see if it can still rake in lots of money to justify keeping the series alive and because of this, the plot is very basic. We follow Walter and Gary who are massive Muppet fans (with Walter being the actual Muppet so guess what sort of connection that makes) who decide to visit the Muppet studios with Gary’s girlfriend, Mary. After Walter discovers that the bad guy’s plan for drilling oil in the studio, they decide to go and visit Kermit The Frog to convince him to gather the old gang and put on one more show to raise money to save the studio and we just checked off several check-boxes on the cliche list. I mean, I think the plot is played for laughs at most because the story has this very meta feeling plus the main bad guy’s name is Tex Richman so it has to be taking the piss. It just feels way too silly to be a straight faced kids movie so this has to be an ironic self parody which I believe is what all the critics saw in this movie because that’s the only way I can justify the 95% Rotten Tomatoes score or maybe the critics are just stupid. I grew up on the old Muppet movies and it seems like it’s just kind of ripping off that format but I’m not exactly sure. I’ll let you decide if the movie is just copying the old format but to quote myself from my “The Greatest Showman” review, “The plot is secondary as it’s simply there to string each musical piece” and I’m nothing if not consistent so let’s talk about the music. 

Well the music isn’t exactly terrible and the singing from the actors isn’t that bad either. I personally found the songs pretty catchy and fitting for the overall tone of the movie and still better than the soundtrack for “The Greatest Showman” but that’s not much of a compliment. This song apparently has 5 original songs but I only remember 3 of them (unless we counting the “Tex Richman Rap” which is way too short to be a song) and I saw that people saying that “Man Or Muppet” or “Life’s A Happy Song” being the best songs in the movie but then we would be denying the greatness which is “The Rainbow Connection” which kind of acts like the end song for the whole Telethon arc in the movie but of course it comes short so we can have Walter show his wonderful “talent” but I’ll save that for the nitpick/rant section of the review. The Rainbow Connection is just overall a great song and embodies what the Muppets were during their heyday but feels very nostalgic in that way which can come across as pandering to an ageing audience which this movie feels like what it’s doing for half of this movie. To go back to the plot for a bit, the whole movie feels like it’s just a revising of the Muppets formula and is full of call backs to the original show and this is best embodied in the whole telethon arc which does make sense since they are using their own talents to save the studio but now in a more modern style because the 80s is far beyond us now. I will go into the plot even more soon enough but let’s quickly touch base on the technical side of the movie.

I think the movie looks good for a live action movie especially with the Muppets. I think the puppetry displayed is good as it always has been in any media featuring the Muppets and it’s definitely better then the midget’s puppetry in “The Greatest Showman”. The movie is also well shot and the CGI is pretty good for a 2010 production but you have to remember that this is Disney we are talking about so they can afford to splurge on stuff like this. Also none of the actors feel like they are phoning it in for the whole movie. Jason Segal as Gary is good enough for the whole movie and Amy Adams portrayal of Mary was also pretty decent. Chris Cooper as Tex Richman was meh to me. I kind of wished they got someone like Christopher Walkins or Kevin Spacey to play Tex since they have proven they can play villains before but then you remember that Tex’s so called maniacal laugh is literally him saying maniacal laugh so maybe this was too cheesy for them (let’s forget Nine Lives ever existed). There isn’t much else to say about this side of the movie since well, it’s a Disney movie. Disney movies rarely flop and when they do, it’s rarely deserved but it’s because they are always the best of the best working on these movies to make them look as good as they do. I think I gave this movie more than enough praise so let’s move onto the bashing I promised four paragraphs ago but it’s not going to be directed to “The Greatest Showman”. 

If we were to start criticising this movie, I would start with Walter who is supposed to be the latest addition to the Muppet line up and he is so spectacular, his appearance both starts with this movie and ends with its somewhat average sequel (I am excluding any non-movie appearances) because he is quite clearly too good that he shouldn’t of have been created in the first place. Yeah, Walter is just unlikable as a character. If we are to not question the logic of two human parents giving birth to a Muppet (or the logic behind Muppets breeding or even Muppet/humans breeding), we can just jump right onto how annoying his character is. He acts like a childish fanboy for the whole movie and expects people to care about him because he is different and therefore he should be treated like a special and unique snowflake. I mean, he pretty much secretly guilty trip his own brother to take him to L.A which was originally planned for Gary and Mary where Gary could propose and then once in L.A, takes control of the whole trip and ruins the whole trip for both of them (mainly Mary though) because he wants to save the Muppet studios from a businessman who wants to make money for his business so his company may actually expand and open up employment opportunities but this is all stopped because a Muppet fanboy couldn’t let the Muppet legacy die even though it has a big enough legacy that could probably have the studios destroyed and there would be minimal impact. Walter might of been good on paper but in practice, he is just a knob and while we talking about knobs, can we talk about the character of Tex Richman? The guy is supposed to be the main villain for the whole movie but all the way until the end, he has a decent motivation. He wants to get oil found under the studios for money and as a businessman and owner of a business, it makes sense but then someone read the script and thought he wasn’t evil at all so he has a 90 degree turn and becomes even more stupidly evil for pretty much no reason. And if I am to continue with pointless crap, why is there so many unnecessary celebrity cameos in this movie? Like, the only ones that make sense is Jack Black’s appearance as Jack Black since he does get kidnapped later into the movie to make a forced appearance in the telethon arc but then you people like Zach from the “Hangover” trilogy showing up as a hobo called Hobo Joe for no reason and does nothing to advance the plot. Did they have some spare money from their $45 million budget so they decided to pay some A-listing celebrities to just randomly show up throughout the movie to fill in for extras. This is all just stupid to me but nothing truly frustrating because what’s frustrating is what goes down in the final ten minutes.

Before we dive into this, I will say this again, there will be spoilers and this section will spoil the final ten minutes of the movie so do whatever you want to do avoid the spoilers, just don’t say I didn’t warn you. So after the Rainbow Connection falls short of pulling in the money they need, all the Muppets start panicking about how are they going to raise the rest of the money but then Walter shows up in the middle of stage and ready to show off his talent of whistling. Yes, whistling is his talent and this has no set up during the whole movie so this is literally out of the blues and this nearly saves the studio until Tex steals and drives a car into a telephone pole, cutting off all the phone connections to the studio meaning no one can send in money by the phone and they are now only short by a cent and there is two things wrong with this. First things first, Tex shouldn’t of been able to even walk yet alone hijack a car and drive it considering he was thrown off the top of a building and landed flat onto a concrete floor couple of minutes ago so you would at least expect him to have broken some bones but nope, he only has a couple of scuff marks on him and he is A-ok so Tex is now quite clearly a terminator. The second problem is the fact they are only a cent short but they have this massive audience in the theatre. Sure they could of just donated a little bit more to make the 10 million dollar mark but nope, they just sit there because screw saving the studios, we need to have more cliches to happen. After a long and boring speech from Kermit about restarting their careers as a family or something like that and then they walk out of the studio to be greeted by all their fans because it’s totally not predictable at all. Gary finally proposes to Mary and Walter gets accepted into The Muppets but then, Tex shows up claiming that he owns the Muppets name and likeness now because of that stupid plot device of a contract but don’t worry, Gonzo shows up, still spinning his arm around after failing to let go of the bowling ball he was supposed to throw earlier in the telethon, claims that he has figured out how to let go and then throws right into Tex’s chest which sends him flying to the ground where he supposedly bangs his head and now has become made another 90 degree turn and is now a good person and just gives the Muppets their studio back. I don’t feel like I should be explaining what’s wrong with all this but I will anyway just in case you don’t understand. First, Gonzo just committed assault which should see him in big trouble but nope, he gets away with it. Secondly, Tex should be either seriously injured or dead after that, even if he escaped being seriously injured by falling off a building. The bowling ball should of easily cracked some of his ribs and there is a highly likely chance of his lungs being punctured by said broken ribs but nope, he just suffers a minor percussion which leads us to the final problem: They just used a Deus Ex Machina and I’m not talking about the critical acclaimed game series for the same name. For those out of the loop, a Deus Ex Machina is something that just happens to solve what seemed previously like a unsolvable problem and this whole “accident” is just a massive mess of Deus Ex Machina. Who can read that part and approve of it, thinking that was a good conclusion for this movie because Jason Segal and Nicholas Stoller who are the writers for this had to somehow fit in both the Muppets getting back their studio and also have the typical encouragement speech that all Disney movies need to have and thought writing in a Deus Ex Machina which is the first thing any writer learns to avoid doing in any plot since it suck out all the tension and conflict out of a scene and maybe even a movie faster then any vampire can suck out blood and lets not forget that then the director, James Bobin had to check off on this. It’s just stupid on so many levels and so frustrating but then you remember that Jason hasn’t written anything that spectacular with the same applying to Nicholas and right now, Nicholas and James are working on a live action Dora The Explorer movie in conduction with Michael Bay’s production studio, Platinum Dunes, I think the answer is very clear that these three are quite clearly incompetent. I think that’s enough bashing so let’s end this before I devolve into poor man’s Angry Joe.

The Muppets in general, has been part of my life since childhood. I grew up on “The Muppet Show” reruns and “Muppets Tonight” and their movies are always fun to watch but this? Ehhh, I don’t think it holds up to the Muppet legacy. As a kids movie, it’s fine but anything without gore is fine for kids these days but for an older audience, this is a very pandering film. I mean, this movie is full of call backs to the original show and righteous 80s references, dude (I promise I won’t do that again) and because of it, it feels like a right up nostalgia trip. As much as I beat it up, it’s still a passable movie by normal standards so here is your 6/10, Muppet movie. You may not live up to the Muppet standard but you are definitely entertaining at times for someone of my age (despite being very frustrating because of your plot) so if it ever pops up on tv or you find a disc copy on the cheap, pick it up because it’s still a nice and happy time for everyone, even if the numerous references leaves feeling either old or befuddled and to be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t mind seeing more Muppets in the foreseeable future but considering “The Muppets” TV show was canceled after one season which seemed like a very promising adult take on the Muppets and their last appearance was last year at the Super Bowl, maybe they are just relegated to making cameos these days which is a shame. Disney seems like they have forgotten that they own The Muppets ever since getting their hands on Marvel and LucasArts so they can just print money with Star Wars and The Avengers for now. Maybe later down the line, they will give The Muppets another crack and if they do, I wouldn’t mind seeing it even if it means they have to dumb it down even further for kids since it seems like they are getting increasingly more stupid with each generation.

So this might be my longest review to appear on this so far at double my standard. I mean, I’m hitting around 3060 words right now but anyway, next week will be the Berserk review which I have been sitting on for over a month now and after that, it’s going to be Steven Universe as my first TV show review because I wanted to see what’s the hoopla behind the possibly culturally sensitive yuri stuff and then we are moving onto the Saints Row trilogy of reviews so hooray for us. I’m going to have so much fun playing Saints Row 2 again. Unmodded, PC port of Saints Row 2. Mmm, so much fun.

LiEat: Japan's Brand Of Nostalgia Baiting

Let’s start with a short story. I found this game out back in 2016 on Steam. I was given the chance to publish two series of reviews in a one shot of the school newspaper under the name “Death By Gameplay” and “Death By Gameplay: Movie Edition” and since all I cared about was “Smite” and “L4D2” at the time and I already wrote short reviews on them and the two movies of my choice for the movie edition (I think it was The Jungle Book remake and Valentine’s Day) but I had to do a G-rated game so I went on Steam and after some browsing, I stumbled across LiEat. Despite going against my better judgement of knowing this is just a very bad RPGmaker game, I bought it and played it and it left such a lasting impact on me that I gave it a 95% but knocked it for being nostalgia bait. Two years on and I’m going to go full circle and review this out of nostalgia and while I was just hitting my stride back in 2016, I feel like the experience of the past two years should be enough to hopefully deliver a more accurate review if I don’t get blinded by nostalgia.

“LiEat” is an indie JRPG which was made on the “Wolf RPG Editor” engine which as far as I can tell, is a Japanese exclusive RPG maker since I can only find Japanese versions of the engine online. The plot follows the liar known as Teo and his “daughter” Elle who is a dragon who can make lies manifest and continue to eat them, hence the name “LiEat” and also, Elle looks like a little human girl throughout the whole game because moe and lolis sell copies these days. The game consists of three different adventures where we see Teo (or whatever name he decided to take up) and Elle solve mysteries because reasons. Each adventure lasts around an hour and has multiple endings for repeat playthroughs and yeah, this is rather boring. I don’t know what was wrong with me two years ago but to think that with a plot this simple across three very short games was one of the contributing factors to give it a 95%, I was either incredibly stupid or I was very easy to impress. To be honest, I do like the dynamic between Teo and Elle throughout the games since they are pretty much they are a father and daughter team but Teo never really acts like a father and uses her to get info and payment but he does warm up eventually but apart from that, all the characters serve to fill a single role of advancing the plot and offer not much character development since there is only four recurring characters throughout the three games, including our main duo. On top of that, each plot has a very simple idea underneath it so it just seems like he went and stuck on the two characters onto a simple idea and hoped that it would work. There is no real fun or interesting things to happen in these plots and it’s just point to point. I would say more about the plot but it’s so null of anything interesting that I’m bored of writing this paragraph so let’s move on.

Gameplay wise, it’s standard and if you were reading last week’s review of “Thor: Ragnarok” in that massive rant of a review, you would remember that I threw the word standard around a lot and if you were smart enough, you would know that “Standard = Bad” and it is bad. It is a bare as bones RPG system through and through and all it does is serve to be a something to break up the story which is the main focus of the game so the combat is kept to a minimum which is nice of the creator since I hate the combat. The combat is definitely the weakest point of the series since it’s just the basic RPG combat system at work. You find item, you equip item and now you do slightly more damage. There is no unique properties for going out of your way to find new items and the same could be said about the level up system which also serves no purpose except little stat boosts which will make no real difference in the combat since you can’t really grind in the game. The combat is simply something that got tacked on by the engine it was made on and is ultimately just some unnecessary baggage that is stuck to the game like excess fat but I do give credit to the creator for at least making it tie into the plot since most enemies are lies that are manifested by Elle and you have to battle and eat them to determine either disgusting truths or delicious lies which is a great way to tie it into the plot of the game. What’s also great is how the maps are designed since they are open ended and offer a chance to explore and find stuff like other RPGs but that’s a double edged sword. The maps feel way too small and therefore, you can only explore for like five minutes before you have checked the whole map and checked everywhere for any consumables or weaponry to collect for the combat sections and we already talked about how pointless the combat is so the point of exploring is now minimise to just seeing where characters are so you know where to go when you need to go talk to them. In the end, all the gameplay feels like it doesn’t belong to the game and is simply there to support the very slim idea of this game actually being a game and not an excuse to make a visual novel (which the creator went and did as a light novel which acts as a prequel to this trilogy of the games) but there must be more to this that I can credit so let’s move onto visuals.

This is 64-bit RPG so of course it’s going to look nice. I don’t know why as a culture, we love this retro kind of style, especially for someone of my age since we grew up on early polygramical graphics and with LiEat, I still don’t understand. It’s just 64 bit graphics and although I agree they look nice, it’s also just standard for these sort of indie RPGs, especially ones who use basic engines like Wolf and RPGMaker. If there was anything I was going to credit about this game, it would be the soundtrack and not the graphics because that’s actually nice to listen to. I’m not a big instrumental person but LiEat’s soundtrack isn’t that bad and the fact it comes free with the game when you buy it on steam, you don’t really have an excuse to not download it and listen to it outside of the game. It’s very orchestral which is weird considering the fact this is a indie game so they wouldn’t have the budget for an orchestra so the guy who did the music is either talented with many instruments and then used editing software to overlap his recordings to make the music or they just stole the music from somewhere else. I’ll let you stew that thought in your mind for a bit while I move on with some more criticism because it’s time for that section where I get a little more bias and personal.

I’m going to come clean, I was blinded by nostalgia when I wrote the first paragraph at school before I even started replaying the game. I was so blinded, the original title for this review was “LiEat: The Wonder Of Indie JRPGs” and if that doesn’t show how blindsided I was by my own nostalgia, what about the fact that I continued to write the next paragraph going off by my own memory and your own memories can be a tricky thing. It wasn’t until I played the game and took a more subjective view is when I realised I was blinded by nostalgia. This game isn’t spectacular as I remembered it but it also isn’t the trashcan I describe it as. It’s serviceable for what it goes out and achieves with what little it has. I believe this game has a cult following of sorts since this game has an incredible amount of fan art for what I thought was a relatively unknown release but I’m a member of the “Gardevoir Appreciation Club” (self founded) so who I am to judge but for what I thought was a small group of fans seems quite big instead. I could just ramble on about random stuff but to be direct, I feel like LiEat doesn’t stand to that feeling I had back in 2016 and isn’t exactly groundbreaking or interesting enough for the claims I made in my old reviews.

I’m giving LiEat a 5/10 which is 4.5 less than my original but bugger the old review, I was quite clearly more stupid back then. The game is not interesting enough but it’s but by all means, it’s not bad. It’s a serviceable JRPG and considering the fact it’s only five bucks on Steam, maybe you could consider LiEat the next time you have some spare change on your account and you don’t want to get Poker Night At The Inventory. I also haven’t tried any of the other games made by this guy which has made it on Steam so I can’t say if this is his worst or best game in his collection at this point but if later down the line I do end up reviewing another one of his games, I will make sure to make the comparison then. Next week might be an movie retrospective but if not, my Berserk review may be released so prepare for more anime reviews because my budget for reviews is exactly zero and reading manga happens to cost me 0 dollars so hooray for jobless teens.