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Welcome

Hi! Since this is the newest post, a little introduction is in order. I’m Andrew, and this is my blog.

I mostly write about #games and #what I did last month, but other stuff too: check out the Site map for specific things, or the Tags page for broad categories.

See the About page for more details.

Summary for December 2024

Picturesque

Sophie is sitting on some stones on a grassy hill. We only see her back, wearing a cloak and a straw hat. She is looking into the distance where there is a river with trees covering the bank, green fields and rolling hills separated by rows of trees. Far away, closer to snow-covered mountains under a blue sky with some fluffy clouds, is a city – only small dots of buildings.

I didn’t like Howl’s Moving Castle that much. While Kiki is more or less the same, Nausicaä is a clear expansion, the story of the book and the movie are very different, in a way that reading the book first made watching the movie very confusing for me. What they have in common is that I don’t think they sold the romance that well, if at all. The characters were… eh. I wasn’t on board with the themes.

There is a valid criticism of Miyazaki’s handling of war that I won’t go into here, and Howl’s is a great example for that discussion.

Ponyo on the other hand is simply adorable. In a way, it is a return to My Neighbor Totoro, in a slightly bigger way. And that’s alone is enough for me.

Humanoid hands holding a sword, the hilt of the witch is a large circle, inside it is another smaller circle with a plate that looks like Pac-Man: “pie” with a triangle piece missing.
[The dark and gritty Pac-Man reboot.]

I don’t think I had a choice not to see Secret Level. So I did. The best episodes are the ones where the story has to deal with a game mechanic, so it is very disappointing that most of them chose the same one: respawn. The others just chose to tell the story in a world of a game, and for 10 minute episodes, sometimes even less, they were fine stories. Ultimately, not a disappointment, not by a long shot, but overall just not a memorable anthology.