Issue #334: A Long Intro Segment I Split Into Parts
It surprises me how much I am a creature of habit. It probably doesn’t surprise you, considering I have been writing this newsletter for however long. But I was reflecting, recently, on some of the stuff I used to do when going back to Florida to visit my family. When my dad was alive, I would stay at his place. And I always had stuff shipped there that I wouldn’t usually buy for myself and didn’t want to bring with me on the plane. For a good few years, probably 2017 until 2019, I would have hot sauce shipped to my dad’s house around the holiday season.
I guess it felt like a festive thing to sample new sauces. My dad even tried Hot Ones’ The Last Dab — that was 2018.
But in 2019 we tried a sauce we both really enjoyed: Hell Fire Detroits Habanero sauce.
Because of the perceived difficulties of returning with bottles of liquid on a plane, this sauce did not make it home with me. I think my dad used it a bit, but I know there was still some left over when we cleaned out the fridge. Anyway, I hadn’t had it, or any Hell Fire Detroit sauces, since then. Until last week. I ordered a few different bottles, the habanero included, to my house recently. The ingredients list for these sauces is always the same, just whatever the hot pepper is in question plus apple cider vinegar, distilled water, olive oil, and sea salt. I think it would not take a genius to realize that this is an extremely good method for making a hot sauce — just combining peppers with the bare minimum to make it a sauce. But I liked their sauce, the habanero one especially, way way more than I remember. My point is only this: Hell Fire Detroit Habanero hot sauce is highly recommended.
Revisiting Dragon Quest III
This week I had some time to revisit one of my favorite games of all time, Dragon Quest III (1988). I played this game as a Gameboy Color release in 2001, as Dragon Warrior III. I never had the opportunity to play the NES version, I only played the original Dragon Quest on my friend’s Nintendo. I fired up the GBC version and it was just like I remembered. Reasonable, refined 8-bit graphics.
It felt good, even natural coming back to the game after so long. The visual style is only slightly improved over the NES version, after all. But I’ve also never played the SNES remake which will serve as the basis for the upcoming Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake due out later this year. And man, that game is beautiful.
I’m surprised despite having poured so many hours into the GBC version that I never tried the SNES version. The upgraded visuals are unreal. The quality of life aspects of the game are more or less the same — the GBC version is actually a graphically downgraded (or restored, depending on how you look at it) port of the DQIII SNES. But even though the game looks so familiar, it’s great playing it with this fresh (to me) coat of paint and is a fun prelude to the HD-2D release.
Adventures with Gamera
Speaking of things that feel familiar but are actually new to me, I had my first foray into the Gamera films in an appropriate late night binge of a totally random assortment. I watched these four, the most recent on the left and the first watch on the right.
As a text list:
Gamera 2: Attack of Legion (1996)
Gamera vs. Guiron (1969)
Gamera vs. Gyaos (1967)
Gamera vs. Viras (1968)
How did this happen? Well, I am familiar enough with Gamera that before this weekend, I would have mistakenly told you I’d seen one or two of the movies from the series. But after watching them, I’m sure I haven’t. Still, I have thought of him as an iconic kaiju for as long as I can remember. Even in 1999, I recognized Bowser’s Up B special attack in Super Smash Bros. as an allusion to Gamera’s flight.
Strangely enough, the Smash Wiki article on the move, “Whirling Fortress,” doesn’t mention Gamera. Maybe some enterprising GamePro or Nintendo Power columnist brought it up in one of their guides. Or maybe I recognized it from Gamera’s appearance in Dragon Ball (1986).
At any rate, seeing Gamera 2 was a revelation. It’s funny enough to begin a overdue journey with these films with one of the Heisei era remakes. The movie came out in 96, and it feels like it. The special effects and the quality of the suits are very evocative of Japanese tokusatsu TV, but that doesn’t make the whole affair any less cinematic.
I threw the movie on at random before bed assuming it would feel familiar enough to put me to sleep. I was dead wrong. I couldn’t look away and ran the entire thing.
At this point, my streaming service of choice was prompting me to watch Gamera vs. Guiron. No way, I was going to bed. But I couldn’t sleep, so I got back up and figured, hey, another Gamera movie, what’s the harm. This was the one where it really dawned on me, I had definitely never seen any of these before, even in passing. Gamera’s iconic spinning jet flight was familiar as an idea, but I couldn’t have imagine how cool it actually looks on screen in those original Showa films.
Gamera vs. Guiron, I think, is another relative outlier for kaiju films. A lot of it takes place on an alien planet with bizarre inhabitants. The movie is full of tonal dissonance with child characters thrown into gruesome danger — that’s actually pretty typical of what I’ve seen so far. But their exploration of the sparse landscape where the conflict between Gamera and Guiron is staged feels surreal and carnivalesque, the irrationality of dream logic moving the plot from event to event. The planet Terra is part Oz, Pleasure Island, and part throwaway Star Trek (1966) locale.
My TV was intent on getting me to watch yet another Gamera film, this time suggesting Gamera vs. Gyaos. This one is, perhaps, the most archetypal of kaiju films. The conflict is on Earth, Gamera has a host of human supporters, and there are all kinds of rich sociopolitical subtexts in a relatively complex plot involving property value and development plans. It doesn’t quite outshine vs. Guiron for me, but I think that’s a minority report.
That was the end of my marathon, but I finally seized my destiny from the algorithmic movie suggestions and chose to watch Gamera vs. Viras as my next entry. There were a couple reasons for this. Noriaki Yuasa directed vs. Guiron and vs. Gyaos. His touch seemed to me to be both ambitious and extremely diverse in the way he approached these films. He also directed the original Gamera from 1965, but I wasn’t ready for that one yet. The next one he directed that I hadn’t watched yet was vs. Viras, which had the added bonus of involving space travel similar to vs. Guiron. And it delivered.
The alien antagonists really let Yuasa go wild. There are similar moments of absolute tonal incoherence as the children of the film are menaced by a guy who can detach his arm. The space ship design for the aliens is also incredible.
This leaves me with four Gamera films under my belt and an appetite to understand them better, as well as dive deep into the idiosyncrasies of the ones directed by Yuasa. Like I mentioned, it felt like a fitting way to experience the films. Exhausted, without full control of my facilities, the films put in front of me by some other agency (though vastly inferior to the actual agency of programmed film sequences). I am going to need to revisit the ones I watched overnight, but I think I’ll have seen the whole series before the end of the year.
Most Heterosexual Shounen Anime
I had the thrill of seeing Blue Lock The Movie - Episode Nagi - (2024) this weekend, a side story from the Blue Lock manga and anime series. Production studios seem to be experimenting with different types of films that break the predominant molds of anime series film: either non-canon stand alone story or recap film. While each mode has their heights, like Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might (1990) or Mobile Suit Gundam I (1981), I have enjoyed the version of theatrical serialized anime that actually relates to the broader plot. The most successful of these types of films has been Jujutsu Kaisen 0 (2021), not just the tenth highest grossing anime film of all time, but the tenth highest grossing Japanese film of all time. Among the films above it, four are from Studio Ghibli and two are from Makoto Shinkai. Jujutsu Kaisen 0 is adapted from canon manga material written by Jujutsu Kaisen (2018) author Gege Akutami. The studio released the film just as the protagonist, Yuta Okkotsu, became important to the weekly manga. Jujutsu Kaisen 0 is a true film in the sense that it wasn’t adapted (or recut) into a TV anime down the line. The highest grossing Japanese film of all time, Demon Slayer The Movie: Mugen Train (2020), is also a canon adaptation of Demon Slayer (2016) manga. Mugen Train, however, was then recut and aired on television, taking away a bit of the allure.
I don’t think Episode Nagi is going to get recut into an arc of the Blue Lock anime. It doesn’t progress the plot, but retreads the events of the TV series (or manga) from another perspective. Think Ender’s Game (1985) and Ender’s Shadow (1999). What makes it so good is that it leans into the cinematic possibility for Blue Lock, covering roughly the time frame of the first twelve episodes with fantastic pacing and great character development. Nagi gets a lot of attention in the later episodes of the series when he joins forces with Isagi Yoichi, but Episode Nagi shores up some of the relationships and motivations that make Nagi and Isagi’s relationship such a gut punch.
That gut punch is because Isagi interrupts an intimate friendship between Nagi and Reo Mikage. Although Blue Lock is not, ostensibly, a romance and thus avoids any explicit discussion of romantic or sexual interest, Nagi and Reo’s relationship could only be understood as “queerbaiting” if in fact the two characters are “supposed” to be straight.
Of course, authorial intention doesn’t really account for much. Any reasonable viewer or reader of Blue Lock, particularly Episode Nagi, would conclude that the two are gay. Episode Nagi goes through great lengths to show the pair in physically intimate, romantic scenarios. This is all to the point of tragedy — what else? — as Nagi abandons his connection with Reo in favor of playing soccer with Isagi. Unlike other sports manga and anime I enjoy, Blue Lock focuses more on these implicitly queer relationships (all the way to the bank). The connections among these characters are substantive, though, and soccer is a fine third term to disrupt the relationship as the aspiration toward greatness outweighs personal relationships.
I’m not sure Episode Nagi will be cracking the top grossing Japanese films of all time list, though I wouldn’t mind if it did. But in the United States, we are living in a golden era of theatrical anime. If you would have told me, even five years ago, that I would be watching a Blue Lock film, a Haikyu (2012) film, and Ghost in the Shell 2 (2004) within a month, there is no way I would have believed it. And yet, here we are. Episode Nagi is a throwback to the most “slashable,” bishounen centered anime with a reasonable (we are still talking about shounen anime here) emotional core. But this time you get a satisfying story in ninety minutes that enhances the viewing or reading experience of the main Blue Lock series. It sure as hell ain’t The First Slam Dunk (2022), but it’s pretty good.
Weekly Reading List
https://www.twitch.tv/gamesdonequick — The bi-annual speedrunning marathon, GDQ, is on right now. And I mean right now, if you are reading this in relative proximity to the time of publication. I watched a pretty interesting Live A Live (2022) run and a Balatro (2024) run. There is plenty more to come.
There is a Michael Jordan of Magic: the Gathering and his name is Kai Budde. In my brief time as a high level Magic competitor, Kai’s unbelievable run of Sunday success seemed totally out of reach even at the height of my playing career. And, certainly, in retrospect, even had I been one-thousand times better than my best as a player, even if I had managed to make day two of a Pro Tour even once, there is no way I would have even been able to string together anything even resembling Kai’s historic achievement.
Kai Budde has been honored by Wizards of the Coast and the Magic Pro Tour because of his incomparable streak of dominant wins. As Billy Jensen puts it in the announcement, “Kai won the Pro Tour seven times.” The next closest person to Kai has managed to string together four wins — there are two people, actually. But neither of them have managed to do it as consistently as Kai Budde. So, as of this weekend, the Magic: the Gathering Player of the Year Award is now the Kai Budde Player of the Year Award.
Kai is also dying, imminently, of terminal cancer. Jensen, again, says, “despite some ups and downs in his recovery process, recently things have taken a turn for the worst.” This announcement was delivered this past weekend at Pro Tour Modern Horizons III, a tournament where Kai was competing. Kai didn’t make day two, but he entered another Pro Tour Qualifier tournament that took place over the remainder of the weekend… and he won. Fellow Magic pro Gabriel Nassif commenting on Kai’s PTQ win reminds those who may have forgotten, “it is a Sunday after all.”
There is a surreal quality to watching Jensen’s announcement. The feeling that I get is that of watching someone attend their own funeral. If things are really as bad as I’m told, Kai Budde’s remaining time on the planet will be measured in months and not years. But more striking than Kai’s poised and composed acceptance of the honor of his name eternally marking competitive Magic is the fact that he is even there at all. Accepting the honor, Kai said a few words, among them, “I’ve had a great time playing Magic. I hope to show up to a few more tournaments, as much time as I have.”
More than his name on the Player of the Year trophy or his improbable winning streak, I think this is Kai’s most impressive achievement. It is, at least, to me, the one I find the most inspiring. He is playing at the highest level until he is physically incapable of doing it. That’s commitment.
Until next time.