Thoughts on Arcane

As of right now, I've rewatched each episode a handful of times and ill probably rewatch more.

I was really excited about reviewing this series as I watched it, but when I finished it I realized this is a show that I don't have anything to say about.

It's perfect, that's pretty much all I'm able to say. Everything is just so good, the writing, the animation, the choreography, the special effects, the dialogue, the music, the sound effects, the themes and approaches to said themes. It's all just outstanding.

By now it shouldn't surprise us that riot would make something on this level of quality, they have never been shy about investing money into anything. They have branched out into music, comics, and now a freaking TV show. They have always made impeccable animated cinematic trailers for the game, but it's a big leap, going from 5 minutes to 360~ minutes. And yet, most people would argue it's even better than the trailers. It may not look "realistic" like a lot of their trailers, but I think Arcane's animation is much more beautiful and satisfying to watch. And finding out all these little details, like how the characters are animated on 1s and the special effects on 2s. Just brilliant.

I also really love the characters, they are amazingly written and very well explored. Powders descent into being Jinx is really well done, the trauma was there from the beginning, but seeing it progressively get worse is incredibly sad and intriguing.

It would be hard to choose a favourite character, all of the protagonists are amazing in their own way, but putting champions aside, my favourite character would definitely be Silco, everything about him is so good, and he is the embodiment of doing well, not doing much. He is a busy man so most of his interactions with other characters end up being very short, but the dialogue is good, Silco manages to get his point across very quickly with minor effort.

Something I found strange was how so many people called the ending a cliffhanger. To me personally, I found the ending to be a very satisfying conclusion. Everything went full circle and (almost) every character fulfilled their purpose (I'll get to that in a second).

I can't move on without spoiling so here's your spoiler warning.

To go over the main characters of this season of arcane, we have Vi, Caitlyn, Jinx, Markus, and Silco. Ekko, Heimerdinger, Viktor, Jayce, and Mel are propper main characters but they don't have a role to play in the "main" conflict of this season which revolves mostly around Jinx, Vi, and Silco. I imagine they will have more important roles in season 2 given that season 1 perfectly concluded its themes and conflicts.

Vi has always been who she was meant to be. the trauma for her made her grow up fast in order to protect Powder and provide whatever she would need, her purpose was to be a callback to the past, a memory, and a symbol of hope that things could go back to what they were, given that she had already grown a lot in act 1 and was in prison without much contact until act 2, she wasn't meant to get much development. the only development she needed was realizing her way of dealing with things isn't good nor bad, she just needs to find the right time and place.

For Silco and Markus, despite having a very different dynamic, their journey is very similar, as both try to do what their predecessors did, try to do it differently in hopes of doing it better, doing it wrong, and then trying to fix the broken by doing what their predecessors would have done, only for it to be too late at that point.

Caitlyn was there.

(JK, I love Caitlyn and her purpose as a character is very dear to me, but not relevant enough to elaborate here)

Jinx is, in a strange way, almost the protagonist of this season, as most of the stuff that happens is almost directly connected to her. And yet she gets the least development throughout the show, we mostly just see a poor broken girl trying to be what she always hoped to become while trying to disassociate from the repercussions of such. We don't really see her change throughout, and that's the point, she never grew up, she is still the little girl she was in act 1. That becomes evidently clear during the climax scene when Jinx prepared the most important confrontation in her life as a colorful tea party, but it's hinted at many times before as well.

Arcane has crows in a bunch of scenes with Jinx. Crows are a symbol of change and transformation. After testing hextech and having flashbacks of that tragic day in act 1, Jinx decides to go back to where they used to play. there she finds a crow that essentially screams at her. A call for change, she needs to change, she can't be the same little girl anymore, but Jinx shoots the crow, not wanting to change. The next time a crow appears is when she meets Vi for the first time after many years, a confrontation that makes her realize things are not the same anymore, everything is changing.

And it all builds up and back, back to where it all began. During the climax, there are dozens of crows outside, this is an important moment for Jinx, a moment where she is bound to change, a moment where she can't run anymore. and after all is said and done, Jinx finally accepts change, takes a seat on the chair with her new name, a chair decorated with crow feathers, now ready to reject everything she ever wanted, and embracing everything she ever feared.

Jinx's Journey is one of tragedy, one that the way it was handled, explored, and concluded made me see arcane as a perfect show that wouldn't need another season. That is, until an hour later when I remembered Ekko and Heimerdinger aren't quite where they are supposed to be yet, and Viktor is very far from it. I'm really curious to see where those stories will go. But, for now, arcane has left me full and satisfied, this was a lovely show and I hope to see more things on this level of quality in the future.

Sincerely, Spoon.

Update (I'm Back)

Heyo

 Sorry, guys, I haven't been present at all. School has been tough lately, but exams aside it's over and I have more time to dedicate to my personal projects like writing reviews. All the reviews I mentioned in the previous post are still going to come and I've had more ideas of what to write about. Don't worry, I will work on 1 review at a time and try to be consistent with how often I post, this is just to say I have enough Ideas to keep me entertained for a while.

These are the reviews I plan to write:

-Death Note (Netflix Movie Adaptation)

-Pacific Rim

-Far Cry 3

-Watch Dogs

-Voltron Legendary Defender

-Galactik Football

-Coraline

-Neon Genesis Evangelion (All Content)

-Star Wars (All movies 1 at a time)

-Yakusoku no Neverland Season 2

-Dark Souls II Scholar of the First Sin

-Detroit: Become Human

-Beyond Two Souls

Another thing I would like to make clear is that I will most likely never review something that I think is perfect, there's no point in me going on about each detail of any media if I'm gonna say the same thing about everything and then call it a review, and it would also be dumb to say something like "this is perfection, if you're not doing this, you are wrong" because I think everything has the right to be different and try something new and maybe even be better than what we previously thought was perfect. 

One more thing before saying goodbye, I've been having a lot of fun editing videos, you can see my YouTube Channel by clicking the link to your right. If I'm not working here, trust that I'll be working elsewhere. I've also been trying really hard to come up with a format to turn these reviews into videos so that it can be more accessible and maybe reach a bigger audience. 

That's all I have for you now, let's hope my next post is a review and not another fucking update excusing the lack of reviews.

Matane

Update for future content

 Hey, hope you're all doing alright, I haven't been writing as much as I'd like to and I apologize for that, both to you and to me, I wanna be more active and consistent with this blog but I haven't been, I'll try to change that, I really like writing these, even when struggling to enjoy anything else, having this platform to express my appreciation, as well as disappointment, feels really nice, doing research on both the things I review and in reviewing itself, trying to find the best ways to express my thoughts through text, it's a challenge, but a very fun one.

 That's what I have to say about activity, but for actual content, I have news for that as well.

 As I said in my second DS2 post, I will probably be giving more updates as I progress through the game and maybe eventually a full review, in the meantime, I have a bunch of notes from playing Watch Dogs and Far Cry 3, I can probably use them to make a decent review, I played them not that long ago so my memory is still a kind of fresh.

 I also ended up never making a post about the last episode of Yakusoku no Neverland which I  made seem like I was gonna do and I did plan on doing it, but the episode ended up being so much worse than I could possibly expect, for a while, I thought about doing a post about the whole season, but since I had been watching it as it was released I didn't remember the first few episodes as well and would probably have to rewatch them which I kept delaying because I just didn't want to go through this again.

 As for things I plan to do but haven't started, I plan to rewatch all of Evangelion again and carefully take notes to break it down a bit more, and then watch the movies. I had this idea when I was told the movies aren't recaps but instead reboots of meta-commentary of the devs shitting on the garbage fans the original show had. I've seen this done before in the internet series by the name of Llamas with Hats and I think it was written very well, I'd love to see how the creators of Evangelion handle it.

 On a similar note, there's another show I want to rewatch what I've watched and watch the rest of the content is Voltron, back in the day I used to watch it every time a new season came out, it was never good but the characters are amazing and kept everyone going. When season 6 ended though, I was tired of the nonsense and gave up on the show, there are 2 seasons I've never watched, but what I heard It's just as bad as the previous ones + some insultingly bad queer bait. Can't wait to consume all that garbage and write about it. I think the reason I wanna watch it so much is so that I can say I finished what I started and also because I liked the characters so much, I wanna properly say goodbye to them.

 That's what I have planned for now, as I said before, I'd love to get suggestions for what to write about next.

That's it for now, have a good night. Sincerely,

Spoon.

Update on Dark Souls II Scholar of the First Sin

  Been playing more Dark Souls II Scholar of the First Sin and it's been a mixed bag: there are some concepts that are unique to this, at least compared to DS1 (I haven't played DS3 yet), and with innovation comes risk, ups, and downs.

  To be honest, I don't see any issue with most new things, but they're all very specific and niche, I don't really use anything new but I can see the appeal, most of the time it's just DS1's concepts explored even more, which is quite interesting, while others are original.

 But even though this game is deeper, overall these changes don't change the game. What does change the game is the new enemies, areas, and bosses, and I think those are a major step down from the first game, there are so many bosses, and yet they feel very weak, not in strength because the game relies a lot on that, but in actual content. all the bosses I've killed so far felt empty, boring, and annoying more than anything else.

 In DS1 each boss fight felt unique and epic, each death would make you feel teased and excited for the next attempt and each victory felt rewarding and earned and made you wonder what the next challenge was going to be. Here, each boss only has a few moves, with bad hit-boxes, forgettable music, and uninspired designs.

 There's a lot of core mechanic changes as well, but I feel like they were only used to make the game artificially harder, like giving most enemies fast attacks, lots of poise, more I-frames, and fast recovery from stagger, making most of the player's attacks slow, making parry super slow, taking I-frames away from rolling, not giving any I-frames after being damaged allowing for the player to be stun-locked without any escape.

 This game also suffers from the same issue as Bloodborne, it tries to be surprising all the time, which is just not possible, but while Bloodborne tries to be dark all the time, DS2 tries to be an asshole all the time, by placing enemies around every corner, having traps everywhere, etc. Every time, it never surprises me that an enemy is there, it's surprising how even me knowing, the game always manages to be broken and hit me even with me taking every precaution.

 I'm not the best DS player in the world, but I'm not bad at the games, I know what I'm doing, and yet I seem to struggle every step of the way. Both DS1 and Bloodborne managed to make it feel like every time I died it was my problem, I either didn't do well enough or didn't try hard enough, but 85% of the times I die in DS2 it feels unfair, it feels like I'm not playing the game, the game is playing me. it's exhausting, trying just to be met with an unfair failure, it's disappointing and not fun, it doesn't make me question my ability, it makes me question whether or not it's worth playing.

 Now, this next part is just speculation, I was basically a baby gamer when DS1 came out, I'm not familiar with its history in marketing and how it was received, all I know is DS1 was well received by Demons Souls players and got very popular with other people as well, and I assume it's when Fromsoft got the reputation of making hard games and in an attempt to hang on to that fame they made DS2 "harder" and longer, and that's clearly evident with the achievement "This is Dark Souls" which you get when you die for the first time, it's such slap in the face, why would anyone want this achievement, it's funny, but just for the devs, it means nothing, it's just an attempt at humiliating the player.

 I love DS1's narrative, a story that continuously gives you hope just to rip it away and make you question yourself, your goal, and your methods, it's a beautiful adventure that I'll never get tired of praising. but here, the act of pushing you down is not a test, not a challenge, it's just trying to humiliate you, which I would get if all DS players were the "GIT GUD" type of players, but we're not all like that, and it feels tiring being such a great fan of the first game for giving me an excellent balanced experience and then having the second game spit in my face as if I'm being punished for something I didn't do.

 And that's my main issue with the game, it tries too hard to be hard but it ends up just being annoying, playing this doesn't feel fun most of the time, it feels like a chore which is not what playing a game should feel like and that's a big issue.

 That's all I have to say, for now, I'll keep playing until I've killed every boss and finished the game, I might write more updates regarding this game in the future and possibly a review when I finish it, but I'll figure it out later.

Have a good night. Sincerely,

Spoon.

Second thoughts on Dark Souls II Scholar of the First Sin

A while ago I bought Dark Souls 2 Scholar of the First Sin, except it was a reverse scam, in the box came both the disk and instruction manual of Dark Soul Prepare to Die Edition which everyone seems to agree is a better game.

To be honest, I wanted Dark Souls 1, but I couldn't find it anywhere and once I found Dark Souls 2 I was desperate and bought it right away, turns out I got the game I wanted from the start.

I had an amazing adventure and enjoyed every minute when playing DS1. I'd like to write a review of DS1 in the future, but such a masterpiece requires a very well-crafted review to do it justice and I'm not sure I have the skills to satisfy my ambition yet.

Not so long ago, I bought the real Dark Souls 2 Scholar of the First Sin for PS4. I played it for a few hours, but I didn't enjoy it at all, I was really sad about it, it was different from the first game but in a bad way, I disliked all the changes and soon gave up on it.

But, earlier today, I played it, I created a new character and basically speedran in 2 hours what I did in a lot more with my first character and spent another hour exploring new areas. And you know what? I enjoyed it, it still has its flaws, but overall it's still a good game. I now know why I didn't like it the first time, it's not because the game was too different, it's because I was too different.

When I played DS1 for the first time I already knew a lot from the start and was able to have a balanced experience always with that feeling of exploration while also kind of knowing what to do.

When I played DS2 for the first time I went in blind, which is more fun for a lot of people, but, for me, that only works on some games and it did not work on DS2. After replaying the beginning of it I realized this is still a good game, I still prefer DS1, but DS2 is special in its own way, it might not be my favorite, but it's still a Dark Souls, it's still something I can enjoy.

I don't know when I'll get to play again, but until then I'll take some time to learn more about the game so that when I play it I'll be able to have fun.

I'll probably say this again on my DS1 review, but it is an important lesson to learn, sometimes a game is perfect for you, but you never get to see it because you don't have the right approach, don't force yourself to play something you don't like, but if you already spent money on the game why not try different things. Even if you already like a game, you can always find new and more fun ways to play, don't limit the game or yourself to 1 way of playing, it's a game, after all, an interactive experience, if there was only 1 way of doing things it might as well be a movie or book.

But then again, what do I know? Who am I to tell you how to have fun? Just do you.r own thing, I'm proud either way.

Thoughts on Yakusoku no Neverland Season 2 Episode 10

I missed Phil so much, it's baffling how they managed to make the moment when they reunite so bad.

I gotta say, I was wrong with my comment on the last episode, I fell for it, I believed the bald guy betrayed them, I was wrong, the writter/s did not try to artificially create an obstacle to make this climax a climax, instead they went full speed the other way, giving even more advantages to the protagonists, thanks guys, it's not like I wanted to be excited about the finale or anything.

They even try to give the perspective of the demons so we get excited or something, trying to make the audience confused about what the actual plan is. this is what happens in season 1, but in season 1 we had smart individuals with everything going against them, here we get demons that are dumb as shit and have everything against them. the thrill of season one came from seeing seemingly weak individuals overcoming impossible challenges thanks to their persistence and intelligence. Here, it's just supposed to be a power fantasy.

It's like playing a game where you grind until you become invincible, and only after that you kill the final boss, it doesn't feel good, there's no thrill, no challenge. but this episode isn't the black sheep of the season, this has been a long time coming, demons have been established to be strong but dumb, even the smart ones are seen failing every time due to not thinking ahead of time, the only challenge has been physical power, so once the protagonists have that, there's no fight, the protagonists have the upper hand because they are smarter.

Take a look at code geass, the story of a man that starts with nothing but his intelligence, and thanks to his strong will he gets awarded the power he needed to take on the world, being at a numerical disadvantage most of the time throughout the anime keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat wondering how he is going to overcome it. By then of the anime, and the climax begins, the protagonist has around as much power as the antagonist, and yet it's not an easy fight because the antagonist is equally smart. That was an exciting climax, this isn't.

Whoever wrote Yakusoku no Neverland shot themselves in the foot because there's no way they could have made this interesting. the closest they could have done would be to have a secret super powerful demon final boss that would be stronger than anyone forcing them to start sacrificing people and forcing them to default to the ideals they have been trying to extinguish triggering some inner conflict in the protagonists. The issue is, they can't do that with 2 episodes of climax, it's just not doable.

With how this garbage season and climax are going I wanna try to predict the ending, here are my options:

1- nothing more happens, they make it to the human world, and a) everything is good, or b) everything sucks there. both irrelevant.

2- they have a final super demon boss like I mentioned before, defeat it and nothing interesting happens, at that point, you can go and watch dragon ball or any other garbage shounen that has these kinds of fights

3- demon lord, but people die, creating stakes for the first time in this entire season making it super artificial and boring and it will feel like they are killing off characters just for the shock value to make the villain intimidating, like JoJo no Kymio na Bouken Part 3

As you might notice, all these suck, but as I said previously, I wanna stick around till the end and see just how much of a mess they make this anime.

Thoughts on Yakusoku no Neverland Season 2 Episode 9

This is going from bad to worse.

Everything is boring, there are no stakes, no risk, nothing, everything is so convenient, it's not fun to watch. Even the whole conflict among humans didn't matter at all, in the end, it was an emotional obstacle that didn't change the plot at all.

And surprise surprise, the character that doesn't do anything was convenient to the plot because sure why not, at least it was an established character that felt important and not just a random background character, right?

I wanna take this show seriously, but I can't, this season compared to the first feels like a joke, I can't help but treat it like one, and the ending of this episode is such a great example: the antagonists lure in the protagonists for a final confrontation that will be the climax, perfect, the protagonists can finally stop fucking around and actually have a goal, but this is a hard task that they don't know how to overcome, perfect, just like the first season, overcoming a problem they know nothing about, but no, why would we have an interesting climax, let's just give the protagonists a fucking guide on how to infiltrate the big evil place, nice job writing, I almost felt like this was worth watching.

And even tho they have the equivalent to a game guide to beat the final boss, the loyal rational dude is the one that betrays them, what in the actual hell, the psycho girl was a much more volatile character, why wasn't she the one betraying them, that would be a more fitting development than "dumb bitch is evolving, dumb bitch just learned empathy".

I honestly don't know what I'm watching at this point. Season 2 is to Season 1 what Hunt down the Freeman is to the Half-Life games.

There are 2 episodes left according to MAL, I'm gonna watch them of course, the ship has already gone down, but I want to see how much deeper it sinks.

Purpose.

 This blog exists for me to be able to share my opinions and thoughts about the media I consume in a collected and organized way. On this blog, I will be sharing my experiences mostly with videogames and anime, but also with movies, series, books, and whatever else I find worth talking about.

 I will appreciate it if you leave comments with your opinions as well. Tell me what you agree and disagree with, what you think I missed and should have mentioned in each review, I'm open to criticism but do keep in mind not everything I say is factual nor do I want it to sound factual, sometimes I will be generalizing, hyperbolizing or just giving my opinion, I will try to be explicit at all times with what I say as to not generate any misinterpretation and create any posterior animosity.

 The bottom line is, this blog exists for me to explain my opinion, my ratings, and my feelings about what I experience when I consume these pieces of media, my intention is not to be controversial, aggressive, disrespectful, or share misinformation, please keep that in mind.

 I would like to conclude this by requesting you to send me suggestions of things to review. I already am working on some that I find worth explaining my opinion on, but I would love to know what you wanna read about first. Independent of the fact if I have watched/played/read what you suggested I will probably have to go through it again anyway to make sure I have a fresh memory about it as to avoid saying something wrong.

 Hope you stick around and read what I have to say.

Sincerely,

Spoon

How I evaluate and score things.