Volumes 6 through 8 of Silent Mobius is where the shit really hits the fan. For the past 5 volumes, the fight between the AMP and the Lucifer Hawk has been pretty conventional. The Lucifer Hawk launch a terror mission, AMP fights back. Starting lightly with volume 5, but more predominantly with 6-8, the Lucifer Hawks start directly taking the fight to AMP.
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Johnny Mnemonic is a very flawed film. It’s not a garbage film that other aspiring cyberpunk movies from this time can be, but it is a movie that significantly stumbles in its execution. That said, there are chunks of this movie that help make it still a pretty enjoyable film.
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We go visit Kasta, and get a Knight Orb to retrain Durgan to Knight.
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After returning to town, we level up and prepare for the next run.
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We have a one-off issue as Killer Croc goes for a rematch against Bane.
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We end up flubbing disarming some traps, and then have to flee an encounter before returning to town.
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We reach the Third Crystal and learn how the Flash happened.
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Studio Trigger’s more recent fare is interesting from a critical standpoint because it’s very clear that they are a studio that does not shy away from being political and generally attempting to be progressive. They’re also a studio who, rather than directly addressing Japanese politics, tends to address their narratives through the lens of American politics, often through the X-Men books, which means that due to their distance from American politics, they can stumble into some rakes that are otherwise avoidable, and BNA: Brave New Animal is a great example of this.
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Apparently Kazuo Koike’s manga is one of those edge cases where a creator’s manga adapts to the screen better in live-action than in animation. Koike’s anime track record includes the infamous Mad Bull 34 and Crying Freeman, while his live action adaptations include such classics as Lone Wolf & Cub, and the film I’m reviewing today – Lady Snowblood.
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We reach the second crystal and learn Durgan’s backstory.
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We continue on our way to the second Memory Crystal.
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We have almost finished Year 8 of Nintendo Power, with a fairly lean issue.
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We fight an optional boss to open up a portal back down to B8.
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We return to the waterfall level to investigate an area we unlocked.
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X-Men comic events tend to not be small, and also tend to shake up the whole line to very dramatic degrees. Fall of the Mutants set up the Australia Arc and ultimately lead to that team going through the Siege Perilous. Inferno killed off Madeline Pryor, de-aged Illyana Rasputin, and sent Nathan Summers into the future to become Cable. X-ecutioner’s Song unleashed the Legacy Virus. And the most recent one of these has been X of Swords.
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I like Shadowrun a lot – it was the second tabletop RPG I ever played and my first cyberpunk RPG. I also know it’s clunky in a lot of respects. So, when I learned about Sprawlrunners about a more fast-moving way to run a Shadowrun-like game, using the new edition of the Savage Worlds I decided to pick it up.
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I recently picked up the corebook for Cyberpunk Red, and have read through the whole book. I haven’t done anything with the rules yet, so I can’t speak to those. However, I do have some thoughts about the setting, particularly the changes in the Time of the Red.
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There are some YA novels that I have read that feel like I’m reading an anime. This is, in part, because some of the light novels that have been adapted to anime were aimed for YA audiences. The Epic Crush of Genie Lo is an YA novel that definitely fits that concept, though one with some very different and unique narrative hooks because of the point of view character and setting that make it really worth your while (and makes me wish it would get turned into an animated series).
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A few quick updates on Breaking Down The Knightfall Saga, and how I intend to cover Cyberpunk 2077.
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Ghost of Tsushima was the last game I beat in 2020 – I completed the game on New Year’s Eve on a launch PS4, and in spite of that console’s age, Tsushima is a title that looks and plays beautifully.
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A long time back I reviewed Smiley’s People. At the time I’d seen the previous series – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – but I’d never gotten around to reviewing it. With the show having come out on Blu-Ray and being available through Netflix on-disk, and having seen the film a while back, I figured it was about time to revisit it.
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Volumes 8-11 of Knights of Sidonia are where Nihei steps firmly into New Battlestar Galactica Territory. We had a bit of that in the earlier volumes, but here there’s the level of internal political dissension I associate with that show.
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As part of this COVID-19 world, I’ve been trying to get through some of the manga titles on my reading list. One of the ones I’ve been working on is Kia Asamiya’s urban fantasy Cyberpunk opus, Silent Mobius.
(Note: For the purposes of this review I am reading the Viz Media release – the Udon release is incomplete, and the Manga Planet release hasn’t come out yet).
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There have been varying attempts in the past to tell dramatic and mature stories with puppets. The works of Gerry Anderson are great examples of this. Well, it turns out there’s a tradition of these kind of stories in Taiwan and china, through glove puppetry. We got a real great example of this a few years ago with the Taiwanese and Japanese co-production, Thunderbolt Fantasy.
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