Issue #332: The Boston Celtics Are Your NBA Champions
I’m a little under the weather today, so this is gonna be a short one. You can actually see, demonstrably thanks to my Oura ring, that I’ve been better.
But I’m not without topics to run through today. Of course, the biggest news (breaking since after I was more or less done with writing) is the Boston Celtics are your NBA champions! This is huge. Huge.
Look at this guy. Al Horford. He is the first Dominican player to ever raise the Larry O'Brien trophy. And he never lets us forget he’s doing it for the DR.
Just a beautiful thing.
Derrick White lost a tooth. Jaylen Brown won finals MVP. If anybody has Brown’s contact info, I got a good lead on a shoe deal for him. Payton Pritchard shot a dagger three buzzer beater at the half. As Sean Grande says, championships are won in moments.
My dad didn’t get to see this one, but he knew it was coming.
Adventures in Modern Horizons 3 Limited
I had a plan to write a whole segment on the new Magic: the Gathering set, Modern Horizons 3. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s true, I’ve done a lot of drafts. And it’s true, thanks to 17Lands.com every pick of every pack and every indignity I have suffered at the hands of bad RNG, superior opponent play skill, and poor decision making on my part is captured in perpetuity. There would be no shortage of things to write about. But I’m not convinced a majority of this audience wants to look at pictures that look like this:
And I’m not sure my painstaking narration would really help much either. If you understand Magic but are confused by what’s happening here, you are seeing the telegraphing of Wrath of the Skies by my opponent.
Suffice it to say, the set is fun. If you like Magic, I think you should take the opportunity to draft it. It’s not a perfect draft experience. There is one deck, the Eldrazi archetype, that seems to be far and away the best. But I haven’t found it too oppressive yet, even with the inferior Magic Arena draft experience. You might get a better sense of what the gameplay has to offer by watching this video:
I also have an Echoes of Eternity in my current draft deck I’ve been playing through over the past few days. I’m 3-2.
Sequel Addicts
The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024) is a reboot of a beloved 2008 horror movie without the obnoxious subtitle. Chapter 1 is a strict downgrade from its source material, however, with the intention to go the distance of a trilogy.
It’s not that Chapter 1 is a terrible movie on its own, but it is impossible — especially for me — not to relate it to the original. The terror of The Strangers is the absolute anonymity and inscrutability of the masked home invaders. The original film emphasizes this in its final moments. “Because you were home” is the climactic answer to “why are you doing this?” The film refuses logic, plot, and twists in favor of pure terror.
By contrast, Chapter 1 is the first of three films. The end result of the film is only minimally different, but they also revise the iconic line from the original film to “because you’re here.” That could be equally terrifying if Chapter 1 followed the logic of The Strangers. But so much of the film sets up side characters, a bizarre small town, and suggests that the identity of the strangers will eventually be revealed.
Embracing plot tension and mystery if this kind is exactly what a The Strangers movie should never do. Clearly, the snooze fest of Chapter 1 did not land with audiences. It remains to be seen whether this revision will be able to bring something of value to this style of story. As it stands, my suspicion is these films will only indulge the most obnoxious of wiki-updating movie plot sleuths.
What Makes Hell’s Paradise So Good?
Before writing Hell’s Paradise: Jigokuraku (2018), Yuji Kaku worked as an assistant to Tatsuki Fujimoto on Fire Punch (2016). If Fujimoto’s work, including Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man (2018), is known for anything, it is perhaps the ridiculously oppressive nihilism that pervades the texts. The vicissitudes of each Fujimoto’s plots seem too extreme to me for Weekly Shounen Jump, but both have been serialized through Shounen Jump+.
I’m not complaining. The extremity of Fujimoto is always thoughtful and thought provoking. His willingness to go where others fear to tread is what makes his work great, even if it turns one’s stomach at times. Kaku, in his career after being Fujimoto’s assistant, doesn’t fully embrace the dour tone of Fujimoto’s work. Hell’s Paradise is Game of Thrones (2011) dark, not Fire Punch dark. Characters you suspect might be important are killed off in an instant. The willingness to subject developed or well designed characters to death, climactic or anti-climactic, is one of the strengths of the manga.
Hell’s Paradise is a period piece, featuring a noble clan of samurai executioners who steward a gang of death row convicts to a mysterious island to search for an elixir — stop me if you’ve heard this one before — that grants eternal life. The shades of jidaigeki are welcome, but this is a “battle shounen” through and through. Kaku borrows liberally from Attack on Titan (2009) and Hunter x Hunter (1998), but it’s most important influence is The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896). The mysterious island where the elixir of life can be supposedly found is full of otherworldly vegetation and giant creatures.
The sense of going through the looking glass is a good one to convey for a manga of this kind. Fantastical historical revision is a refreshing direction for popular samurai manga. Hell’s Paradise is a fantastic manga, but its animated adaptation from MAPPA is also excellent. I can’t wait for the second season, though. I’m reading the manga til the end.
Weekly Reading List
Jaylen Brown, finals MVP, has taste.
Until next time.