Stranger Things 2 lacks that 80s drab, and this bothers me

It’s not exactly the hottest take to say that Stranger Things season 1 is a spectacular show. The season so perfectly emulates an ‘80s movie to the point that you could believe that it’s something actually made during the 1980s. From its mix of child-centric adventure and sci-fi, to its casting of perfectly misfitty characters, the first season of Stranger Things, while very story-centered, also took the time to nail every nook and cranny of minor details, helping boost its ‘80s aesthetic from a simple gimmick to a strong, functional facet of the show itself.

That’s not true for the second season.

Even ignoring the wholly disliked episode 7, Stranger Things 2 while likeable enough is a general mess. Its cast is too widely dispersed from each other to make any forward progress in its more immediate plot points, new characters are introduced to little effect, and most importantly of all: the ‘80s aesthetic that made  the first season so enjoyable has all but faded (er… “been polished severely”?).

Yes, all the likeable misfits are back, with their long-range walkie-talkies and lack of parental supervision among rooms with wood-paneled walls and cube TVs, but there still remains something a bit off: the lighting. A major factor that added to Stranger Things’ first season was how it treated lighting as a major tool to mold their perfectly dated world. Even on sunny days, scenes were washed over in this intentionally grimy manner that served as the series’ own world-building. Not only did lighting play a crucial role to better play up the series’ horror aspect, but it made the more tame dialogue-heavy scenes that much more convincing—your eye being slowly drawn towards the uncomfortable excess of drab-colored rugs among other dated room décor.

With Stranger Things 2, the cast and setting are still appropriately 80s, but the noticeably bright lighting is enough to take you out of scenes entirely. It’s the same kind of distracting that comes from having a particularly bad actor on scene, or a musical score that just doesn’t jive with the scene it’s in. You think it’s minor until you see just how much the work suffers when it’s poorly done. Stranger Things season 1 transcended ‘80s homage to actually feel like something made from that time. Meanwhile, Stranger Things 2 felt more like a modern-day movie playing dressup with outfits and sets from a time long past. It’s the Sandlot 2 of Netflix shows. And I don’t think anyone wants to be that.

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Netflix’s live-action Death Note movie is good and I will fight anyone who tells me otherwise

Netflix’s live-action Death Note movie is good. Not ironically good, or good-for-an-adaptation, or so-bad-it’s-good. Just… good.

And yet I’ve heard so much backlash from the anime community (read: not fan community, but the anime community as a whole), nitpicking over how it isn’t a 1:1 adaptation, how everyone in the cast has been whitewashed (and I guess “blackwashed” in the case of the character of L), among what’s probably a million other arguments for why this movie shouldn’t have been made. Even before official production on the movie began, it had so many cards stacked against it. So of course, if you can’t please the core audience most likely to be interested in the movie, then what’s the point?
But even with all that in mind, I still stand by my statement. Netflix’s Death Note movie is a good movie. Why? Because it’s able to distance itself from the rose-tinted expectations of fans and actually capture Death Note’s essence—an essence that a lot of fans tend to avoid entirely.

Similar to how shonen manga are so much more than their surface-level fights and are able to really delve into more complex themes of friendship, humanity, and even politics, so too does Death Note’s initial allure give way to “ulterior” themes for those willing to dig past its grimdark exterior. At its surface, the original Death Note manga comes off as this giant artsy-fartsy showdown of the minds—this really clever story of cat-and-mouse that touches on themes of morality and godlihood. Its main character is a hyper-intelligent, unflawed high-schooler who oh-so-cooly takes it upon himself to judge the wicked. It is probably one of the most unapologetically pompous shonen series in recent history starring a Barry Sue protagonist with everyone else bending to his will. But it’s for that very same reason that a lot of high-schoolers were drawn towards it. And probably why a lot of fans look back on the series with the same kind of disdain as something like Linkin Park (pre-Chester’s untimely death, anyway)—because the series at its surface is so caught up in its own srs bsns drama, that in hindsight, we can’t help but view the series as nothing more than “baby’s first serious non-punchy manga.”

But what if Death Note wasn’t as serious as people remember it being? What if beyond its blatant religious imagery and rambling monologues on morality, the series was nothing more than a B-movie complete with over-the-top deaths thinly justified through the existence of a magical killing notebook?

That’s what Netflix’s Death Note realizes, and it brings that into the spotlight in full force.

Rather than the perfectly perfect Light Yagami, we have a purposefully whiny shitstain that is Light Turner. Rather than seeking out godlihood, he uses it as an excuse to get in the pants of a one Mia Sutton (who sidenote: is a large step up from the original’s Misa Amane). Rather than the in-your-face mental face-offs between Light and L, the movie’s centerpieces are its Final Destination-esque criminal deaths. The movie strips away any of the original’s subtlety to the benefit of better getting across that Death Note was never about answering nth level questions on life, death, killing, etc, but to centerpiece an unlikeable person’s fall from grace via the most in-your-face, gratuitous visuals and laughably serious demon lore. It embraces its campiness, and is able to utilize it to its full extent, resulting in a beautifully shot, dutch-angle-filled, oddly 80s soundtracky, CW-tier-acting, romp of a movie where you’re absolutely certain Willem Dafoe enjoyed his role playing a slightly less gremlin-faced version of himself.

I’m glad it’s in talks for getting a sequel and I spit in the face of anyone that says the original has aged well enough to the point that they’d prefer that over this.

I thought Spider-Man Homecoming wasn’t all that great, but at least hear me out on this

Even disregarding superhero burnout, and fanboy wanking, I just couldn’t enjoy Spider-Man: Homecoming.

My Two Cents on the Iron Fist Debacle

Lemme first say I have no interest in watching Iron Fist. Being panned across the board aside, I just don’t have time to invest 13+ hours into a series that’s ultimately homework for whenever Netflix/Marvel releases The Defenders.

Rather, I’d like to bring up how Netflix’s previous Marvel series have proven that a socially conscious series can work and yet for some reason wasn’t the logical path to take come time to adapt Iron Fist for a modern audience.

Whether it be a black man, woman, or blind man, each previous Netflix series was able to take a marginalized group of people and empower them without coming off as too obnoxious about it. Each show made a point to treat their star as a person first and hero second (if that). It never bothered with spoon-feeding the audience the character’s “blackness” or “femininity” or “handi-capable-ness” because doing so would be a disservice to the character as well as the viewers. If the Saturday Morning Cartoons of yore were any indication, tokenization was a very obvious pitfall to avoid for the creative teams involved.

So what makes Iron Fist such an exception? Besides the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” natural problem of having to adapt an outdated premise to appeal to mainstream and hardcore audiences, I personally believe going the route of recasting our titular character as an Asian-American is just too much for even today’s modern mindsets. While women, black people, and (to an admittedly lesser degree) the disabled have been successfully integrated into American society, the concept of an Asian main character, not to mention one that’s a superhero, is just too novel of a concept for American-made live-action dramas. And taking into account where Asians fall in modern America, it’s not too surprising. Rather than trying to integrate into societies, it’s become more commonplace for first-gen Asians in America to stick together as a community. Things like Chinatown, Japantown, and Koreatown where the common language spoken is anything but English serve as a safe haven to the according immigrants, but this strange, unapproachable-except-for-touristy-visits, foreign… thing for anyone else. To write a story trying to immerse the audience in that world when that world is so inherently unapproachable to any other American (read: white people) is apparently too big of a hurdle to even bother trying to jump over.

Sure, the counter-argument would be that you’re playing into stereotypes to have an Asian know martial arts, but if every prior Marvel Netflix series were able to successfully establish, break, and exceed stereotypes, I honestly don’t see why Iron Fist wouldn’t dare to follow suit.

But whatever, man, I’ve got plenty of other series to binge on already.

A Look at Fantôme and Utada Hikaru’s Musical Evolution

Utada Hikaru is probably best known among English-speaking fans for singing the iconic Simple and Clean theme from the Kingdom Hearts games, with her end theme song Beautiful World for the Evangelion Rebuild movies coming as a close second in terms of notoriety among nerds. And while she never truly reached mainstream media fame in the states, she’s made quite the reputation for herself in her native Japan, having started her musical career back in 1996, and her popularity only steadily increasing from there.

Now a full 20 years after her debut, Utada Hikaru’s Fantôme is the first album she released after her musical hiatus from 2011-2016. Of note, however, isn’t the quality of the tracks themselves, but where they stand when looking at Utada’s career as a whole.

Too often do musicians end up falling in a rut, creating music that ends up being derivative of their older work (or as I like to call it, the Avril Lavigne effect). And while this may not necessarily hurt their core fanbase who is eager to take on more of the same, it does take a clear hit to their notoriety in a “radio playing” sense. Why listen to a new thing when an old thing holds up just as well and sounds pretty much the same? Also taking into account music’s ever-changing landscape and how it evolves over time, it just feels less awkward to listen to a time-capsule sort of piece from ages past rather than a recent piece that insists on shoehorning a long-ended aesthetic into its style. Sure there are some exceptions, but more often than not, it’s less a case of the mainstream being unaccepting to an older “style” than it is the musician themselves being unwilling to adapt and evolve past their comfort zone. And you can’t exactly blame the musicians that insist on towing the line, since experimentation leads to so many more pitfalls.

In the case with Fantôme, though, the album as a whole just… is. There’s nothing too toe-tapping or ear-wormy in any of the tracks, but listening to it while keeping in mind Utada’s history does make for a more pleasant listen. Literally having gone through all her major hits from 1998’s Automatic and moving onwards from there, you can witness Utada’s musical growth and maturation, as she transitions from radio pop, to ballads. And it’s in witnessing this range and progress that I found true enjoyment from what should otherwise be a middleground album.

[Utada Hikaru’s Fantôme can be purchased on the US amazon site]

Legacy and the Aging Protagonist: In Defense of Dragon Ball Super

Dragon Ball Super is one of those series that’s incredibly easy to dismiss as an easy cash-in to a long-lived franchise (though honestly, that title belongs moreso to the Dragon Ball Heroes card game). New characters are introduced for the purpose of story-expansion, and new power-ups are invented almost to accompany every new addition to the cast. And yet a good 50+ episodes in, the series has been doing a surprisingly solid job of not only continuing the story from where it left off, but also progressing each character’s arcs, keeping in mind the series’ 30+ years of in-world history to pinpoint where characters currently are emotionally. Not bad for a show about dudes punching alien-dudes until they die or befriend each other.

r we besties yet? Y/N

A good chunk of the ReLIFE EDs have been covered by Goose House

ReLIFE is a fascinating series for a number of reasons. For the uninitiated, it started off as a webcomic by author Yayoiso telling the story of an unemployed 27-year-old given a second chance at a more fulfilling life by entering the ReLIFE program where he’s turned back into a teen to re-live his final year at high school. And if that wasn’t enough of a pull for you, crunchyroll has mirrored its Japanese streaming counterparts and has released the entirety of the anime adaptation Netflix-style for any and all people prone to binge-watching over weekly-viewing.

I’m a bit behind on the anime version myself, but I did notice that episode 2’s Ending Theme had been previously covered by Japanese group Goose House, known for the second Ending Theme in the Silver Spoon anime, and the first Opening Theme in the Your Lie in April anime. Curious, I figured I’d check ReLIFE‘s full list of endings and found that 1) holycrap, there’s a different ED for all 13 episodes, and 2) a whopping 8 of those 13 songs have been covered by Goose House at one point or another, some of which date from back when the group went by “playyouhouse.”

Correlation Between Modern Manga Writing and Short-Episode-Count Anime

Anime adaptations of manga are nothing new. Checking upcoming anime every season, there’s always an interest in discussing what manga is deserving of an adaptation. That said, while interests in different subgenres continue to crop up among modern anime, episode counts are continuing to drop. Long gone are the days when 50-100+ episode anime was the norm. Now more than ever, anime episode count is dwindling, and it’s been affecting manga-ka in an unexpected way, having them take different approaches when it comes to writing their stories in hopes of nabbing that sought-after anime adaptation.

Gabe Finally Watches: Nana

Nana tells the story of two 20-year-olds named Nana that have a chance encounter on a train to Tokyo—probably the most American-style setup for a josei I’ve ever seen. And the Western influence doesn’t stop there. From the apartment the two end up sharing, to the burger/bar the girlier Nana frequents, nearly everything about the series makes a point of distancing itself as far from your typical Japanese dramas as possible.

Tiffany’s “I Just Wanna Dance” Mini Album Review

You know when you check out an artist’s album because their single was good, only to realize the rest of the album sounds nothing like the single? That’s what Tiffany’s debut album I Just Wanna Dance is, except in this case the bulk of the songs are far better than the titular song.