Monday 27 December 2021

Frezno's Games Of The 2021 Thing!

Well, here we go again! The last blog post of 2021! Just think, a year ago I was in the weeds of finishing Symphogear, and now look at me! I'm... well, I'm still thinking about that show. I've got some bangers planned for 2022, and you'll probably see them as soon as the year turns over and we get all the holiday stuff back up in the attic. For now, before the year ends, we're here to talk about COMPUTER VIDEO GAMES! Admittedly I didn't play too many of those this year, but I played enough to make a list out of 'em! So let us do that, as we so annually do, right now, and start with...

Monday 6 December 2021

Doctor Who Series 13 First Impressions: Episode 6 (Flux Chapter Six: The Vanquishers)

Jesus Christ. Maybe it's just the fact that I woke up early and kinda fell asleep watching other stuff this morning, but for a solid minute there I just stared at this blank Notepad file wondering what in the hell to say. Even now I'm just rambling, but that at least is thematically relevant to what we got. The Vanquishers, the grand conclusion to the Epic Six Part Event that was Flux, calls to mind T.S. Eliot. This is the way Flux ends: a whimper disguised as a bang. A massive roller coaster ride of aliens and explosions and the threatened end of everything, all wearing the trappings of excitement and fun, but bringing me no real substansial joy. The story of the Chibnall era, I suppose. It once again has very little to say about anything beyond wrapping up itself, but that didn't piss me off as much as last time because it felt less lore-obsessed, if that makes sense. Let me try and dive in some more.

Monday 29 November 2021

Doctor Who Series 13 First Impressions: Episode 5 (Flux Chapter Five: Survivors Of The Flux)

Survivors Of The Flux? More like SURVIVORS OF THE FUCKING GARBAGE CHIBNALL ERA LORE BOMBS!


I did not enjoy this. I very much did not enjoy this. Given that it invokes, repeats, and doubles down on the Shocking Revelations Of The Timeless Children, it invites direct comparison with that particular episode. That episode, as your reminder, was a hot mess that made even a hot mess like The Rise Of Skywalker look good by comparison. They were both running on similar registers of Shocking Revelations About The Protagonist's Origins, and seemingly rejecting those origins at the end in favor of some other ideal the protagonist believed in strongly. At the time, I found The Timeless Children hilarious. Reaching So Bad It's Good levels, both in how brazen and unbelievable its sincerity was and the complete joke it made out of the Cybermen with stuff like "I want to turn the Cybermen into Just Robots" and the fucking Cyber Time Lords. It was funny. I was laughing. Other people weren't, and I respect that because I understand now. Survivors Of The Flux has aired, and I'm not laughing either. Okay, that's partially a lie, some of the Shocking Revelations got the laughs out of me, but in general I'm not laughing. This isn't funny. It's dire.

Monday 22 November 2021

Doctor Who Series 13 First Impressions: Episode 4 (Flux Chapter Four: Village Of The Angels)

Two kind of gonzo episodes of Doctor Who in a row in the Chibnall era? What, did they hear me or something? We're 2/3rds of the way through Flux now, and that dreaded shit I keep mentioning is starting to come into play now. Chibnall passing the buck and delaying answering things in order to raise more intrigue and keep the viewer on the hook. At this point, the delayed narrative tactic is Chibnall Who's equivalent of a magical girl betrayal arc for me; it's a storytelling element that, done poorly, makes me wary of any flirtation with it in subsequent media. Unlike the rest of Flux, Chapter Four here actually has a cowrite with Maxine Alderton. As we did back in Series 12, one has to be careful not to fall into the biased trap of stating sincerely "every strength in the episode was due to Alderton and every weakness was due to Chibnall". It's extra tricky this week because... well, get me out of this pitfall, because it feels kind of true. You can feel Chibnall's fingerprints on key parts of the episode, and those are the parts that don't hold up. Before we get into those, let's get into what does work. Let's get into the Angels.

Wednesday 17 November 2021

Doctor Who Series 13 First Impressions: Episode 3 (Flux Chapter Three: Once, Upon Time)

Chibnall is still Chibnall, but I do appreciate the freshness of him giving us a different flavor of Chibnall. With Chapter 3 of Flux, God help us, we can add the phrase "Gonzo Chibnall" to our lexicon. A strange, ethereal dream of a nonlinear episode that floats fractured in time, delving into the realm of memory and premonition, expositing and teasing and explaining in equal measure while also dropping a whopper of crackling metaphysical concepts. What's not to like? Well, it's a Chibnall, so it doesn't quite hit the highest of highs and actually pokes some unfortunate lows. The strange ethereal dreamlike quality feels like it reflects Chibnall's writing process up to this point, as he cribs so much half-remembered detritus from the driftwood of memory of the RTD years. This time, at least, he seems to have half-remembered Steven Moffat had some good driftwood in the past. Again, I appreciate the freshness of that, if nothing else. Of course, as so many of the Moffat fans who form my little corner of the Internet have pointed out, a Moffat-penned episode would have been good.

Monday 8 November 2021

Doctor Who Series 13 First Impressions: Episode 2 (Flux Chapter Two: War Of The Sontarans)

Welcome back to part two of the grandiose adventure Flux has laid out for us! War Of The Sontarans is, in a lot of ways, very telling in what it is. With a few tweaks, it could be its own standalone episode. One can easily imagine a version of this with some stuff shuffled around and the B plot replaced with some other B plot that tied into the whole Sontaran thing. Last time I mentioned the numerous hooks dangling about waiting to be tugged on, and they are less tugged on in this episode than left mildly dangling in the breeze as another hook is added to one line. There's a real danger there, but we'll get to that when we get to the B plot. Why don't we kick off by talking about the resolution to that intense cliffhanger from last week, where the Flux was rampaging straight for the TARDIS? The question lingering over our heads in temporal grace for the last week was, how will Doctor Who and her friends get out of this one?

Monday 1 November 2021

Doctor Who Series 13 First Impressions: Episode 1 (Flux Chapter One: The Halloween Apocalypse)

I suggest a new strategy, Doctor: let the Lupari win.
Well, here we are again. For the next six weeks I get to talk about the newest season of Doctor Who. Chris Chibnall's last full season, even. Well, as full as a six-week miniseries Event can be. Really, we can be sympathetic to that because of corona. I'm less annoyed than I was in 2012 when we got five weeks of The Amy And Rory Farewell Show as our series for the year. Hell, 2/5ths of that was Chibnall, even. It's almost prescient. Well, a new episode has aired, the first chapter of the Flux storyline/subtitle/what have you. I now have to try and make sense of it, in my usual way, but as I so often like to say.... Wait, how do I put it? (It is at this point that I went back to look at the Series 12 First Impressions to see how I put it.) Ah yes. I call it "a period of temporal grace", a brief snapshot I capture in text like a fly in amber of a moment in time where I don't know shit about shit with this show. Let us see, then, what we've got. Let's see Chapter One: The Halloween Apocalypse.

Sunday 31 October 2021

Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 16 (Double Feature: The Haunted Hike & Halloween: Resurrection)

Here we are at last! Halloween! Spooky Day! The culmination of the spooky season, kids knocking on the door, candy given out, all of that. The choice of what to cover for the final day was locked in a while ago. It shouldn't be a problem. That was, of course, until things and impulses happened and there was another spooky season experience I really wanted to talk about on the blog. What to do? Do I not talk about Nameless and wait a day to talk about this? Do I skip the Halloween movie? Do I write about it and keep it in the vault until next year? The answer I came up with was just to do both. So, for this spooky finale, you get the equivalent of the full size chocolate bar from my house tonight. Two posts for the price of one. Hot damn. Let us begin.

Friday 29 October 2021

Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 15 (Nameless)

One last non-traditional spooky scream before the end of Halloween. Wild. I say non-traditional because I am not a comics critic. I know some very good comics critics, one of whom asked very nicely for me to cover this comic. So here we are, covering it. It's even a Grant Morrison joint! They're a well-regarded and interesting comic creator! ...Whose works I have hardly touched. Seriously, it was Arkham Asylum one time ages ago and then this. That should not reflect poorly on their large body of intriguing and varied work. As I said, I am not a comics critic. I just have to pretend to be one for three paragraphs to get this thing out, and I'm already a third of the way there. THE GIFT OF RAMBLING AND INTRODUCTION, Y'ALL! With that in mind, let's see if we can find some interesting and actually relevant things to say about the six-issue comic series Nameless.

\
It's a bleak, ultra-violent, at times nihilist piece of comic. That's something. Reading the first issue, I was thrown right into the deep end. There's some sort of dream diving, and dudes with fish heads, and a Nameless one and a veiled lady and a key. I have no idea what's going on but there's murders and a weird magic phrase and then our nameless guy gets contracted to go to the MOON. Also some of the shop fronts in issue 1 were mirrored. Okay, hang on. There's mirror bullshit and we're going to the god damned moon? When did Grant Morrison get on my brand of bullshit and can I get some advice on how to mainline this shit? Why are we on the moon? Because there's an ancient asteroid that's going to end the world and drive us all mad that we gotta get into and stop. I doubt this is an inspiration, but the comic gave me Dead Space vibes in places. A whole bunch of space body horror with lots of gore and madness and things infesting astronauts. Let me say it plainly, in case you seek this out: this comic goes hard as hell with the violence. I didn't content warning the post since I'm not going into detail and I will have found the safest image for the thing I can, but holy fuck this comic goes places.


Like deep into the line between dream, reality, hallucination, and madness-induced dream by a dark god from space. I didn't exactly bounce off this comic, but also there's a lot tinging under the surface that could be analyzed... if one were a comics critic. I am not, though, so I'm grasping at straws to make something of this. The last half of the comic is some wild shit where you're not sure what's really happening or not. It almost feels like the final two episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion, a deep dive happening inside one nameless person's head as they deal with their traumas and repressed memories and what "really happened", in as much as the comic can be said to have really happened. It's a fascinating book that demands at least a re-read with the knowledge of its end bits in mind, if not several more to appreciate any deeper clues or symbolism within. There's meat on the bone here, is what I'm saying... but as I am not a comics critic, it's not my plate of meat to carve into. I'm just here for the appetizer course, so to speak, but now we've made it to the end and it's about time for Halloween. The spooky night approaches! Candy! Spooky songs! Kids knocking on my door! And, of course... the finale of the marathon.


Boo.

Wednesday 27 October 2021

Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 14 (Doctor Who: Image Of The Fendahl)

Oh hey. It's that other space show I like to talk about on this blog. No, not Dirty Pair. Doctor Who! Seems like I'm a little early though, doesn't it? I mean, we've got six whole weeks of a new series looming on the horizon and here I am talking about Tom Baker. We'll deal with Flux when we have to deal with it, and that plus NaNoWriMo will make Mondays interesting. For the time being, it's 1977 and it's time to get spooked. When you think Tom Baker and Doctor Who and spooky season, a whole lot of memorable stories may come to mind that are well-regarded by fandom. I went with a more middle of the road story, as far as fan consensus is concerned. This ranked 122nd in the Doctor Who Magazine 50th Anniversary Poll. Middle of the road. Of course, if you've ever listened to me on the Doctor Who Reviews podcast with Rain and Kat (spooky season bonus: check out our latest episode on State of Decay!) then you know I mock this traditional-minded poll to hell and back and think that it's an opposite world of my own tastes. Where does that leave poor Image Of The Fendahl in my mind?

Monday 25 October 2021

Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 13 (Even More Spooky Star Trek Episodes)

Captain's log, Stardate 75887.3. Yet again for a Halloween marathon, we find ourselves boldly going to the darker corners of a sci-fi franchise that equal parts inspires and infuriates me over its long run. No, it is not Doctor Who, but Star Trek. You pegged that already, so well done. This time around, having done the immediate standouts to me, I decided to do a little research and Google what other folks thought were the scariest Star Trek episodes. In doing so, I found three stories from three different series to talk about. Let's boldly go right on back into space utopia and see what spooky bullshit awaits.

Saturday 23 October 2021

Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 12 (The Empty Man)

(CW: suicide)


This was... quite the unexpected piece. I didn't know anything about it going in, so it was certainly an experience. The best summation I can give is that it's very heavy, and I mean that in at least two ways. Certainly the CW up above tells you that there are obvious moments with some heft to them, and there's certainly this pervasive aura around the film as you watch it, especially when you don't know shit about shit going on in the movie. That heft doubles when you get to the heady philosophical and alchemical concepts teeming just below the surface. Combine that real anxiety with the sense of confusion, and Cowboy Bebop at their computer said it best: you're gonna carry that weight. God, anime references, I really am starting to lean back into my old wheelhouse. Let's transition to another topic, quick.

Thursday 21 October 2021

Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 11 (Gamera: Guardian Of The Universe)

Ridley and Kraid got beef.
Thank God. A little retreat from heavy themes like abuse and anxiety and gaslighting which make me uncomfy both watching the movie and then trying to write about it like a big weirdo on the Internet. Instead we have a pretty straightforward kaiju movie, and it's even from the Heisei era which I gather has some films that are appreciated by many a kaiju aficionado. I mean... I vibed with Godzilla vs. Biollante, and Godzilla 2000? Gamera is not in my wheelhouse, however. I also gather there were some films about Gamera from Back In The Day and that this is a revival of sorts. This is their Godzilla 1984 but it's a movie about a giant turtle beating the shit out of a giant bird. There's a simple level of pleasure from such a movie, a level which even legendary film critic Roger Ebert vibed with despite not vibing with the original 1954 Godzilla. That's interesting. I'm no Roger Ebert (though I have beaten Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES, a feat that to the best of my knowledge the late Mr. Ebert never accomplished in his eventful life) but let's see what we can make of this giant turtle kaiju movie.

Tuesday 19 October 2021

Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 10 (Midsommar)

And now I'm mirroring you. AAAAAAAAAA
(CW: anxiety, suicide, gaslighting, sexual assault)

Jesus Christ. I was supposed to talk about a kaiju movie today! I led into it and everything, and then I got delayed, so I needed to slap something in this slot. Oh hey, this was on the docket! Suggested by friend of the blog Rain even! What's the worst that could happen? A glance at the lengthy string of content warnings I felt needed inclusion should help there. You have to understand. The beginning of this movie legitimately, no hyperbole, fucked me up. The first half is a punctuated and oft-prolonged anxiety nightmare which I'm pretty sure legitimately triggered me. I am honest to God tearing up writing this. This is not a joke, this is not a bit, this movie genuinely shook me to my core and scared me more than a glove-handed dream killer ever could. I was honestly somewhat relieved when it went in a folk horror direction of a strange communal religion with ritualistic sacrifice. That's not to say there's no connective tissue between those horrors, because there is. Let me tell you about it.

Sunday 17 October 2021

Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 9 (One Missed Call)

(CW: physical abuse)


Well, good God, this movie took a bit of an unexpected turn thematically. It will be tackled, of course, even though I feel a little out of my depth both in tone and culture. Before that though, the central premise! Which reminds me, in its own way, of The Ring. I haven't actually seen The Ring, mind, so I don't know what deep thematic stuff is going on under the hood in that movie and if it ties to the deep thematic stuff going on under the hood in this movie. By premise, though, you can see it, yeah? A spooky message haunting a method of communication that warns of your imminent death, that spreads once it gets you, and has a creepy girl ghost at the heart of it. Hell, both even use older forms of tech that the passage of time has made obsolete; The Ring's central haunted object is a cursed VHS tape, whereas One Missed Call haunts pre-iPhone cell phones. Time has already made the haunted object at the heart of the film a relic, and that only adds to the spooky nature in hindsight.

Friday 15 October 2021

Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 8 (Local 58)

(CW: suicide)





Now we're really jamming with something weird and wild. Well, I should say we're going to be jamming with something weird and wild. Gotta get there first, so let us go through the process of getting there. The video linked above is how I found out about this series, a few months ago. I made a mental note to myself to come back to it for the spooky season on the blog, because with some of the concepts and sources of horror involved I felt obligated to. You'll see. You'll all see. So, for the uninitiated, Local 58 is a series of short horror videos created by the guy what did the famous Candle Cove creepypasta story. Lots of spooky bullshit about old TV and late night public access TV is at play within Local 58, and before I jam with the real wild stuff that's resonant to the blog, let's talk about the rest of the shorts for a little bit.


Of the seven shorts, three tie into what I want to talk about, one is very brief but contains what I feel is a main hook of the horror, and then the other three are just sort of there. I'll talk about those three now. "You Are On The Fastest Available Route" is a pretty simple one that glitches from TV footage to dashcam footage, with a GPS giving a driver directions before sending them into the woods to turn off their lights so a monster can get them. It works, and is retroactively tied into the rest of the shorts via the theme of technology betraying humanity. "Contingency" kind of crosses a line into outright disturbing territory as an emergency broadcast message. There's a fun scene I didn't talk about in Gremlins 2 where the Clamp Network airs a saccharine "end of the world" emergency broadcast message. "Contingency" is a way darker version of that, urging the preservation of American dignity in the face of nationwide defeat in war by encouraging mass suicide. It's fucked up, is what it is. "Real Sleep" is a later short and possibly deals with the theme of technology betraying humanity, and is decently creepy business about trying to suppress dreams via subliminal messaging, but doesn't scratch an itch for me personally.


What does scratch an itch, though, are those other three shorts. I'll talk about that brief middle one first, as it'll make everything else click. "A Look Back" is only a minute long and is a rapid montage of spooky clips from the other shorts up to that point, but contains a bit in the middle, flashing across the screen, that I will repeat verbatim in text form:

WE SEND SIGNALS TO OURSELVES
THRU THEIR DOMAIN
DID WE REALLY BELIEVE
THEY WOULDNT ADD THEIR OWN

Which brings us backwards, nicely, into "Weather Service", a short in which broadcasting is interrupted by a back-and-forth weather alert, first urging people to stay inside, then go outside, and so on and so forth. A creepy freak meteorological event that eventually takes over the station, urging all to go look at it. What is this nightmare weather event that insists we look upon it and go mad? It's the moon. There's even, in big black letters at one point, the words AVOID MIRRORS. You begin to see, given the magical girl exegeses we have covered here, why a creepypasta video series about the fucking moon going bad and trying to drive humanity insane is dark and spooky and something I had to write about, yes? "Show For Children" is a quick but effective descent into the spooky, a cartoon about a little skeleton boy peeking into graves and seeing other skeletons, all the while a cartoon anthropomorphized moon in the sky with big eyes watching. At the end, the skeleton boy lays in his own grave, the moon mirrors his peeking into graves, and the skeleton boy turns into a more detailed skeleton. The moon got him. "Skywatching" is the most horrific use of the moon as an object of madness, an astronomy show hacked into by malicious technology with close-up shots implying something is in there, and it ain't a fucking egg. 


In a wild way, this creepy video series feels made for me and the brand I've cultivated. The implication that TV signals are being used against us to communicate nefarious ideas to drive us mad alone is wild. It's the same driving force that made me appreciate John Carpenter's Christine, and how the titular car communicated her nefarious intent through rock and roll songs on her radio. Something is trying to make itself understood through the airwaves, using the moon as a source of horror and madness to get us. Local 58 is brief and often times ambiguous, but one can find worse ways to waste 20 minutes watching spooky short horror videos online. Just be careful the next time you go moonwatching. They say moonlight shines eternal, but eternity can be quite nasty when you think about it...

Wednesday 13 October 2021

Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 7 (A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child)

It's the end of an era here on the Halloween marathons. Each year for quite a while now, we've been revisiting a Nightmare On Elm Street film sequentially. Well, except for that time I jumped ahead and did Wes Craven's New Nightmare, but you'll understand that one is its own weird metafictional beast. We've still got one movie in the tank for next year, should we do this again, so this isn't the last Frederick Krueger movie we're covering. No, instead this is the last Nightmare On Elm Street movie I watched that I hadn't seen since first watching it in 2004 or so, in college, when I watched all of them sequentially as a fear-conquering exercise. Going in here years later, all I remembered were some of the unique kills. What, then, do we make of The Dream Child after all this time?



Holy fuck, guys, I do not fucking know with this movie. This is the one Nightmare movie I don't especially vibe with. The particular things I have enjoyed about this spooky dream murder series are the surrealist creativity of its dream murders, and the deeper interesting theme running through each movie that one can hang their critical analysis hat on and go "Yep, that's one fine hat hook this picture's got going-- Jesus Christ did that kid's muscle fibers just get turned into puppet strings? That's fucked up.". Let's shotgun through them real quick! Nightmare 1: the sins of the parent haunting their children. Nightmare 2: Fears and anxieties over one's own homosexuality. Nightmare 3: Mental health care is bullshit and doesn't help people in need. Nightmare 4: Grief and loss and how we remember those who we cared about who we've lost. With that in mind, what's Nightmare 5's cool hat hook? I... don't know. Oh, there are some at play, but I think the reason I didn't vibe with the movie is quantity over quality; instead of one big thematic hook that runs through the whole movie, there are like two or three half-formed hooks which only hang on parts of the movie. It's my job to talk about those shoddy hooks, apparently, so let's.

Monday 11 October 2021

Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 6 (Return To Oz)

Friends =)
This one has been literal years in the making. A friend of the blog who likes this movie has really wanted it covered in the Halloween marathon. Well, here you go. This is going to be an interesting one, considering this isn't a traditional bit of spooky media... but we'll get to that. First, a confession. Until last evening, when I saw it as research for going into this? I had never seen the original 1939 Wizard Of Oz. Yes, I know. It wasn't available to rent in my little town, it never came on TV when I was a child, it just sort of passed me by. Watching it finally, it's fine. I can see how it's a cultural touchstone and a beloved nostalgic movie for many. I'm coming to it decades too late to really really vibe with it, but it's a good movie. The nearest I can come to understanding its appeal is that it reminded me of Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, a movie that has the same childlike wondrous visuals and musical nature that I did see when I was a child and vibe with nostalgically. So, you know, to people who love it, I can get where you're coming from.

Saturday 9 October 2021

Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 5 (Metroid Dread)

(Hi there! Given that this is a whole serendipitous bit of current event writing, it only feels right to give you all a spoiler warning heads-up. This game just came out yesterday and I'm going to talk about a bunch of stuff it does, especially story stuff, so if you're playing through it you'll want to wait until you finish before reading. Hope you've been enjoying the game, if you're playing! On with the show.)


BEEP BOOP IT'S MURDER TIME
There's just a bit of good timing at work here. Not only does Metroid Dread fit a spooky marathon perfectly, but I also spent most of my day yesterday playing the thing non-stop and I really want to talk about it. In the end, you gotta love stuff like this that gives me a good excuse to use a spot on something current. It's not like I can go to a theater and see Halloween Kills in three weeks anyway, so this is the most current events you're going to get. With that out of the way, let's see if I can be concise in talking about Metroid Dread.

Thursday 7 October 2021

Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 4 (John Carpenter's Christine)

[VFX: car on fire]
Okay. What do we make of John Carpenter's Stephen King's Haunted Car: The Movie? There's actually something I can really jam with in here, but we gotta build up to it. Unfortunately since it involves the titular Haunted Car, I am going to really have to stretch. No worries. No worries, y'all. If you know me, you know I'm good at stalling out a point and rambling. For God's sakes I'm doing it right now, even. I don't think I'm going to get a paragraph here before I actually have to talk about it, but I'm damn close. Let's talk about the book a little, then, since this is an adaptation. I'm not sure what drew John Carpenter to this King work, specifically. Oh. I literally just did a Wikipedia glance and it turns out this was just a "well I got nothing else going" kind of deal and Carpenter actually wanted to direct an adaptation of King's novel Firestarter. Interesting factoid. Okay. Let's talk about the book. Christine, not Firestarter.

Tuesday 5 October 2021

Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 3 (Zombie Land Saga Revenge)

Idol stuff, man.
I always end these marathons with some variant joke on how the real horror before me is NaNoWriMo in November. This right here is a horror lurking in the future for me. This season of Japanese cartoon television, aired in the summer of this year, was good and resonant enough that it practically demanded I do a patented Frezno-brand deep dive project about it. It pissed me off and terrified me because of the work I'd have to put into it, but honestly? It won't be as long as Symphogear. I can live with that. So, consider this a rare moment of brevity before I give into my excesses and tell you fucking everything about this show and how it made me cry. First, though, a primer. Two years ago, in preparation for another spooky marathon, I took the first season of this show with me on vacation. You can read those thoughts right here. Two weeks ago, I blasted through it all on a rewatch on vacation in that same place. Here are some thoughts on that.


With Zombie Land Saga Revenge, it's a cemented fact: Zombie Land Saga is now my favorite piece of zombie media. It ain't even close. Sorry, Shaun Of The Dead. Woe be to World War Z. In fact, I'll lay a little groundwork for me to pick up on in like six months or whenever I get at this. Zombie Land Saga is the Symphogear of zombie media. "Oh fuck, did you drop a good one there, past me". I'll be saying. Zombie Land Saga, in its first season, was all about healing from trauma; the psychological trauma of one's anxieties/fears/regrets, and the physical trauma of literally having died and finding oneself to be the living dead. In short, ZLS Revenge runs on that theme to even greater effect. The main arc of the season is Japanese idol group Franchouchou, in secret composed entirely of the decomposed living dead, plotting a revenge concert at a massive venue in which they previously performed and totally bombed at. The first season was Franchouchou's rise, in between they fell, and now they're going to rise again. They're the undead, it's what they do best.

Sunday 3 October 2021

Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 2 (Llamageddon)

Good lord. What do you say about something like this? I guess you start with the mindset you have to have going into a movie like this. Some movies give you exciting thrills. Some give you insightful allegory. Llamageddon is not one of those movies. Llamageddon is the kind of dumb fucking movie you throw on with friends to have a chuckle at. There are all sorts of movies like this, but Llamageddon at least feels like it's laughing with you. It knows it is a dumb fucking movie about a killer llama, how absolutely gonzo that premise is, and just goes hog wild with it. Movies like Sharknado and its ilk are big budget variations of what Llamageddon manages with some cameras shooting at a house in the country for the weekend, and that's kind of impressive.

Friday 1 October 2021

Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 1 (Gremlins 2: The New Batch)

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU'RE AT SOUP???
The spooky month has descended upon us again! It is time, once again, for the real horror to blight me; the constant non-stop writing rush between now and early December. God help me, the snow will be coming by the time my fingers stop moving. Ironic, then, that the inaugural subject for our new and brevity-improved Sixteen Screams marathon is the sequel to a Christmas movie. Yes, Gremlins is a Christmas movie and that's why I'm not covering it here. God help me if I ever wade into the debate about which marathon The Nightmare Before Christmas would belong in. It would help, before we begin, to talk a little about that original movie and what I remember it doing. Certainly I never saw it until I was a teen. As a child, a cousin had the Gremlins 2 game on Game Boy. Its cover art with the Mohawk Gremlin spooked me, but I liked the game. One summer while visiting I found the Gremlins 2 NES game at a flea market. Same cover, but I picked it up. Time has proven that it was a much better game than the Game Boy version. Oh, God. I said I was going to talk about the movie and then I went on a tangent about the Gremlins 2 video game. That was, uhhh, setup for going into talking about the movie. Yeah.

Wednesday 15 September 2021

Coming Soon: Sixteen Screams For Halloween!

 Hi there. Before we get into the usual preamble, I just want to talk about something that's way too short to devote a blog post on, but too longwinded for a tweet. Singer/songwriter Dua Lipa, who I have heard all of one song from prior to today, dropped a music video for a song called "Levitating" the other day. It's an animated music video which takes obvious aesthetic influence from 90's anime and Sailor Moon, but also has a couple of sly homages to Dirty Pair that I caught. Often, in posts on media important to me, I will refer to the concept of my "internal landscape". The music video for Levitating somehow manages to be a perfect representation of my internal landscape, circa September 2018. The visuals, the sound, the mood... This is pure Freznocore as I existed back then! It's wild, and it's like looking back at a past version of myself, but through this weird audiovisual pool. Anyway, check out the video down below. Visuals are rad, and the song's good too. Past that, on with the main show.




It's that time of year again. Fall beckons, and my fingers tremble in fear; not from the spooky season rapidly approaching, but for the sudden marathon of writing they will now endure every day for the next two months or more. Between this and NaNoWriMo, fall is my most productive period. So, we're announcing the start of that once again. It's almost time for another Halloween marathon in which I write about spooky and spooky-adjacent media during October. The astute among you will notice a change. Previously our spooky marathon was called "31 Days, 31 Screams" and had a post a day during the month of October. I am making the executive decision to cut things in half this year, for two reasons. The first is that I actually have some more writing I need to set aside some energy for during the fall. I don't want to reveal anything just yet, but it's one hell of an opportunity for me and I hope and pray the results are up to par. The second is that I'm running out of ideas for things to do in the spooky months. Last year was a hell of a stretch. I think we can make one post every two days an easy thing this year. 16 days, 16 Screams. Sixteen Screams For Halloween. You like it?


Well, I hope you like it. Of course, as always, even 16 might be a stretch. That's where you all come in! I always open up the request line this time of year for spooky media that you think would result in a good post from me. I am but one individual with my own tastes and focus, and opening the floor to others helps broaden my perspective and cover shit I might never cover otherwise. So, do feel free to suggest some things in the comment section below! I will give you some helpful bullet points for ease of selection on my part:


-I have access to Canadian Netflix and Youtube rentals, and am debating a one-month resub to the streaming service Shudder for the month of October.
-My only real trigger/phobia, beyond a very specific case, is wrist or throat slashing. If such scenes are signposted in the movie such that it's obvious they're going to happen, I can avert my eyes in time. If there's only one or two such scenes in the movie, it's fine with a warning. If it's something like a Friday the 13th or Sweeney Todd, where such things are the main method of murder, that's a hard pass.
-I am open to other media, like brief forays into TV shows or comics or what have you, but it's not my main area of expertise and I'll need a relatively affordable or even cost-free way of access to cover it.


I think that's everything. I look forward to your suggestions, and we'll see you in two weeks for some more screams and spooks and scares. Until then, get some hot chocolate at the cafe, watch the leaves fall from the trees, and wait safely for my return. Then we'll delve into the world of the macabre. Together. 


Wednesday 18 August 2021

Enterprise Season 4: A Trek In Episodic Substitution

Well then. What in the hell is this? That's not just a question you may be asking yourself right now. It's a question I'm asking myself. Why am I back here, of all places? The answer is that I'm being a cheeky little gremlin, an agent of chaos getting revenge in what, to borrow a turn of phrase from El Sandifer, is a text-based magical ritual to destroy nostalgic pandering. Ah. There's that old Nintendo Project-styled esoteric gonzo waffling. Enough of that for a second. Let me set the scene and explain what the hell I'm doing here.


From February to April 2019 I ran a project on this blog called To Boldly Step Forward, in which I watched the show Enterprise for the first time and offered bite-sized thoughts on every single episode. All the words are right there in the hyperlink if you wish to delve into my deeper thoughts, but I will for once show brevity and give a quick summary of the long road I had, getting from there to here(Sorry not sorry.). Star Trek: The Next Generation was an important part of my interior landscape, a show that moved and changed and inspired me. Enterprise turned out to not be that show for me, but it was so tantalizingly close to being it that it still frustrates me. The short version of the path that To Boldly Step Forward led me down was a show with wildly fluctuating ups and downs; the downs were hella down, but the ups tingled with possibility and intrigue. Through its first two seasons Enterprise's most resonant moments involved its "Temporal Cold War" arc, in which people from the future mucked around in the past. I took it as a metaphor for Star Trek's utopian future seeking enlightnment and inspiration from its flawed but good-hearted past.

Friday 9 July 2021

The Harmony Of Hope And The Hope Of Despair: The All-In-One Package

Hi there! It's been two months or so since we finished this, and I'm not really back at it, per se. Just some tidying up. Since finishing this project, I've been sort of relaxing and procrastinating. My usual self. I got one or two things in the pipeline, though; one being a quickie post that's as gonzo as it is a stupid idea. The other is much more in line with my 'brand", so to speak. Anime, cute girls, the utopic ideal. It's a show I've talked about before but its follow-up was so good and personally resonant to the larger narrative of the blog that it actively pissed me off, solely because now I have to devote a little project time to it. With that timely tease out of the way, what is this?


For any newcomers to the blog, or those of you who clicked my pinned Twitter post, or anyone else, a little explanation. From November 2019 to May 2021 I watched, enjoyed, ruminated on, and wrote at length about the Japanese cartoon Senki Zesshou Symphogear, a magical girl cartoon about finding hope and the utopic ideal in the most desperate and darkest hours of the human soul. It's a show that's very important to me, and very resonant to me given the types of media that have shaped and changed me over the course of my life. I expressed that in one marathon of a project which took me 60,000 words and a year to write, and this blog post is the all-in-one package curating every single word in one handy and easy-to-access compilation. With that, I for once find some brevity and leave you to it. Please enjoy my hard work and thoughtful feelings, in... The Harmony Of Hope And The Dirge Of Despair.





Part 1: Meteoroid-falling, Burning, And Disappear, Then… (Senki Zesshou Symphogear)






Part 2: In The Distance, That Day, When The Star Became Music... (Senki Zesshou Symphogear G)







Part 3: Believe In Justice And Hold A Determination To Fist (Senki Zesshou Symphogear GX)







Part 4: By Shedding Many Tears, The Reality You Face Is... (Senki Zesshou Symphogear AXZ)







Part 5: Create A History, With The Light God Could Not Know (Senki Zesshou Symphogear XV)







Saturday 8 May 2021

The Harmony Of Hope And The Dirge Of Despair: Epilogue (All Good Things...)


Well, we made it. It's the end. You and I, over God knows how many words, have journeyed through Symphogear over proverbial coffee. Now I have to say goodbye, the only way I know how; through longwinded gonzo and heartfelt writing. Yes, we're going to try to sum up Symphogear and what it meant to me. We're also going to try and deep dive into my interior landscape. A very talented person, someone I feel I can call a peer and a friend, once advised me on this project by asking me to listen to my own emotions, and really ask myself why and how this big dumb show meant so much to me. That's the question I'm going to answer here at the end. I will, of course, frame it in terms I understand but try to make them clear. To my friend and peer, and indeed the rest of you, I hope you approve of my answer.

Friday 7 May 2021

The Harmony Of Hope And The Dirge Of Despair: Part 5 (Senki Zesshou Symphogear XV) [5.5]

(Just the slightest "NSFW" alert for some screencaps near the end.)


Part 5: Bridge Of Blessing


Things are looking bleak, aren't they? The dark goddess Shem-Ha's truth of the world revealed. No matter which way you look at it, humanity and any chance it has for a utopic ideal are cursed. We are cursed by the prison of Balal preventing us from understanding each other, and should that curse ever be lifted? The curse of Shem-Ha's dark enlightenment shall fall upon us, and we shall all be remade in her image. Shit, I thought thematic flip-flopping was my Houdini trick? How in the fuck are we getting out of this one? I'm confident. I have my out, and it's right there in the show. Ironically, this out would never exist if it weren't for Fudo and his executive meddling as part of his master plan to be the monster protecting Japan. We'll have one last laugh at the nationalist old fuck in a moment, but let's go back to our girl Hibiki, and find the way out.

Thursday 6 May 2021

The Harmony Of Hope And The Dirge Of Despair: Part 5 (Senki Zesshou Symphogear XV) [5.4]



Part 4: Mambo Of Monsters


I took this capture for Part 2's labyrinth talk, but see?
The theme was right there all along.
So this one's interesting. Over time, we have been building up the various antagonist forces in this final season. From Noble Red to Fudo Kazanari to now a dark goddess wearing Miku like a designer dress, all of them are intertwined with each other in more ways than one. Fudo was using Noble Red to gain the power of the goddess Shem-Ha to use as Japan's protector, but the connection goes deeper than that. Here's the string connecting all of these antagonistic forces, and so much more of the show. Here, then, is where we confront the monsters at the heart of this story. As everything's tied together it can be hard to find where to start, but I think I'll begin with the return of some old monsters.


Noble Red are certainly the biggest example of the theme of monsters popping up, but I want to save that for a little later. That being said, we do have to focus on their scheme to implant the god-power into Miku. It's a scheme we know succeeds, since I told you about it a second ago, but they also kidnapped Elfnein as you'll recall. The reason for that's simple. We're in the ruins of the Chateau de Tiffauges, Carol's world-ending tuning fork fortress. Elfnein is also technically in Carol's body, as of the complicated and weird alchemical transfer at the end of Symphogear GX. Knowing that, Noble Red want her to activate some shit in the Chateau so their god-power transfer experiment will succeed. Their power generator down here is filled with no less than discarded and ruined Autoscorer bodies. This will become important in just a second. 

Wednesday 5 May 2021

The Harmony Of Hope And The Dirge Of Despair: Part 5 (Senki Zesshou Symphogear XV) [5.3]



Part 3: Progression Of Protection

Finally, we get to put this nationalist old bastard on full blast and tell him to fuck off. Those of you with a keen sense for the history of this project will know that we usually save the toxic male antagonists for last. (See: Dr. Ver, Adam Weishaupt.) Why, then, are we dealing with Fudo in the middle of things? Simple. He's not the true antagonist of the season. Oh, he's a real asshole and a piece of work, and tearing into him will be satisfying... but there are bigger and more terrifying fish to fry on the horizon. Fish this idiot thinks he can keep in his aquarium, but more on that in a bit. There's some real interesting meat to this jerk and his ideology, and how it ties into Tsubasa's season arc. It's time to play jam once again.

Tuesday 4 May 2021

The Harmony Of Hope And The Dirge Of Despair: Part 5 (Senki Zesshou Symphogear XV) [5.2]

 

Part 2: Amplification Of Amalgam


That was all just a bit shocking and terrifying. Let's calm down a bit, and talk about the people who did that terrible thing to the concert. It's difficult to know where to begin, considering how this trio of antagonists practically mirrors everyone in the show and warrants discussion in at least three different ways. Luckily, one of those ways is by contrast with our protagonists, and can lead us down some interesting discussion. It also has led me into a bind of flip-flopping reversed themes from the last season, so you get to witness the textual equivalent of me doing my best Harry Houdini and trying to escape my own personal Water Torture Cell in real time before the contradictions drown me. (The previous sentence may or may not be one of the best analogies I have made to date. You're welcome.) With that in mind, let's have a chat about Noble Red.

Monday 3 May 2021

The Harmony Of Hope And The Dirge Of Despair: Part 5 (Senki Zesshou Symphogear XV) [5.1]

(TW: blood, descriptions of violence)

(For John S., whose journey through life ended as this text journey was ending.)


So. It's the last one, isn't it? It's hard to believe, but it's true. As I'm writing this right now, February the 23rd of 2021, I have watched the entirety of Symphogear. Twice, 'cause I always rewatch them for note taking. Writing the end of a thing is a very different feeling from writing the beginning or middle, there's that sense of finality in your words as you put them down. Maybe you get it. Either way, here we both are, you and I, one last cup in our metaphorical little coffee shop as I tell you about Symphogear. Let's get to the point and try to sum this up, I guess.


Symphogear XV, the very last season, does not have that Sailor Stars feeling the previous season did where it threw old plot elements into the kitchen sink to mix it up and be nostalgic. Plot-wise, it definitely has the feel of a culmination, building on a bunch of elements the previous seasons put into play. Tonally, however, it feels like a back to basics approach. I'll be delving into that for the next God knows how many words, but XV steps back a little from the weird super-alchemy show Symphogear became in its middle seasons. In its place is the show it was at the very beginning. One other advantage of being all caught up with the show is that I can actually Wiki dive now! I can tell you, for instance, that the XV stands for... XV. As in the Roman numeral 15. As in the Major Arcana number for the devil in a tarot card deck. Spooky, I know. We'll get to where the devil is in this show, but let's begin. Take a nice warm sip of that coffee, insulated from the late winter air, and let me tell you about Symphogear... one last time.


"You wait a moment, Doctor. Let's get it right. I've got a few things to say to you. Basic stuff first. Never be cruel, never be cowardly. Remember, hate is always foolish. and love is always wise. Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind. Laugh hard, run fast, be kind. Doctor... I let you go."

Wednesday 3 March 2021

I Didn't Like Ghosts n Goblins Resurrection And Here's Why

So a new Ghosts n Goblins game came out last week, and I spent that week playing through it to completion. I don't like it. Let me tell you why, in my usual rambling verbose long-winded way.


A month shy of ten years ago, a funny thing happened. I was on a drive to my usual vacation getaway spot, and on the way we drove by a mountain. I had been listening to a gaming podcast that mentioned how hard a game Super Ghouls n Ghosts was, and for some reason a thought hit me as we drove by that mountain. I wanted to beat that game. I wrote about April 2011 in this post from April 2016, and marvel at the horror of time: the post about this event that happened is as old as the gap between the event and the first post. Anyway, over the next ten years, I delved into hard game monsterism. Many accomplishments, many a hard game toppled... but for the purposes of this writeup, that includes all the mainline Ghosts n Goblins games. I beat them all, and God help me I kind of like them in their own special way. 


So it was that, when Ghosts n Goblins Resurrection was announced a few months back via a Nintendo Direct, my notifications absolutely blew up. @FREZNO HEY LOOK IT'S A NEW GHOULS GAME, HARD GAME HARD GAME HARD GAME! I just found it funny that I got a brand such that I could get tagged like five times by different friend groups about a new GnG game. Regardless, I knew about it! It looked good! Unique art style but also it looked to play like the old games. I like GnG games, I should like this! So it was that I pre-ordered the damn thing, preloaded the download, and on Feb. 25th I was ready and willing to play some new old horror-themed hard game! What follows is not a review in the typical sense. More of a trip report/ranting into the void about hard game expectations. Buckle in.

Saturday 2 January 2021

Doctor Who First Impressions: New Year's Day 2021 Special (Revolution Of The Daleks)

ADAB
Hello there! Happy 2021! It's felt like forever since we talked about Doctor Who over here! Instead we talked about punchy magical girls for 46,000 words. Yes. I counted. well, the new year came, and with it came a new Doctor Who episode. One basically in the can before the world went to hell, coincidentally right after the last Doctor Who episode aired. There was some trepidation from me on the eve of this airing, considering that it seemed for all the world like the last new Doctor Who we'd be getting for who the hell knew how long. Again, the world is completely fucked so I could understand the delay, but remember where we were two years ago. We were getting a Dalek New Year's special! OH AND THAT'S ALL THE WHO YOU GET FOR 2019 HAVE FUN PEACE OUT. It soured the proceedings just a bit, and I don't remember those proceedings particularly fondly anyways. This episode, on the other hand? It's not half-bad. No, I had a lot of fun with Revolution Of The Daleks. I want to put that up-front, I overall give this a thumbs-up. Overall, mind. For every good decision, there's something I can wave my hands around about and go "what in the fuck?". Let us do that and get into Revolution Of The Daleks.