YEAR END LIST: ANIME (Winter)

Yes, it's time for those year-end lists that no one actually reads!

My first four will cover anime, split into seasons. Instead of rating them up to a top pick, I'll merely post the ones I enjoyed and provide some commentary. I watched a fair few series this year...

WINTER 2017

SAGA OF TANYA THE EVIL

This comes as no surprise to those who know me, but putting Aoi Yuuki into anything as a VA is a quick way to ensure I'll watch it. A lot of people describe this series as 'Magical Loli Hitler' and they're not wrong. You can argue it as a deconstruction of the Magical Girl archetype, but taken to a different place than something like Madoka Magica. There's a strong existentialist theme as Tanya conducts her one-loli war against God, revelling in every cruelty she can inflict upon the way.

SCUM'S WISH

A romance with a dark twist. There's a strong psychological element to this show, whose premise revolves around the two primary characters engaging in a relationship to fill the void left by those they desire being unattainable. The characters make a lot of morally questionable decisions on the whole, and often revel in the hurt and anguish they cause. But there's a strong undercurrent of personal growth for the main character as well, which I enjoyed.

GABRIEL DROPOUT

The meme anime of Winter 2017. I enjoy wacky comedies, and this one was pretty crazy. The premise of angels and devils coexisting with humanity isn't really new, but the reversal of roles for the characters was quite fun and interesting. And of course, Satania. That character made the show greater than maybe it had a right to. Of course, Gabriel herself paints an accurate picture of a lazy gamer... Gotta bust that butt for microtransactions.

KONOSUBA SEASON 2

Gabriel DropOut may have been funny, but KonoSuba was legitimately side-splitting. Unfortunately as is often the case, Season 2 wasn't as good as Season 1, but it was still a very high-tier romp, with gag after gag being thrown at the viewer and nary a moment of let-up. The animation itself is famously awful and gimpy, but that's part of the appeal. It's absolutely silly and knows it. And that's why we love it. Fun fact: spamming Turn Undead is love, spamming Turn Undead is life.

MISS KOBAYASHI'S DRAGON MAID

The other meme anime of the season. It's much more slice-of-life than it is comedy, but the fish-out-of-water vibe for the dragons, as well as the ensuing hijinks that they get into made it a fun watch. Fafnir's dour, hostile view towards humans on that first phonecall was what sold me. There was also a strong theme of personal development among the cast, which is always welcome.

GAME REVIEW - Doki Doki Literature Club

I have SEVERELY neglected this blog over the last year. Whoops. There's, as always, a year-end list coming shortly, but for now, let's kick off the review foray with the current hot-ticket game, Doki Doki Literature Club. Please note that this review will contain UNMARKED SPOILERS so don't come bitching to me if you read this and then ruin the game for yourself.

First thing to address: this game comes with a LOT of health warnings. Like, a freaking shit-ton of them. And considering how cutesy the visuals are, how absolutely moe it presents itself, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's another dating sim visual novel among a heavily saturated genre. On boot, it categorically tells you not to play the game if you suffer severe depression or have any one of several mental health triggers. Somewhat concerning, but OK, sure.

One thing you immediately notice is how good this game looks. Yeah, the characters are sprite-based and the backgrounds static (there are only a very few instances of any tangible animation in this game at all), but everything is so well-drawn, so clean, that it adds together to a very visually appealing game. The characters are expressive, having a large number of reactions programmed in that means you're never left wondering what they think about a given scenario.

So why all the health warnings?

Well, to the initial part of a run through, it doesn't really seem like there's a reason. The story is relatively basic, where your childhood best friend who has a crush on you invites you to join their club which just so happens to be full of cute girls and not bespectacled D&D nerds. Somehow. And situations are created whereby you attempt to woo one of the girls. So far, so predictable. But then just before the second act drops, said best friend reveals they have crippling depression, and shortly thereafter hangs themselves. Oh, and you find their body. And it comes from so far out of nowhere that it's akin to standing next to Iron Tager when he has fifty meter and you're in a grabbable state.

From there, the fuckery begins. And fuckery is very much the right word. The game resets, except in the very early scenes it glitches heavily to the point that it erases your childhood best friend entirely. Not only from the game, but from the game's character folder. The game actively adds and deletes elements from the folder you run it from. And the way it's done is creepy as fuck, as though the game itself is toying with you. The constant tearing down of the fourth wall makes the game very unsettling to play in Act 2, especially when the big reveal happens and the reason for all the fuckery is revealed.

Considering that, per the Fan Pack (I completed the game via free to play and enjoyed it so much I bought the fan pack to support the developers) it's a parody of the genre, it comes over more as an existential horror with elements borrowed from Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. The content warnings are VERY well deserved. And in terms of how the game pans out, it's incredibly well-written.

For the fact that it's four to five hours long at most (a few more more if you want all three endings), can be acquired through a legitimate free download, and is an active parody of a genre rather than a love letter to said genre, it's probably the best game released this year that I've played. And I'd thoroughly recommend that everyone write their way into Monika's heart at least once. Just Monika. Just Monika...

10/10

YEAR END LIST - 2016

MUSIC

2016 was a pretty good year for music overall. We had a lot of strong releases, which made choosing a year end list and narrowing it down to a top five pretty tricky.

5. The Devin Townsend Project - Transcendence

In truth (heh) I was expecting this album to place higher on my list. Devin Townsend has been on something of a predictable tangent since he released Epicloud, with Sky Blue and now Transcendence following the very reverb-y, open vibe. This new album is notably heavier on the prog influences than Sky Blue (which was more of a pop album than anything) and does feature a relatively diverse selection of songs. The drumming, especially, gets much more aggressive on this disc than we're used to with recent DTP outings. Unfortunately it's hampered by a few songs that don't really go anywhere or outstay their welcome (Failure, Higher), but overall it's a solid album that's well worth a listen.

4. Haruka Chisuga - TRY!

This album managed to sneak in right at the end of the year (I got the disc in the post somewhere around the 18th or 19th of December). 2016 was certainly the year of j-pop for me, where a chance encounter on Spotify whilst finishing my novel opened me to the world of sugoi, sweet melodies and colourful album art. This one came to me via the anime of The Asterisk War, and where this album is strong is how diverse the song selection is. There are soft, slow songs (Momokyunsodo, Corolla), energetic and upbeat numbers (Anata no Haruka-san, Honto no Koe wo Anata Na Azuke Taku Te), and enough variation in style to keep you interested throughout, ranging from technopop to 80's Astley and through to hard rock. The best thing? The song that brought me here, Ai no Uta -words of love- isn't even the best song on the album. And it doesn't dip in quality for the entire runtime, which is a little over an hour. Impressive, especially for a debut.

3. Sabaton - The Last Stand

You know what you get when you buy a Sabaton album. Cheese, cheese and more cheese. You know it, I know it, and the band knows it. So when Sabaton gave us an album that manages to top Carolus Rex, I was of course somewhat surprised. They've honed the direction Heroes was headed in to the point where every song makes sense. Gone, by and large, are the power ballads, replaced instead with songs that bear more of a marching pace. For the main, it's a relatively fast paced album, in the same vein that Call to Arms was. It also carries some of their best and catchiest work yet, such as Rorke's Drift, Shiroyama and Blood of Bannockburn.

2. Black Crown Initiate - Selves We Cannot Forgive

What? Black Crown Initiate released an album and it didn't make the top spot!? Unfortunately not, but that's no slur on this disc, which is far and away the top metal disc 2016 has produced. Shorter in terms of both overall length and how many tracks there are than The Wreckage of Stars, Selves We Cannot Forgive instead hits with more complex songwriting, a greater tendency towards progressive noodling and tracks that are on average pretty long. The band have the chops to actually noodle without it becoming trite, and everyone is proficient enough that their showcase elements within the songs never feel out of place. Highlights for me were Again and Selves We Cannot Forgive, but realistically choosing favourite tracks here would be silly because it's all so goddamn good. Oh, and they can nail this stuff live. FLAWLESSLY. Come back to the UK soon, please?

1. Perfume - Cosmic Explorer

Well, well. Perfume are a band that I found during the aforementioned Spotify session. I've always had a soft spot for j-pop songs, but the level of energy this group carried in theirs sucked me right in and I wound up with the entire discography. Compared to their last disc, Level3, this album is more mid-tempo, with less focus on the dense electronic elements that its predecessor bore - it's much more like JPN instrumentally. It also feels much more spacious (which is fitting, given that a theme on this disc is that of space, both physical and metaphorical). And whilst it doesn't have the amazing front half that Level3 had, it balances this by having a much more consistent runtime (Level3 sort of petered out near the end). Highlights would include Cosmic Explorer, STORY, FLASH, Pick Me Up... But really, when it's all this good, trying to pick favourites among the tracks is a little futile. A fantastic disc that well deserves my top spot for the year.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS; Nightkin, Oath of Elucidation, Killswitch Engage, Incarnate, Fallujah, Dreamless, Babymetal, Metal Resistance

GAMES

I've not played a huge amount of new games this year, so this segment will cover ones that I've played for the first time this year as well. The listed consoles are the ones I've played the games on - some of them appear on multiple platforms, obviously.

5. Halo: The Master Chief Collection (2014, Xbox One)

I came late to this one but had a code gifted me. Nostalgia is a hell of a thing, and with the Halo games being a great excuse to revisit some old classics. Halo 1 and 2 have both received a nice little makeover, and allow you to flit between the classic visuals and the remastered ones on the fly. The co-op mode is as fun as ever, and with Halo 4 you get access to the full Spartan Ops DLC missions. It's definitely a game to play with friends, but if you enjoyed the campaign enough, there's no reason not to sit down and blast your way through it again. Oh, and if you want something REALLY stupid... Get a Halo 2 playthrough on, set all the physics skulls on and get to it.

4. Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth (2015, PS4)

I had a copy of this passed to me after umming and aahing about buying said copy. Beyond that it was an RPG, I had no expectation of what the game would entail, what sort of systems it would use, and so forth. I was pleasantly surprised to find a nice, meaty JRPG with a solid, Pokémon-esque battle system and a decent story to occupy 60 hours of my time. The colourful, almost cel-shaded artwork means that it looks beautiful, and the soundtrack adds to the overall quality. Whilst the translation in the subtitles is occasionally slightly questionable and lacks proper punctuation here and there, it's not enough to detract from the game. I still need to do the DLC side-quests at some stage...

3. BlazBlue: Revolution Reburning (Android)

We were expecting Centralfiction to drop this year (which it did), but to get a second BlazBlue game in the same year was just icing on the cake. Unlike the main series which follows the standardised 1v1 fighter model, Revolution Reburning (RR for short) is a stats-based progressional mobile game following a free-to-play model and containing in-app purchases. You beat strongholds, collect items and resources to power up your heroes and unlock new ones, and the further in you get, the more game modes you unlock. It would probably lose its lustre quickly except for the fact that it's extremely good fun, the controls are responsive and intuitive and there's a massive social element to the game which increases the replay value. But fuck Rachel in Elite 50. Seriously, fuck her. So. Much.

2. BlazBlue: Centralfiction (PS4)

Wait, Centralfiction isn't my number one pick for the year!? What sorcery is this!? Unfortunately for BBCF, there was another game that I simply enjoyed more - but that's no slight on Mori's final entry to the series. If you've played Chronophantasma, you'll be getting more of the same, but refined into its ultimate incarnation. The core mechanics are as they've always been, the burst and overdrive system have received some tweaks in the Active Flow mechanic and Exceed Accel, an overdrive-only super, all existing characters have been rebalanced and had certain moves removed or added (sometimes both), and overall the game seems notably faster (except for you, Tager). The training mode also takes the input monitor system from the vastly inferior Guilty Gear, allowing you to track and refine your inputs in training. It's let down by the lack of a dub which renders the flavour text (which isn't subtitled) meaningless, but with the core gameplay and story mode being so damn good, it's more a niggle than a full complaint.

1. Overwatch (Xbox One)

owo, what's this? I had been quite derisive towards Overwatch on release, namely because people were describing it as similar to Team Fortress 2, one of the worst games I've had the misfortune of playing. So when a free weekend rolled around and my mates persuaded me to get on for a few games, I was happy to learn that I was wrong. Where Overwatch differs from TF2 is that it's actually fun - though occasionally infuriating (Genji, get on the fucking payload already, and no, you don't need healing) - and very rewarding when played in a group. One major plus point is that Blizzard are not just receptive to fan ideas regarding content, but are constantly patching the game for balance, new maps, additional or seasonal content. You get a LOT for what you pay for, and all of the updates and seasonal content that's released is free of charge. Glorious. With the replay value consistently boosted, it was a very easy pick for GOTY 2016 from me.

BOOKS

As I've not read much that was released in 2016 itself, this section will cover anything that I've read during the course of the year, including manga.

4. BlazBlue: Remix Heart

Yes, yes, we're all aware by now how huge my weeb boner is for BlazBlue. I actually read Remix Heart one day purely from curiosity and a little boredom. Whilst it's very heavy on the fanservice, it's also bloody funny, and relatively well written. Where I really enjoyed it was in the additional backstory for the characters involved, and in setting up the character I now main in the games (she's not OP, fuck off).

3. Kate Elliott - Crown of Stars

I picked this series up on a recommendation from the guys over at Best Fantasy Books. It's very much of its time - late 90s fantasy with a focus on specific characters and regional politics. What I liked about this is it's also very much proto-grimdark - there are constant themes of threat and danger to the main characters, especially Liath, and up until the series' halfway point there's very little that can be done to allay those dangers. Hugh is easily the most well-written villain I've read in fantasy thus far, and the main storyline is unveiled slowly and in line with the secondary storylines. It's incredibly well written for the author's first foray into the genre. Even on book 4, where a common complaint is that it got sloggy, I never felt as though I needed to stop.

2. Steven Erikson - Fall of Light

Erikson is firmly nestled into the god-tier of fantasy authors at this stage, and with good reason. The only author who can keep pace with him is Bakker. Erikson's second series, Kharkanas, focuses on the schism within the Tiste, explaining how they became Edur, Andii and Liosan. One common complaint with this book among those who don't quite get what Erikson is trying to convey with this series (henceforth the Unready) is that it's extremely heavy on the philosophy, and relatively mild on the action. What we have to consider is that it's a story being told by one philosophical poet to another (Blind Gallan to Fisher Kel Tath in turn), and focuses on a race who are so profoundly philosophical that their entire culture revolves around it. I'm very much looking forward to seeing how this one wraps up.

1. R. Scott Bakker - The Aspect Emperor Series

R. Scott Bakker's first trilogy, The Prince of Nothing, was good. Very much the work of a nascent author finding himself, and occasionally bowing beneath the weight of its ideas (and there are a LOT of those). However, Bakker seriously stepped his game up for the second series in his Second Apocalypse mega-series, with a tense storyline following the characters present in the first trilogy - Achamian, Esmenet and Kellhus - across their various quests. Kellhus seeks to use Men to defeat the Inchoroi once and for all, and will deceive and manipulate all that it takes to achieve that. Achamian seeks proof with which to denounce Kellhus. And Esmenet tries - mostly in vain - to hold both her family and her empire together whilst Kellhus wages war. It's extremely dark, heavily philosophical and dense enough that the Unready will probably falter partway through. But there are no weepers on the slog.

ANIME - UNMARKED SPOILERS BELOW!

5. Magical Girl Raising Project / Keijo!!!!!!!!

 

I couldn't actually pick between these two, so they're going in as joint fifth. I'll break them down individually below:

MGRP initially looked sort of cutesy, but who doesn't like seeing Lolis getting killed (especially ELITE FUCKING 50 RACHEL, FUCK YOU)? It starts off a little slowly for the first couple of episodes, but quickly sets up as a dark, psychological pseudo-horror that explores what people would do if given power and then forced into a Battle Royale situation. And it doesn't let up with the nasty. Some of the deaths are incredibly hard to watch (Nana's reaction to Winterprison, and her subsequent suicide by hanging spring to mind), and the main character's subsequent mental breakdown is pretty harrowing, especially when they find out why everyone has been killing each other.
Keijo!!!!!!!!, on the other hand, is JoJo with ass and titties. Literally. It's utterly ridiculous, completely stupid and absolutely brilliant for it. The fact that it caused SJW trolls to get butthurt is simply a bonus. Whilst on the surface it seems like pointless fanservice (and yes, there are elements of that), beneath that thin crust is a show that's aware of exactly how daft it is, plays with that knowledge and provides a good watch for that fact (seriously, we have special moves such as the Vacuum Butt Cannon, Shoryu-cans and Titty Hypnosis). I'm hoping they leave it at just the 12-ep run as any more may cause it to outstay its welcome.

4. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Part IV: Diamond is Unbreakable

It took a while for this one to get good. About half of the season's runtime, in fact. It doesn't help that the main protagonist of this arc is something of a dick, but then it was another that I persevered with. DIU lacks the immediacy of Stardust Crusaders, and because of the general lack of Joseph, isn't nearly as entertaining as Battle Tendency, but by the time main villain Yoshikage Kira rolls in, things start to get good very fast. He brings an entire level of creepy to the franchise that no one else has managed, and from that point on, DIU became a must-watch weekly.

3. Alderamin on the Sky

I actually chanced upon this one during a trawl through Crunchyroll to see if there was anything good that I fancied watching. I'm a sucker for military themes, and one thing I really enjoyed about this is that, whilst it's ostensibly a show that revolves around main character Ikta Solork's tactical prowess, it refuses to shy away from the reality that war is hell. Whilst none of the main characters cop it during the show's 13-episode season, a lot of the secondary characters do, and often on-screen at that. But it's when the show is revealing an aftermath to the protagonists, and you get no visual representation of what happened beyond the resulting corpses, that you know it's gotten really good.

2. Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World

A mate at work recommended this to me, and I got on board about 10 episodes in. Like MGRP, Re:Zero takes existing genres and tropes (namely the MMO / character-gets-sucked-into-a-game genre) and turns it on its head. Whilst initially the fact he can respawn at checkpoints proves a source of amusement and at time arrogance for Subaru, once he's died a few too many times - and become attached to other characters who also die - we go hard into the realm of psychological horror. He event winds up shutting down entirely for a while once Betelgeuse enters the scene. And on that note, Betelgeuse. What a diligent, slothful chap. Love it.

1. Izetta: The Last Witch

This show. This FUCKING show. As someone who watches, reads and plays a LOT of stuff, it's very, very rare to find something that can blindside me every time I make a prediction as to what will happen next. Much like Alderamin, one of the central themes in Izetta is war and the impact war has on people. And because war is hell, again, a lot of characters are going to die. The first episode sucked me right in, and never before has an anime left me fretting anxiously for the next episode. Hell, by the end last episode, I was pretty much in tears. And when the big reveal at the end came (which, again, I didn't see coming), I had to sit and collect myself for about five minutes before I could even move. Thus far, this is the sole series in which I've never once skipped through the OP.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS: Flying Witch. Berserk

DISAPPOINTMENTS

Let's keep this section brief because I've already written elsewhere about why these particular things were huge disappointments to me. Again, they may not be from 2016 specifically, but I'll have played / read / seen them this year.

5. Guilty Gear XRD: Revelator - plays like a vastly inferior BlazBlue, doesn't have the system mechanics or character balance to match the hype.
4. Sword Art Online - or 'how to go nowhere at any pace'.
3. The Name of the Wind - The Epitome of Average, more like.
2. Doom 4 - overrated and fails to deliver.
1. The Way of Kings - just awful.

ALBUM REVIEW - Perfume - 'Cosmic Explorer'

Sometimes a man needs to take a little break from metal. Sometimes that break takes him a hard left into completely uncharted territory. Such is the position I found myself in semi-recently (around when I completed my first novel, Incarnate). That hard left took me into the realm of J-Pop, a genre I'd dabbled in before. And it wound up here, with the fifth Perfume album.



Now for those who are unfamiliar, or staring at the screen right now with an expression that says 'what is Maark smoking right now?', Perfume are a vocal group whose music is very much the opposite of my usual fare, involving choreography, light shows, and lots of studio production.

As with most of their albums, this disc starts with an instrumental piece which actually reminded me a lot of the Baby Metroid theme from Metroid II. Following this, the title track comes in, and it's surprisingly slow compared to the opening pieces of the rest of the band's discography. It actually signalled another slight directional shift when I first heard it, as most of their album have borne. The overall sound of this album is perhaps more mature than their earlier releases, and overall it works out pretty well (you can look at the sound of this disc as a fusion of JPN and Level3).

We move on through Miracle Worker and Next Stage With YOU, both relatively soft pieces, both with a focus on repeated vocal lines. FLASH bears more instrumental focus, though again the main catch is in the sublime vocal melodies.  I actually felt that STORY is a bit of a sore thumb - whilst the band have used discordance in songs before (and pretty successfully), the tonality on STORY feels more as though it belongs on a Prodigy album, with the odd marching cadence and aggressive, slightly off-key synths. Most of the other songs flow nicely into one another - my particular favourite being the late track Pick Me Up, which I would probably say epitomises where this band are at present.

There are flaws present, however. The production is foremost - there are moments where clipping is very evident on the vocal tracks (Cosmic Explorer and Miracle Worker spring to mind), and there are more vocal lines in English than on previous releases which leads to occasional mispronunciations (stage as stagey and refrain as... well, the predictable jumble of r and l happens, so let's leave it there). I'd guess that the increased crossover of language is actually in part due to the fact they're starting to break out of Asia, so we can overlook that.

The flaws don't really detract from the overall enjoyment of the album, however, and that's key. It's overall a very solid addition to their catalogue - not my favourite of their discs as of yet, but that's liable to change in the future. One slightly duff track and occasionally questionable production were the only issues I could really find to warrant marking it down, but it still gets an 8/10.

ALBUM REVIEW: Soilwork - "The Ride Majestic"

There are some bands who you can reliably expect to sound a certain way with a new release. Lamb of God, Iron Maiden, Rammstein, Neaera... Each has a core sound rarely deviated from. So it is for Soilwork, as they release disc number ten.

So, the real question comes down to this: Is the ride majestic? The answer is yes, yes it is. Shiny and chrome, and majestic. Here is an album that grabs you by the throat, pausing only briefly to allow you a breath before the mauling resumes. We have here harmonised dual leads (that undeniable Goteborg Sound), alternating gruff and melodic vocals, occasional keyboard flourishes, and the ever-ridiculous drumming of Dirk Verbeuren, the Nicest Guy in Metal.

A lot of bands try and claim that their new album is 'our most melodic' (see: more autotune) whilst simultaneously being 'our most brutal' (see: more breakdowns). So, for Soilwork to actually deliver on such a promise (whilst never explicitly stating it, to my knowledge) is impressive. The disc takes what they started on The Living Infinite, focuses it into 11 (13 on the special edition) songs, adds a liberal dash of A Predator's Portrait and Natural Born Chaos, and then sucks you into the maelstrom.

The title track is a pretty succint summation of the album; it has an insanely catchy lead hook and massive chorus, whilst never feeling trite. Speed is on fire, his vocals sounding better than ever on all fronts. Sylvain Coudret and David Andersson's guitar work is as ever an excellent continuation of the Soilwork sound, occasionally delving into somewhat calmer waters (Death in General, All Along Ehcoing Paths). We also have some intense brutality (Alight in the Aftermath, The Phantom) the latter of which is hearkening back to their Chainheart era material. It's very easily the band's most complete release, with no filler tracks, no wasted moments.

The main criticism we have to level here is that Sven Karlsson's keys are buried in the mix, for the most part. They come to the fore here and there, but it's much less pronounced that on the last few releases. Overall, it's a minor quibble however, and it doesn't necessarily hurt the flow of the songs at all.

This is easily a 10/10 effort, and I can foresee major rotation through my playlists for the next few months. Now for them to announce a UK tour, eh?