Slowest Bullet, Part One: Negative

Since I got trapped on an alternate Earth where the internet didn’t exist, and people had to find their own solutions to tough bits in computer games, I have experienced a lot of pop culture.

I’m back on this ‘real’ Earth now, so I may as well write a wee bit about some of the games I’ve played/films I’ve seen/comics I’ve read in the last few months, and my unhelpfully-negative opinions of them.

Oddly enough, even though the internet didn’t exist on that parallel earth, everything else was exactly the same, meaning my opinions on the stuff there are just as relevant to this earth as that one.

Don’t think on that too long, though, as it won’t make any sense.

And it’s all a lie (OR IS IT?)

(yes).

New Bleach Characters (because it didn't have too many already)

A new ‘season’ (series) of Bleach started about a month ago, and it’s ‘proper’ manga-derived stuff, as opposed to the months of filler which I have studiously ignored due to it’s non-canonicity (REAL WORD). There’s no doubt a conversation to be had about the relevance of canon, but in the case of Bleach, what I do know is that it has a track record of ‘canon = thrilling adventure; non-canon = placeholding pish’.

I typed ‘canon’ a lot.

Anyway, new Bleach picks up a year and a bit after the end of the Aizen/Arrancar storyline, but I’m not sure it needed to? It ended pretty well with Ichigo losing his magic violence powers, having beaten the main badlad of the series. There WERE loose ends to do with his family and friends, but I was pretty exhausted with the whole thing by the end of the arc, and was happy to just accept that it was finished and things had reverted to a more-or-less ‘good’ status quo.

The new story does seem to be dealing with Ichigo’s family and friends, which is fine, as maybe once this storyline’s done I can abandon Bleach and have it exist as a happy memory before I start to feel guilty for being an adult who still watches cartoons aimed at adolescent boys? I reckon it’ll run and run, though. Tite Kubo seems to enjoy tacking on endless new bits of mythology, that sometimes don’t seem to go anywhere, which is both good worldbuilding, and frustrating X-Men-style “OH GOD IT’LL NEVER END” soap franchisery. LOOOSE ENDS.

The new setup has some interesting stuff. I want to know what’s going on with Ichigo’s sister who seems poised to be the next super-tough Kurosaki. It’s also good to see Ishida’s dad back, after his brief appearance years (!) ago, and I’ll always have time for Tatsuki, despite her new ‘badass’ power-mullet (a hairstyle Tite Kubo seems INCREDIBLY fond of).

There’s a lot of things going on I don’t care about, though – the new characters seem rather dull and on the whole remind me slightly of the Bounto, and I do feel Bleach REALLY doesn’t need any more new characters. Plus, their design is rather unremarkable (see image above), the explanation for their powers (“objects have souls, too!” or something) is a bit eye-rolly, and one of them, who has had a lot of screentime, is that old Bleach standby, the obnoxious young woman who shouts all the time, is selfish and irritating, and punches people when she can’t get what she wants (hilarious!). Even worse, she is immediately lovestruck when she sees Ichigo. BORRRING.

 Obviously, it’s only, like five episodes in, so these characters will probably get humanised at some point (Bleach is pretty good at that), but I don’t know if I really care? I feel sort of ‘done’ with Bleach? Especially if one of the current plot threads is really “Haha look at Orihime acting silly around Ichigo due to her crush as if she’s had negative character growth!”

Hmmmm. Looking for an excuse to ‘drop’ things I apparently enjoy is a recurring theme for me, just now. Perhaps it’s because of my voracious appetite for hott neww culture, but my incredibly low finances that allow me to enjoy very little of what consumerism has to offer? So, to enjoy a new thing, I have to give up an old thing?

Like ‘mainstream’ comics, for instance. And by ‘mainstream’ I guess I mean ‘superhero’, which is rather stupid, as superheroes are sort of just a weird niche fetishy thing? I want to stop buying them in their monthly incarnation, anyway. Luckily, DC Comics have given me the perfect opportunity with their ‘New 52′.

It's 'new' because they've got extraneous lines on their costumes!

As anyone who pays vague attention to superhero comics will doubtless know, DC have decided to start again with all of their titles, which gives them an excuse to strip aside years of confusing continuity, and streamline characters and concepts to make them more accessible to new readers. A good idea, and I hear it works on some of the titles, and doesn’t on some of the others (some TERRIBLE decisions have been made, most notably regarding Amanda Waller).

It’s a perfect jumping-off point for me, and I’ve been looking for an excuse to do just that for quite some time.

But why? Because monthly comics ‘pamphlets’ are grossly overpriced (£3 for the last one I bought), with very little content, and what’s there is stuck between pages and pages of insulting adverts, and printed on pages that are so glossy you have to hold the comic at a certain angle to read them due to the light shining off them.

I’m being kept holding on to buying monthlies by Grant Morrison, who I have a ludicrous amount of time for.

Thing is, the last issue of his ‘Batman, Inc’ that came out was pretty terrible, and I have no idea if the series is even continuing anymore, post-universe reboot.

His current concern is ‘Action Comics’ which is about the ‘New 52′ Superman, and is an ‘okay’ comic but I don’t know if I can be arsed buying it. Not read the latest issue yet, and I in fact have been late in purchasing the first two, as well, which is strangely telling as I used to feel antsy if I hadn’t bought my fix of Grantsy-Pants as soon as possible.

Maybe I’m just growing out of the endlessly-recycling world of superheroes? Doubt it, though the fact remains I more and more am choosing to purchase self-contained stories that’ll be a nice and satisfying to reread, instead of a gigantic maybe-planned-maybe-not story that will never actually end. Stories that won’t have fill-in art, ingrained sexism, terrible production, and adverts for cars and the army.

I don’t watch ‘Neighbours’ anymore, either, so maybe I’m just going off soap opera?

"Don't it make you feel good?" "No, sorry. Not anymore"

Why buy a £3 piece of 20-page glossy shite with faux-’realistic’ art when I can go to a charity shop or Amazon and get a second or third hand trade paperback, digest or manga instalment for the same price? I guess there’s the whole “support your Local Comic Shop, pig!” thing, but, well, I am unemployed, so sometime’s middle class purchaser’s-morality has to be thrown out the window (though I still feel pretty awful about buying non-free range eggs the other day. There’s having no money, then there’s just being an irresponsible prick, y’know?).

That said, when Morrison’s apparent future titles ‘Multiversity’ (Frank Quitely!) and his take on ‘Wonder Woman’ (feminism and fetishism, apparently!) are released, I bet I’ll still buy the bloody things instead of waiting for the trade. There IS something to be said for a ‘single’ comic, a disposable pop artifact which can be rolled up and read on the fly, but how often are they actually like that? 

 Stupid comics nerd grumble grumble.

Oh, for fucksake. What a shit take on Harley Quinn.

Sort of related, I’m mildly interested in the new ‘Batman: Arkham City’ game that’s out. I mean, I really enjoyed the first one, despite the flaws in basic design and setting. Remember ‘Se7en’? Know the boring legacy it’s left behind to designers with no imagination who go for ‘grim and gritty’? Yeah. The new game’s just like that, but more so. So, we get dreary-looking action with added po-faced  ’realism’, full of dirt, clothing seams, EXTRRRREEEEEEM character redesigns (like the awful ‘The Batman’ cartoon but, you, know, ‘REAL’ and ‘ADULT’), and SexXy CatTwOmANn.

Yaaaawn. If it plays like the first one, though, it’ll be a lot of fun, and I’ll look past the ‘modern’ (late-90s) take on the setting and enjoy the closest we’ll come to a great Batman game, where I get to live out my unexamined pukey Libertarian (ewwwww) vigilante fantasies (though I mainly just like the leaping around) .

Will I buy it, though? Naw. Got no fucking money, do I? I’m already wondering how I’m going to pay for my pre-order of King of fighters XIII, which I have complained about in the past (‘King of fighters racist’ is one of the search terms that leads most people to this site, and I genuinely wonder why my blog is about the only one that mentions it. This is not a boast, it’s a concern) , even though I’m paying for a large chunk of it using vouchers I’ve earned from filling in online surveys about grocery shopping…

Everything's better with Beni

I am ludicrously excited for King of fighters XIII, which has been tweaked and improved for the conversion from arcade to home version, and features extra characters, modes, COLOUR EDIT (my favourite), new backgrounds, and so on.

It looked for a while like the racist background was going to be removed, though this was just wishful thinking on my part as I hadn’t seen it in any of the promotional materials. It’s still there, all right. One of the few good choices the developers had made was to cover up Elizabeth’s ‘boob window’ on her costume for the newest KoF games, but there’s now an option to revert to her old outfit. Hooray. And the Mai/King/Yuri (but not the Art of Fighting males) clothes-rip defeat ‘poses’ are still there. And Mai’s hideous waxed scrotal sack of a chest animation.

Also, there’s a ‘nice’ bit of transphobia/homophobia/not-sure-what-phobia in the Fatal Fury team ending, where the  red-blooded ‘hungry wolves’ all get embraced by the women in their lives, except for Joe, who has an admiring fan in the shape of a 5-o’clock shadow-sporting masculine-looking person in traditionally feminine clothes. His response? Run away, of course! And obviously, as queer-types are all FORCING their AGENDAS and SELVES on those poor straights, Joe gets aggressively chased and caught, then embraced by the person who is happy to ignore the fact Joe isn’t interested, as the other characters look on and laugh. SIGH.

I don’t think Joe would actually act like this, either.

 

Sigh. I’ll still buy it, though. I’ll be embarassed whenever any of the stuff mentioned above happens in it, but I’ll ignore it! White male privilege.

Hey! This has been quite a depressing blog post, full of neg-head bullshit and bringdown wankery. Just be thankful it didn’t mention comics-turd Mark Millar or the Scottish music scene’s current propensity for dreary indie-folk, or the pro-government/anti-blogger hilarity of ‘Contagion’ starring Jude Law, as it was going to!

The next post’s going to be all about positivity, folks, ‘cos I’ve read/seen/played/heard a LOT of supercool stuff recently. YEEEEEAAAAAAAAAH.

Yare yare?