Final Fantasy VII: Remake

I watched a lot of livestreams of people playing FFVII:R and ended up able to hear the Japanese dub of the game. The English subtitles (and voice lines, actually) are localized rather than directly translated, so understanding the Japanese was quite beneficial for gaining a better understanding of the situations and character traits being displayed over time. The game itself was breathtaking and will likely be a standard to which many future video games will be compared.

I'm not gonna lie, hearing Barret in Japanese after hearing the English VA do such an amazing job of capturing his character definitely caught me off guard (not to say that the Japanese VA was bad or ill-fitting, he was great, I just wasn't ready).

Also, Nobuo Uematsu remains one of my absolute favorite composers, he did a phenomenal job. The credits song, Hollow, is a beautiful piece that really captures a lot of the game and the dynamic ending to the game, which is excellent given how smoothly he layered it throughout other parts of the game's soundtrack.

Square Enix has done it again. In more ways than one.

Roll Credits




Hollow

Anime Catch-up: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency

The intro for Part II of JoJo did things to me that I really was not expecting.

I've heard music from the anime before and knew that there would be some jazzier and funkier pieces at some point, but Part I did not have much of that. As such, when Part II's intro came in with a completely different tone and approach, I was pleasantly surprised and, for the first time in a long time, never skipped the intro after listening for the first few episodes. It's really good (and, similar to Part I, highlights a lot of what comes later without directly spoiling anything of great importance).

Joseph was an interesting and alarmingly logical protagonist to follow in Jonathan's footsteps given his heritage. His personality and intuition is befitting of the Joestar family name, but his more peculiar and childlike nuances allow him to stand outside of his predecessor's shadow.

Another thing that I appreciate about the show is that it's quite easy to figure out which parts are likely used as memes despite having never really gotten into many JoJo memes. The scene where Joseph's secret weapon for a threat to save himself, his friends, and the general public near the fight is "にげるんだよ、SMOKEYYYY" is absolutely hilarious given the insanity that took place beforehand.

Overall, I had a fantastic time watching Part II and still look forward to watching the remainder of what is currently released. I might even read through everything once I've done that (and subsequently get ahead since the manga remains ahead of the anime).

Anime Catch-up: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood

It's been a long time coming.

I watched Part I of JJBA (2012 version) around a month ago to finally get started (since the quarantine left me with enough time to do so comfortably). I'm not going to lie, the show is insanely good for what it is. It feels like exactly what people have said it would be, which is honestly a rarity for anime given the wide variety of explanations people usually have. The flamboyant and dynamic character interactions and battles were an absolute thrill to watch, and the music was certainly up to the praise often given. Roundabout, the ending song, never felt out of place, even moving into Part II.

I found it very easy to identify certain character traits and relationships based on word choice in the Japanese dub, where characters such as Dio and other villains refer to themselves rather pompously without any form of regard for those before them.

Sidenote: Dio is so insanely evil, I really...did not expect him to actually start off that problematically. I can certainly understand how the JoJo bloodline remains in conflict with Dio and similar evils for so long after this.

Anime Catch-up: Fate/Zero Ending

So I watched the remainder of Fate/Zero sometime last month and it was a fascinating series of events. The consequences of the various actions taken and not taken leave the plot heading in an interesting direction.

Gilgamesh showed himself to be every bit the powerful force he had built up to be, and seeing Kiritsugu's relationship with Kotomine manifested in their fight was equally worthwhile and satisfying. Beyond that, there are a great deal of horrible people in this series (both prior to the show's timeline and during) who have left things in a problematic spot. Despite this, there were some incredibly well-scripted moments for characters, including Iskander in his fight with Gilgamesh. Overall, I think that the writing did a solid job of establishing the philosophies of the servants and having them fully represent it through both their words and their decisions.