#if you advertise that the original members are going to have arcs focusing on them you would think that you’d follow through | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

darksushimoon-moved · 4 years

Text

Stars Align (Hoshiai no Sora) has been trending for the past few hours (around 12 now! And it was above BTS for a while!!!). For those who don't watch it, it might be a new thing under their radar, one they haven't seen trending yet. I say, in my personal opinion, it's a must watch!

It's a sports anime, yes, but it's not really about the sport. On My Anime List, the synopsis goes like this:

"Constantly outperformed by the girls' club, the boys' soft tennis club faces disbandment due to their poor skills and lack of positive results in matches. In desperate need of members, Toma Shinjou is looking to recruit capable players, but he fails to scout anyone. Enter Maki Katsuragi, a new transfer student who demonstrates great reflexes when he catches a stray cat in his classroom, instantly capturing Toma's attention. With his interest piqued, Toma ambitiously asks Maki to join the boys' team but is quickly rejected, as Maki doesn't wish to join any clubs. Toma refuses to back down and ends up persuading Maki—only under the condition that Toma will pay him for his participation and cover other club expenses.

As Maki joins the team, his incredible form and quick learning allow him to immediately outshine the rest of the team. Although this gives rise to conflict among the boys, Maki challenges and pushes his fellow team members to not only keep up with his seemingly natural talent, but also drive them to devote themselves to the game they once neglected.

This story focuses on the potential of the boys' soft tennis club and their discovery of their own capability, while also enduring personal hardships and dealing with the darker side of growing up in middle school."

So, without going into spoiler territory, why should you watch it?

For one, the scenes are incredibly storyboarded and craftfully animated. While using standard 2D animation for the foreground characters,

they use 3D animation for the background characters and objects, keeping them moving despite their distance in the scene!

Not to mention the incredible scenery.

The characters are drawn and colored with care, the lines looking painter-ly with their fluidness, and the colors a pastel color, contrasting with the show's heavy themes.

Which brings me to the second point as to why you should watch this.

This show tackles many themes that have been relatively unexplored in anime. Without going into depth, they tackle themes such as child abuse and LGBTQ representation, and many more. It may appear to be a sports anime, but it does not focus on its sports, only in a handful of episodes does the soft tennis place forefront ahead of the issues the characters face.

Lastly, I beg you to watch it because of how it was treated. In short, the creator, Akane Kazuki, wanted to tell an unconventional story, and had originally planned for this anime to be 24 episodes. However, it was axed down to 12 episodes in the spring of last year, and therefore, they could only air the first half of the series. Akane wants to finish the story, but it's up to fans like us who are willing to go the extra mile to advertise it and buy merch to show the company that we want more. If you watch it on legal streaming sites (which it can be abundantly found on) the company will see interest, and want to televise it more!

So, you may be asking, where can I watch it? (Or not, that's fine too.)

Well, its available on Funimation (where there's a dub coming out of it, it's on episode 9 currently) and Hulu (where all the subbed episodes are located)! And, I believe you can find it on Amazon Instant Video as well.

Though, despite all I talk it up, I must issue some content warnings before it starts. This anime is very, very heavy thematically, and I don't want anyone to be surprised when they watch it.

-Child abuse is brought up time and time again throughout the show, with most of its cast having problematic parents who abuse their children, in many ways, not only physical.

-Bullying/cyberbullying is a major theme throughout the show as well, especially in episode three, and throughout one of the character's arcs.

-sadly, alongside the LGBTQ representation, there is transphobia/homophobia.

-furthermore, there are themes of violence, murder, and mild suicide implications sprinkled throughout the show.

EDIT: I've been informed to also include further cws, so these are a few I forgot in the original post!

-existentialism is talked about often throughout the show, by the main character and others!

-in the dub, funimation changed one of the lines to be fatphobic, likely by accident, but still a thing.

So despite the fact this is an incredible show which talks about tooics that deserve to be talked about in today's media, I do acknowledge it isn't for everyone. Which is okay! I just wish for everyone to promote the show as it deserves to be played out in its entirity, instead of being cut short.

Thank you for reading, if you made it this far! I hope you'll give this show a chance!

#hoshiai no sora #hns #stars align #maki katsuragi #shinjou touma #anime #anime 2019 #akane kazuki #shut up ash #long post

758 notes · View notes

sukirichi · 3 years

Note

read the new chapters and aAAACKKKKK BESTIE???

y/n - ‘I was born to make everyone’s life a living hell’ maam this LINE?! JAW DROPPED, TIME STOPPED being insecure all her life and wanting to live up to the expectations to her dad just to have that sliver of attention from him, that sentence gives us a glimpse on how little she felt despite being accomplished, rather successful actually because she always cleans her boss’ mess have a lot of baggage to unpack. and when the secret was confirmed, her anger rejects all of the entity that ties with her past because both her parents deprived her for the things she was supposed to have– becoming greedy to fulfill those. then eventually, somehow, going back to her roots aka being humble after having the talk with her dad. As most of her insecurity started because of him and how she had to be the bigger person for his other family, clearing out the misunderstanding between them brought a sense of peace while she’s settling in the restless turn of events.

and with our main man gojo, this guy, it is not wise to- 😤😤 how can you say you’re engaged after doing the body tango huh? esp when you said you want y/n to be your wife? oh gee and the revelation of his past relationship with mia and how he sees her in y/n is so fucked up. can’t help but think that satoru wanting to marry and be this lovey-dovey with y/n is just him reliving the moments that mia never gave him in the past. and y/n accepting that their current relationship is based on how they’re filling up the cracks in their needs and settling for the sake of familiarity. imagine how deep in love our girl is to keep satoru in her life 💔 im still in it for the second lead agenda

needless to say, everyone here needs a therapy so they can get their shit straight together 🤧🤧 (ノ•̀ o •́ )ノ ~ ┻━┻

BUT i know you mentioned this many times but laywer! naoya all poised and in his best behavior while helping y/n in her new situation has my heart go💕💕 winning lots of cases and is known in his field, he proved that he is both beauty and brains. and the pen spin??? man be pulling those fast spins either to distract or impress the person he is talking to flashing those perfect white pearls wtf now i can’t get that out of my head naoya brain rot 🥵🥵 also celebrity chef! sukuna in charge of all those delicious, exquisite cuisines? imma make myself broke just to taste his masterpiece🥲 ooh but how about him being a michelin star chef and owning a michelin-starred resto?! no doubt, left and right you see this man appearing on some high food magazine on the cover 😊😊 oh oh i also saw that supermodel! choso?? also his face is plastered on magazines AND luxurious advertisements ex. shibuya crossing! where most people be drenched in his glorious presence yea weird shibuya arc ref pls kill me and everyone talks how handsome and intimidating he is while he just have a rbf and only the closest people in his life get to see him drop that front 😌😌

with that in mind, imagine supermodel! choso being a godfather to the baby of y/n?? he would go soft immediately at the sight of the child and would probably love giving lots of branded clothes it will be good enough for more than a year ☺️🥲😭

oh and there is this one scene in chp7 that reminded me of the recent korean movie i watched i dont wanna say it in case you wanna check it out its called sweet and sour and oh god idk why but watching it, mind keeps on prompting your fics 😬😬 maybe bcos i some of your fic always had med related topics and the main actress role there is a nurse. i remember that you’re on your clinic training so maybe thats why 😳oohh pls don’t forget to take breaks and be safe heart and oh ur a psych major too? oh wow hi ig in relation to one actress in the sweet and sour fic, she was also in a kdrama the heirs- which was popular at the time with it being packed with some solid household actors and actresses. sky castle tho, ig it relates to the theme of reckless more because its mostly how parents from the upper class will mindlessly destroy someone’s life to attain their materialistic desires 🤧🙂

this fic, easily in my top 3 ‘heart belongs to who it dictates’ so many twists, so much drama and ANGST! YES BESTIE GIMME THOSE ANGST 🥲😌

i hope you’re doing well nowadays :’)) we need to find gege the best chiropractor to take care of his back, so good that it’ll make naoya respawn to life 🙂 suki i don’t think i’ll get tired of saying how much i love your work that it feels illegal im reading it for free 💔. i don’t really have much to offer, but im wishing you good health and success in your life :’)) aah i’ve mentioned this already but take care always 💕💖😊🥰

- 🍳

read the new chapters and aAAACKKKKK BESTIE???

needless to say, everyone here needs a therapy so they can get their shit straight together 🤧🤧 (ノ•̀ o •́ )ノ ~ ┻━┻

this fic, easily in my top 3 ‘heart belongs to who it dictates’ so many twists, so much drama and ANGST! YES BESTIE GIMME THOSE ANGST 🥲😌

- 🍳

y/n becomes a real baddie when she’s pissed off 😫

hmm y/n wasn’t really working hard for her dad’s attention, it was more like she felt so left out and unwanted (she feels unwanted wherever she goes) that she just decided to pack up and support them from afar bcos to her, she’s so alienated in her dad’s family that she felt like she had to work hard to earn a spot in their table. she knows she’s the outsider but she wants to feel like she can be part of them, that she is also a child deserving of love and care, but becos her stepmom focused more on her actual kids and her own dad was too busy with his new family now, it made y/n feel that she had to do something to be worthy of that.

that’s why most of the money she made working in tokyo was still wired to her family; she put her brothers in school and supported them, all because she hoped it would make them accept her more. now, things are different because she finally found her biological family, but even if valeria and co. still don’t want her, y/n is now more focusing on building something that’s truly hers that no one can take away. yes yes, she did become greedy, but more for power than of acceptance. she got to a point she doesn’t care as much vying for her parents’ approval and now thinks her luxury gives her comfort; only because at least she has that much. like she said in the latest chapter, happiness was not what she needed, it was stability and money - all things she lacked before.

and yea she did go back to her roots! all of her issues started with her dad anyway but that part is slowly patching up 🩹💔 oooh actually your theory is right bestie 🧐 gojo found y/n interesting bcos she reminded him of mia, so the more she pushed him away, the more he’s like wait, i’ve been here before, let’s not repeat past mistakes but i can do better now. on the part where gojo talked to mia while she was asleep, notice how he said he’s given a second chance to do better now, all because he couldn’t do them with mia but he could with y/n.

ohhh actually y/n was the one who established that ‘fulfilling mutual need and settling for familiarity instead of being lonely’ type of relationship. gojo avoided her for weeks and he’s pretty settled in keeping his distance, but she was the one who sought him out. deep down, y/n is afraid if she doesn’t at least use him as an anchor to her more humble roots, then she might spiral out of control and end up like valeria, thus using him as a ‘distraction’ but in reality, she needs his comfort to be grounded.

SECOND LEAD AGENDA OMG LETS GOOO 🏃🏻‍♀️🏃🏻‍♀️🏃🏻‍♀️ geto the fine fine option.

NO BESTIE MOMENT U MENTIONED LAWYER NAOYA I JUST KNEW I WAS GONNA SCREAM. okay but lawyer! naoya is so fine, i love his character so much bcos he’s a pure bean. originally, i was gonna make him an antagonist but i found he had more potential as a good, supportive character. HIS PEN SPIN HELPPP WHY COULDN’T HE JUST BEEN OUR BABY DADDY 😫 he pulls them fast spins bcos he’s nervous btw HAHAHAHA y/n can be quite intimidating and lawyer! naoya is sometimes too precious.

celebrity chef! sukuna is MEAN! he was pictured after gordon ramsay so lmao. omgggg sukuna being famous not only for his food but also his handsomeness 😳 he gets so cocky over how no one can get in his level while popping a battle of champagne, listening to ‘careless whisper’ while dancing to his reflection in the mirror 😤

also yoo supermodel! choso is THE hot shit 🥵 he’s so famous his schedule is packed for an entire year and a half and those are just for very selected brands and designers! ugh imagine going to work on the subway when you see supermodel! choso with rbf posing sexily and you swoon because he’s so sexy. plot twist that choso doesn’t know how to drive bcos as a kamo family member, they grew up with drivers taking them to and fro, so when his driver got sick and everyone else was busy, supermodel choso takes the subway himself and hides behind a face mask and cap while still wearing extravagant clothes that makes him stand out more. he does not have ‘subtle’ on his book at all.

and yeah people say he’s intimidating but its more his height and build + rbf! in reality, he’s just as soft and sweet as naoya, but both of them go into protective mode when someone they care about is being crapped on. and boy when they DO get into “what did you just say?” mode, better run away 🏃🏻‍♀️ supermodel! choso is also an heir to the kamo empire though not after the business, but he still has enough power to take you down in a second.

meanwhile, lawyer! naoya didn’t become this successful without being so savage yet composed he makes you question your entire existence before he drags you to court. lawyer! naoya is so scarily convincing that he can make you plead guilty even tho you did nothing wrong 💀

aaaah omg supermodel! choso LOVES babies actually! as the eldest child who looked after his brothers bcos the kamo parents are always away for work, being a father figure is so natural to him. i can picture him being the one who cries harder than gojo if the baby is born bcos he’s so excited, then reads poems to the baby before sighing that childbirth is such a beautiful thing 🥺

omg i know sweet n sour, the actresses are one of my faves tho i haven’t watched it yet! oooh they’re a nurse? i didn’t know that 🧐 i actually finish my short training in a week so i’ll be heading on to heavy majoring in psychology! wait bestie are YOU also a psych major 😳💕 oh and i see i see, sky castle *jots that down for future references* reckless actually has lots of significance in terms of the parents’ roles so i’m excited to see that! and aww thank you so much, can’t believe i made it in someone’s top three 🥺💕

HELP AHSKWKW i’m gonna call the best chiropractor in the world and send them gege’s way, i’ll cry a river if that’s what it takes to bring my boo back to life 😭 and noo baby the support already means a lot to me, i’m just happy to indulge in my hobbies and share it wih you all so thank you very much for everything 🥺 please take care of yourself too n have a nice day!! kith MWAH 💕

#asks with naoya's trophy wife #series: reckless #jjk: manga spoilers #anon:🍳

5 notes · View notes

au-tumn-al · 6 years

Text

TTGC has been out for 2 weeks now and since it’s been enough time for me to stop crying and actually do the post-game stuff, I want to get all my thoughts out about it. It’ll be under a cut because it’ll be long, and I’m not sure how many of my followers are actually interested in what I have to say. Which is ofc fine, I just like talking about it and I’ve been sitting on some of this for a while.

To start off, I loved Torna ~ The Golden Country. It’s the best expansion DLC we’ll be seeing from Nintendo, and probably from most other games in general, for a while.

I like its core cast of main characters than base XC2, and I think I like it a little more than XC1’s as well. I didn’t actually like any of the characters more than my favorites from base XC2, but as a whole, they were all really likable and never felt like they were falling behind in the background. I never felt like “yeah, I like them I guess” to any of the cast members like Sharla was for me from XC1, and a pretty decent chunk of the protagonists in XC2. ...Because XC2′s cast was way too huge with too much focus on the antagonists and somehow not enough at the same time, but that’s neither here. Technically Team Hugo isn’t really as important to the story as Lora, Jin, Addam, and Mythra, but the sidequests very easily fixed that for me. All the characters were very present in the side-content so I never forgot about them. I regularly did sidequests when they popped up so it felt like a natural part of the story.

I would say that it delivered in everything that I was hoping for from a story standpoint but it really, really didn’t. One of the things I was looking forward to the most was seeing more of Amalthus and Malos’s dynamic before Malos left to start his rampage. Their relationship is only told through subtext in the core game and what we saw was interesting. Even in some of chapter 8 and 9, it almost felt like they were trying one-up the other on how much destruction they could cause. Malos’s “Amalthus, you never disappoint” line delivery even makes it sound like he was looking forward to what his driver would be throwing at Alrest.

The only thing we got from Torna about how they were initially with each other was

Malos shows up and Amalthus’s knee-jerk reaction is a deadpan “oh god, it’s this asshole” look. I enjoyed it probably more than I was meant to, but I wish we got to see more. Maybe it was a little unrealistic to expect it, but considering how much of the story depends on their relationship with each other, was it really?

Another thing I was hoping for was more backstory for Minoth. I wanted to know if he knew Malos (which was actually answered though, so that was nice) since they shared a driver, and I really wanted to know how he ended up becoming a flesh eater. Judicium was already destroyed by the time TTGC rolled around and we barely went into what a flesh eater even was, so that was lame. That said though, the game did go into his relationship with Amalthus and it told us all that was really important, on top of giving us some other stuff I wasn’t expecting (a North American wild west motif, Spanish, a weapon deadass called “gunknife”, and Elma’s specials except more stylized) so you certainly won’t hear me complaining. I loved what we got with Minoth even if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, and I think he’s great.

Another thing that I was expecting was for Malos to have more screentime. He was heavily advertised so I think I’m justified in expecting this. There wasn’t necessarily anything about Malos I wanted expanded upon, I just wanted to see him more since he makes everything about a billion times more entertaining just by being there. He completely stole the show in every cutscene he was in and I loved every second of it. He was kicking everyone’s asses in his first boss fight and even won, but I was loving his script, animation, and voice acting far too much to care.

there was a nice little detail to his animation too

After he punches the ground for the Monado Cyclone(?), you can see him shaking his hand off because like damn, that probably hurt. ,,,I just liked it. Don’t ask me why.

He’s probably the main reason I only play in English to be honest. His voice actor sells the script and character so perfectly. I seriously don’t know if I’d like Malos as much as I do if he was played by someone else. He might be the only Xenoblade character other than maybe Shulk and Lin that I can say this about.

and his monologue to the party right after his first boss fight where he says “they see the divine flame of life and piss all over it” while sauntering away was actually the best scene in the game. We didn’t see as much of Malos as I would have wanted, but every scene we did get was the best so like with Minoth, I can’t complain. I love this man. He’s the most entertaining sack of shit I’ve ever had the pleasure of enjoying.

My ruined expectations and Malos aside, what the game actually gave us was so good, I can’t even complain about the things I wanted to see because they gave us plenty of stuff I didn’t know I wanted. The two biggest ones, for me anyway, are Mythra and Addam.

I had no idea that TTGC would flesh her out the way they did, and I am not disappointed. Mythra was amazing in TTGC, and really made me appreciate her and her character arc in the base game a lot more. I loved how generally unbearable and unlikable they made her. She’s completely self-absorbed and full of herself, and just overall extremely similar to Malos. The way the game handles her attitude was really well done too. Because the other characters are constantly calling her out for her bad behavior (esp. Jin and Brighid. Lora chips in too sometimes) and lack of awareness on top of being the verbal punching bag and the butt of a lot of the jokes in the game, she’s not obnoxious to the player. She could have been really annoying, but she wasn’t. On the topic of the jokes though, I laughed at more of TTGC’s comedy. They relied less on anime tropes and were more character focused, which are usually the jokes I like more. The game felt a lot more like XC1 in that aspect, and that was really great.

Moving on, I loved Addam. He was my favorite character in the game. Making him act like Mythra’s dad was something I wasn’t expecting and I loved it. I have a pretty big post in my drafts where I talk about him extensively so that should go up at some point. It’s mostly about how he’s a really good foil to Rex and how he failed as a driver rather than about his pretty fabulous dynamic with Mythra (even if he ended up rejecting her as his blade, he did accept her as person for him to take care of, and he did everything he could in that area) though. Oh, and because there’s no way to shoehorn this in that Addam post, I want to bring something up. I don’t know if there’s any good footage of this (if there is, please send it to me so I can edit it in), but there’s a post battle conversation between Mythra and Lora that goes kind of like this:

Mythra: “Hey, Lora, what do you do when the going gets tough?”

Lora: “Just think about the people I care about.”

Mythra: “Think of loved ones, huh?”

Lora: “Yeah. If I do that, I’m usually grinning like an idiot.”

Now, let’s look at Mythra when she’s at one of her lowest. She’s scared and feels alone. Malos is attacking her with everything he’s got, and she’s is looking for anything to hold on to. ...You see where I’m going with this.

She flashes to memories of her friends, and thinks of both Addam and Milton specifically. The thing is though, for all she knows, Milton could be dead from Malos’s initial attack, and Addam is doing everything he can to hold her back from fully transforming into Pneuma because of his distrust and fear of her. Mythra trying to think of all her loved ones wasn’t enough, and then all she got was a confusing vision of a person she’d never met before. She’s completely alone, confused, and hurt, and she doesn’t have anything there to ground her. That’s when she breaks down in tears, and then starts sinking Torna in a daze because she can’t control her power.

...on a more positive note, two of the visions she gets of Rex is of him accepting her in chapter 7.

So that was finding comfort in a loved one, but it was just too soon. Like Jin told her, her true driver and real time to come as her own as a person wasn’t in Torna. It certainly didn’t help at the time, though.

At that point in chapter 7, she was in a similarly low state as she was in TTGC, except she had Rex that time, and then was fully able to achieve her full power as an Aegis. It should be noted Mythra’s “I just...want...to save...” line was apparently horribly translated, and the original was more along the lines of her begging for someone to save her. That’s what I hear anyway and I can believe it. It makes more sense that way.

Good God, was this a great expansion. It was already pretty fantastic with just its setting and premise alone, but it does an even better job in making me appreciate a lot of the scenes in XC2. Even the already-amazing scene in chapter 7. sPEAKING OF ALREADY AMAZING SCENES MADE BETTER BY TTGC

Rex: “I don’t even know what I’m doing here anymore... Did...did I go wrong somewhere...?”

This is one of my favorite Mythra scenes in the entire game, TTGC included. It’s so small but it’s so good. I don’t think I even need to explain why this is made better by TTGC.

XC2 is very loud, and unabashedly anime, but it has quiet scenes like this and dammit, are they the best parts of the game. I think they’re even made better by the fact XC2′s tone is generally so upbeat and anime.

I said this before, but TTGC didn’t tell us anything new. We already knew pretty much all of the events of the game before it came out. Maybe we were missing a few details, but in the end, we knew how things were going to go down. Mythra becoming a much more interesting character because of the expansion pass just by being able to see her growth just shows how important the “show, don’t tell” rule is.

I love Haze a lot. I hate how she’s a third wheel in Team Lora, I hate how Addam and Jin are the only people who really pay any attention to her, and I hate even more that no one hugs her when she’s crying at the end of the game.

oh yeah, Lora and Jin were the main characters. They weren’t very interesting to me (Lora barely had an arc and all of Jin’s intricacies mostly come from the base game) so I don’t have a lot to say about them other than I really liked them. The ending would have completely broke me if the game forced me to watch Lora die so I don’t even care that it was left out.

People consider the lyrics of “A Moment of Eternity” a message from Lora to Jin but I like to pretend that it’s Addam to Mythra because it’s less depressing that way. The singer is encouraging their loved one to find someone to help them move on and if it was to Jin, that meant that Lora’s last wish for him never happened. He met Malos and then

but seriously though, it could be both. The song ties in pretty well to “One Last You”, and that was very obviously from Pneuma about Rex. It was probably supposed to be up to interpretation anyway. ...a little off-topic, but there’s a line in the song that goes “time flowed differently for us/not to say it was all bad” and then there’s a scene where Addam talks about how he doesn’t have enough time to adapt to Mythra so...idk, maybe that’s something? I mean, Lora got 17 years with Jin, so she didn’t exactly have the short one year Addam had with Mythra.

i’m done now.

Half of this was me gushing about Mythra. I don’t even care because I loved her. Please forgive any of the obvious signs that I didn’t spend very long proofreading this thanks--

#personal #xenoblade chronicles 2 #torna spoilers #this is a long-ass post lmao

18 notes · View notes

kcaruth · 5 years

Text

Movie Mania: Top 10 of 2018

This one was difficult. Those who have followed this blog for a while will know that for the past two years I have done a top 15 list of favorite films. That is largely because 2016 and 2017 cranked out so many great films, and I could not restrict myself to 10. However, 2018 turned out to be a rather lackluster year for film, in my opinion. Sure, there were some high points, but overall it was disappointing. It was actually easy to stick to a list of 10 this time, and those 10 films are all deserving of praise. I just wish they had some tougher competition to go up against. I digress, though. I now give you my spoiler-free list of favorite films of 2018.

Honorable Mention: Bumblebee

A collaboration between Travis Knight, the director of Kubo and the Two Strings, and Hailee Steinfeld? Count me in!

I stopped following the Transformers franchise after 2011′s Transformers: Dark of the Moon. One can only endure so many mind-numbing Michael Bay explosions before all of his or her brain cells die out. Here is a fun exercise that one of my college professors taught me; try it next time a Michael Bay Transformers movie comes on. Every time there is a cut, tap a pen or pencil or clap your hands. Frankly, it is quite overwhelming and hard to keep up with, and it is difficult not to notice every single unnecessary, jarring cut after becoming conscious of them through this exercise.

Contrast that with 2018′s Bumblebee. At Knight’s direction, the film forgoes most of those flashy explosions in favor of a more intimate approach to actual character development. Knight wisely chooses to keep the audience grounded and focused on the human characters, namely Steinfeld’s Charlie Watson, a teenage girl who is still struggling to come to terms with the death of her father while harboring resentment of her mother for remarrying. As far as the robots go, while the other Transformers movies went overboard with filling the screen with as many Decepticons and Autobots as they could, Knight really only has the titular Bumblebee and a couple of Decepticons hunting him down, ensuring that the action scenes and the film itself do not feel too bloated. Bumblebee is the course correction that this franchise so desperately needed.

#10: Eighth Grade

I was cringing throughout the run time of Eighth Grade, but somehow that is a compliment to this film. Uncompromising in its excruciating honesty, Eighth Grade hits the bullseye when it targets the audience’s empathy for an anxious 13-year-old during her last week of eighth grade named Kayla Day, played by Elsie Fisher. As his debut feature film, writer-director Bo Burnham has stated that he drew inspiration from his own struggles with social anxiety, so the script feels genuine and absent of any Hollywood edits. While Kayla is certainly the main focus of the film, Burnham provides a surprisingly touching character arc for her single father, Mark, played by Josh Hamilton. Mark desperately attempts to connect with his teenage daughter, but it seems like all she cares about having a connection with is her phone and social media. With themes of mental health, heavy use of social media, and sexuality, Burnham delivers one of the most uncomfortable scenes I have ever sat through in a movie theater, which is most likely exactly how he intended it to feel.

I cannot help but compare Eighth Grade to 2016′s Edge of Seventeen, another coming-of-age comedy-drama about a teenage girl by a debut director. If I was given the choice between the two films, I would pick Edge of Seventeen, which I believe is much more re-watchable, garnering that intended empathetic response from the audience with half the cringe. Both are brilliant, but those who have not seen Edge of Seventeen should do themselves a favor and give it a watch.

#9: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

With so much hate and negativity in the world today, Morgan Neville’s documentary about Fred Rogers is a shining beacon of hope that restores one’s faith in humanity. Using archival footage as well as interviews with those closest to Rogers, Neville paints an intimate portrait of the man who welcomed audiences into his neighborhood through his pioneering television program. Without deifying Rogers, Neville shows how this American treasure dedicated every fiber of his being to teaching children how to be upstanding human beings who care deeply for one another, despite our differences. This documentary proves that Rogers’ lessons were not just for children, though. In fact, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? often feels like a one-on-one session with Rogers, encouraging audience members that they are all capable of good through simple acts of kindness.

#8: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Unfortunately, this American western is sure to fly under most people’s radar because it was a Netflix release that I do not recall having much fanfare and advertising. Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, this film is an anthology of six different vignettes set in the American West. Sporting a stellar cast with the likes of Liam Neeson, Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco, Zoe Kazan, Brendan Gleeson, and more, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs flexes the Coen’s signature style of dark drama and black humor while impressively tackling all of the sub-genres within the greater Western genre.

Each of the vignettes are tied together by death in some form or fashion. While my ranking of them changes from day to day, my favorite and least favorite remain consistent. It is virtually impossible to not fall in love with the first vignette, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” which is about a cheerful outlaw known just as widely for his singing as his gunslinging. The final vignette featuring a handful of characters cramped together on a stagecoach ride called “The Mortal Remains,” on the other hand, feels somewhat out of place and ends the film with a bit of a dud. Along the way between these two vignettes, however, viewers encounter enchanting tales of a bank robber, an impresario and his artist, a prospector, and a wagon train on the Oregon Trail.

As the Coen’s first film to be shot digitally, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs boasts some impressive cinematography, especially when it comes to wide sweeping shots, like any decent Western should. It also features a wonderfully delightful score that I desperately hope gets an Oscar nod. Not a week has gone by since I have watched this film where I do not find myself humming one of the songs or music from it. The acting throughout the different vignettes of the film is topnotch, and the actors look like they are having a blast in their roles.The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a fun time that leaves viewers longing for more time in the American West. For those who cannot find the time to sit down for the whole film, I must urge them to at least watch the first vignette about Buster Scruggs, which is worth the price of admission on its own.

#7: Isle of Dogs

Set in a dystopian Japan, Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animated Isle of Dogs tells the story of a boy searching for his dog on Trash Island after an outbreak of canine flu. Voiced by an all-star cast including Bryan Cranston, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson, and Bill Murray, Isle of Dogs is an epic adventure with its fair share of plot twists along the way. Alexandre Desplat provides a brilliant score for the film that matches Anderson’s comedic quirkiness and thematic choices. I would not consider myself a fan of Anderson’s distinct film style, but I do consider myself a huge fan of dogs and enjoyed Isle of Dogs. (Get the title of the film? Pronounce it out loud quickly. I Love Dogs.)

#6: Game Night

Game Night made me laugh out loud like I have not done in a long time at the movie theater. Starring Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams, the film follows the hilariously ridiculous premise of a group of friends whose game night gets wrapped up in a criminal escapade. In addition to Bateman and McAdams’ great, fun chemistry as the husband and wife duo of Max and Annie Davis, Jesse Plemons’ portrayal of Gary Kingsbury, Max and Annie’s weird neighbor, delivers some moments of pure laughter. For a film that is high on laughs, Game Night manages to string the audience along with its surprisingly competent mystery, complete with reveals and twists that both shock and amuse viewers. Be sure to stick around for the credits and post-credits.

#5: A Quiet Place

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a big baby when it comes to horror movies. I absolutely loathe jump scares and will watch horror movies through my fingers if I am forced to watch one. However, I had heard so much positive buzz about John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place that I could not allow myself to make this list without seeing it first, and boy am I glad I summoned the courage to see it. A Quiet Place is a masterclass in tension, tone, pacing, sound design, and character development.

The plot centers around the Abbott family in a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by blind monsters that attack any source of sound with their heightened sense of hearing. Nothing is known about the origins of these monsters, only that they have wiped out most human and animal life on Earth. In this hopeless world, Lee and Evelyn Abbott struggle to fill their children with hope for the future.

The performances in A Quiet Place are some of the best of the year. The actors have an added degree of difficulty of having very minimal to no dialogue during the entire film, so their facial expressions and body language have to do most of the talking. One of the more impressive feats of A Quiet Place is the characters communicate in American Sign Language, and the actors actually learned ASL for the film. Millicent Simmonds, who plays Regan Abbott, is deaf and knows ASL, so she was able to help her co-stars with ASL, make corrections, and suggest improvements.

Krasinski has said that A Quiet Place is all about parenthood. Along with this theme, the film contains many Christian images and themes that are fascinating to pick apart and ponder. With so much depth, A Quiet Place delivers an original story that grips audiences. Although I did not see it in theaters, I am sure that people could hear a pen drop in their viewings.

#4: Bohemian Rhapsody

For all of its inaccuracies, creative liberties, and unevenness, Bohemian Rhapsody took the world by storm as the highest grossing music biopic and reinvigorated a love of Queen and its leading man, Freddie Mercury. Rami Malek runs away with the film as he disappears into his role as Mercury, so much so that audience members might have to pinch themselves to remember that they are not watching the real Freddie Mercury. Seriously, Malek has to be a surefire Oscar contender for this performance. Not only does he masterfully recreate Mercury’s mannerisms and moves onstage, he also channels his pain and feelings of isolation to bring audiences a fully realized depiction of the superstar. The supporting cast is good too, although Malek’s stellar performance does overshadow them, through no fault of their own.

For its finale, Bohemian Rhapsody gifts audiences with one of the most moving, memorable set pieces in all of film for 2018, the 1985 Live Aid concert. In a word, it is epic. Bohemian Rhapsody teaches lessons of acceptance, love, individuality, and the power of music and leaves viewers wishing they could have had a few more years with the amazing Freddie Mercury. This is one of those instances where the majority of critics should be ignored. Even if viewers are new to Queen, they should not miss this film.

#3: Green Book

Bolstered by fantastic performances by Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali, Peter Farrelly’s Green Book takes a relatively unknown true story about a concert tour to the Deep South in the 1960s with African-American pianist Dr. Don Shirley (Ali) and his driver/bodyguard, Italian-American Tony Vallelonga (Mortensen), and tackles its subject matter without being too heavy-handed and maintaining respect for its characters. The script treats Vallelonga and Shirley as real human beings. Contrary to most film tropes, neither completely changes his character after a single event or incident. Instead, that change occurs slowly over the course of their road trip. Both men learn from one another, despite their disparate backgrounds. Mortensen and Ali are both worthy of Oscar nominations, though I think I would give the edge to Mortensen.

For a film about racism, identity, and the dangerous Jim Crow South, Green Book remains accessible to all audiences. It is full of heart and is brimming with that feel-good aura. As Mick LaSalle wrote in The San Francisco Chronicle, Green Book is “so big in its spirit, that the movie acquires a glow. It achieves that glow slowly, but by the middle and certainly by the end, it's there, the sense of something magical happening, on screen and within the audience.”

#2: Annihilation

I have not stopped thinking about Alex Garland’s Annihilation since it came out way back in February. Garland, the director of one of my favorite films released in 2015 Ex Machina, puts together an impressive cast starring Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, and Oscar Isaac to deliver a truly intoxicating film that leaves audiences deep in thought well after the credits roll. Based on Jeff VanderMeer’s novel of the same name, Annihilation follows a group of scientists who enter a mysterious quarantined area known as the Shimmer. Inside the Shimmer, flora and fauna undergo uncontrollable mutations. The scientists explore the Shimmer in an attempt to learn its secrets and discover what happened to the military team that was sent in before them.

The atmospheric, bone-chilling score sticks in viewers’ memories and adds to the intense tone of the film. Speaking of tone, Annihilation might bring audiences to the verge of suffocation because of how breathtaking it is. It has possibly the scariest, most dreadful scene of any film from this decade that comes from the stuff of nightmares and leaves audiences haunted. For all of its terrifying elements, however, this sci-fi film also showcases some downright gorgeous scenes that let the imagination run wild. Unlike many sci-fi films these days, Annihilation is not afraid to slow down and let scenes marinate in viewers’ minds. With so many avenues to explore as far as themes go, from ethics to grief to depression to humanity’s propensity for its own self-destruction, Annihilation is a film that should be talked about for a long time to come.

#1: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

This was the easiest decision on my whole list. No other film came close to the number one spot after I saw Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. I remember seeing trailers for this film throughout 2018, but I did not have high expectations for it and almost blew it off. After all, with all of the Spider-Man films we have had in recent years, how could this one stand out apart from its animation?

The hype is real. Spider-Man is one of the most well-rounded films of 2018. It expertly balances its genuinely funny comedic moments with its emotionally moving dramatic ones. It takes risks that pay off with its bold storytelling, which is full of charm and satisfying superhero action. There is obvious care and attention to detail poured into every frame of this film, a work of art that is a love letter to superhero comic books. The creators of the film wanted it to feel like "you walked inside a comic book," and they hit it out of the park. The computer-generated animation works in concert with line drawings, paintings, dots, and various comic book art styles to make the film look like it was created by hand. It even has word boxes and bubbles that somehow are not too obstructive or distracting. As Todd Howard, the director and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios, is famous for saying, “all of this just works.”

For such a large ensemble of characters voiced by ingenious choices like Mahershala Ali, Hailee Steinfeld, and Nicolas Cage, Spider-Man gives each of them equal footing while keeping the spotlight squarely on Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), the new Spider-Man. Lily Tomlin voices what may be my favorite version of Aunt May, and many other Spider-Man staple characters make great appearances.

The soundtrack is catchy and fits the bill for what a kid Miles’ age would listen to. There are tons of Easter eggs for hardcore Spider-Man fans to uncover, and there are pop culture winks and nods that most people familiar with the Spider-Man franchise will understand and enjoy. Of course, the late, great Stan Lee has a touching cameo, one of his best yet.

Every part of this stand-alone story feels fresh, and the characters have so much depth to them. It is hard to come up with an original concept that reinvents the superhero genre, but Spider-Man has done just that and more. This revolutionary, culturally important film was a joy to watch, and it may go down as the best Spider-Man film yet. Certainly, it has to be a serious contender for the best film of 2018.

The following are a list of all of the films I saw from 2018, in no particular order:

· Green Book

· The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

· Pope Francis: A Man of His Word

· My Hero Academia: Two Heroes

· Black Panther

· Annihilation

· Game Night

· Ready Player One

· Isle of Dogs

· A Quiet Place

· Avengers: infinity War

· Deadpool 2

· Solo: A Star Wars Story

· Incredibles 2

· Ant-Man and the Wasp

· BlacKkKlansman

· Bad Times at the El Royale

· Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle

· First Man

· Ralph Breaks the Internet

· Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

· Aquaman

· Bumblebee

· Bohemian Rhapsody

· Bird Box

· Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

· Eighth Grade

My 2017 film list: http://kcaruth.tumblr.com/post/171040800751/movie-mania-top-15-of-2017

My 2016 film list: http://kcaruth.tumblr.com/post/156340406236/movie-mania-top-15-of-2016

0 notes

entergamingxp · 4 years

Text

Sakura Wars review – heartfelt, over-the-top anime romp • Eurogamer.net

Originally conceived back in 1996 as a way to offer an RPG franchise on the Sega Mega Drive, the original Sakura Wars series was a mix of visual novel, dating sim and round-based strategy combat. It follows an all-female theatre troupe based at Tokyo’s Imperial Theatre, putting on shows as the Flower Troupe to keep the spirits of the populace high, while also acting as the Imperial Combat Revue, a paramilitary operation tasked with defending the capital from monsters. To do so, they use mechs called Kobu, powered by the strength of their spirit.

Sakura Wars review

Developer: Sega

Publisher: Sega

Platform: Reviewed on PS4

Availability: Out now on PS4

With its anime stylings and a cast of lovable protagonists, the franchise became a wild hit in Japan before its fate was sealed along with the Dreamcast. The west only saw the localisation of the last Sakura Wars game, Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, its New York setting and all-new cast considered a good entry point into a series often deemed to be too Japanese.

This new Sakura Wars constitutes a soft reboot, set a decade after the events of the originals and using established gameplay but featuring a completely new cast. You take the role of Navy ensign Seijuro Kamiyama, who becomes the Flower Troupe’s new captain. It’s your job to help restore the Imperial Theatre to glory and keep Tokyo safe. In order to make a gaggle of women into a real team, you need to get to know them, help them overcome personal struggles and realise their true potential.

Kobu battles aren’t difficult, but winning is satisfying, especially during dramatic moments in the story.

As Seijuro, you spend your time either talking to these women or fighting demons in musou-style action combat. Sakura Wars’ dialogue is built around the series’ patented LIPS system: you get three dialogue choices, but only have a limited amount of time to pick an answer. The dialogue options themselves are recognisable if you’ve ever played another game with dialogue choice – you have a good option, a cautious option and a sleazy, impulsive one. There’s also ‘analogue LIPS’, a conversation option where what Sejiuro says is predetermined, and you only settle on the intensity with which you want to say it.

Just like in a visual novel, the answers you pick determine the other character’s opinion of you. Each of the women conform to established personality types – the bookish one, the short-tempered one and so forth – and you get to know them better the more you talk to each of them. If you gain a character’s trust, you can trigger a ‘trust event’. In this event, which uses first person POV, one of the women will have a personal chat with you that will end in some PG-13 touching. These situations can be deliberately naff – one character just wants to practise a romantic scene in a play – but they are, and this is important, fully consensual and do not reduce the young women only to their bodies, even while ogling is definitely going on. Context and nuance are very important here.

If you’ve played Fire Emblem Three Houses, you’re likely well familiar with staring at your favourite character up close like this.

Action combat is new for the series, and a step away from Sakura Wars’ more typical Fire Emblem-esque turn-based strategy. You can freely move your Kobu around, use light and strong attacks, and unleash a special attack once a spirit point meter has filled. Both in combat and in conversation, your actions influence your team’s opinion of you. Fighting quickly without getting hit raises team morale, which in turn has an effect on attack and defence. Making the girls like you outside of combat also determines your starting morale.

The story of the new Sakura Wars is quickly told: the old Combat Revue, including teams from other countries that appeared in previous Sakura Wars entries, died in a grand battle to seal away the powerful Archdemon, saving the world from certain destruction. Of course it turns out that the Archdemon threat is still very real, and reveals itself just when the Flower Troupe is participating in the Combat Revue World Games, a public battle event determining the reputation of several international combat troupes, because clearly saving the capital against monsters isn’t enough already.

Sakura Wars is firmly dating sim/visual novel first, combat second, as it belongs to a genre of games called ‘gal games’ – dating sims for heterosexual men. The player controls a male protagonist in a setting where they’re almost exclusively surrounded by young, beautiful women, and players may ‘pick’ their favourite. In Japan, gal games are part of the mainstream, so much so that dating sim elements are a natural part of many games you know – take the Fire Emblem or Persona franchises for example. While there are many gal games that take dating to misogynistic, demeaning extremes and borderline illegal territory (I drew the line at Tokyo Mirage Sessions, for advertising often misogynistic and borderline illegal practices in a real industry), Sakura Wars remains above board.

Sakura Wars comedy bits involves running gags like this, goofy and forgettable.

Sakura Wars does regularly dip into bouts of panty humour, having you find women’s underwear or ‘ending up’ in a women’s bathroom for comedic effect. This sort of humour might be immature to western audiences, but it’s a result of a culture that treats bodies in a very different way. I can’t laugh about it, but I understand why it exists. I’m split on the borderline creepy dialogue options, which include asking for a kiss or making sexually ambiguous jokes.

It’s important that, unlike other games which paint you as the hero no matter what you say, these options are always penalised – you’re explicitly encouraged to be a good person, and that expectation entails giving players an option to be bad. I do however need to point out that the creepy options are always played off for laughs, which is pretty jarring considering the overall respectful tone.

Sakura Wars’ real strength lies in the passion with which it delivers its story. Designed like a TV anime, complete with episode previews and title cards for ‘ad breaks’, it focuses on a different member of your troupe with each chapter, while also driving the overall story forward.

The plot doesn’t even remotely make sense and I didn’t mind in the slightest. Nothing about the game is smart, it even spoils its own plot several times with ‘clever’ foreshadowing and likes to fix problem using deus ex machina. “How is this possible?” a character says at one point about a surprising twist in their favour, only to receive the answer “I don’t know, but it is!”… Okay!

The plot is silly and the combat’s simple, but I loved spending time with the main characters and seeing what they have to say and how they react to the increasingly high-stakes plot developments. And boy, do they react. There are life and death situations, fisticuffs, and battles set to the triumphant title theme while characters discover their true strength thanks to the power for friendship. The passion all but incinerates your screen. What’s not to love? It may not make sense, but each episode has a clear dramatic arc that resolves satisfyingly.

Also, Sakura Wars just looks consistently great: each scene is presented from multiple camera angles and almost-static images and anime sequences offer further visual variety. The different environments, while little more than pretty backgrounds for conversations, are detailed and the design of each main character is memorable. I do miss the instantly recognisable style by Kosuke Fujishima, who has designed the characters for previous instalments -here, mangaka Tite Kubo of Bleach fame takes over. The designs of the new mechs however is a new favourite of mine, each coming with their own specialty like a giant hammer or an ice pistol. The demons don’t really get a chance to stand out in battle – if you look closely you can see them stumble and fall overdramatically like kaiju in old Japanese monster films. Everything about Sakura Wars is as over the top as an old monster film, but it’s that very cheesiness that had me enraptured.

They don’t make ’em like Sakura Wars anymore, probably with good reason, but this new incarnation, like the old games, is earnest, unapologetic anime nonsense and wish fulfilment at its best.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/05/sakura-wars-review-heartfelt-over-the-top-anime-romp-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sakura-wars-review-heartfelt-over-the-top-anime-romp-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

0 notes

shenzhenblog · 5 years

Text

How True Storytelling Can Save Marketing (And More…)

I recently had the privilege to work on a very special project with my friends at GapingVoid and LinkedIn. We set out on a creative endeavor to explore the intersection of story, art, humor and candor as a means of fostering self-reflection and inspiring personal and professional change. The result is a something I’m very proud of…a new short and sweet but compelling ebook, Once Upon a Digital Time: How to be an amazing storyteller when everyone is a “storyteller.”

To help promote the release and further contemplate the power of story, I spent time with Megan Golden, Content Marketing Leader at LinkedIn. In our very candid and personal conversation, I shared the story behind the story and why we need to first take back “storytelling” from marketers to learn and unlearn our way to true storytelling and engagement. I wanted to share our conversationwith you here. I hope it helps you…

How Storytelling Can Save Marketing: Bestselling author Brian Solis explains why storytelling isn’t just a tactic – it’s a whole new marketing philosophy

by Megan Golden

“Marketers really need to consider that this is a very sacred word.” That’s how Brian Solis, the author of Engage! and X: The Experience When Business Meets Design, launched into our discussion of storytelling. Straight away, it told me that this wasn’t going to be your average discussion about marketers telling stories. It was going to be a lot more challenging for marketers, and it was going to have a lot more to say about how our discipline needs to evolve.

I had the chance to interview Brian as part of our work together on Once Upon a Digital Time, a new eBook that explores why marketers have become so obsessed with telling stories – and what that really means for the future of our discipline. We created the book with Brian and Gapingvoid, the culture design group co-founded by Brian’s long-term artistic collaborator Hugh MacLeod. The result is a challenging take on what storytelling really means for marketers that, thanks to Hugh’s fantastic illustrations, is also very funny.

Interviewing Brian was my chance to explore some of the big ideas in Once Upon a Digital Time in some more depth. He didn’t disappoint. As he explains in this interview, Brian believes that marketers who simply adopt the title of storytellers aren’t doing the hard yards they need to do, to get this right. Storytelling isn’t just a sacred concept, it’s also a concept that demands real commitment – and real organizational change. The reward for going through that journey towards becoming a genuine storyteller is a future-proofed approach to marketing itself.

Here’s how our discussion played out:

Megan Golden:

There are over half a million LinkedIn members with storytelling listed in their profile. Why are modern marketers self-categorizing themselves as storytellers?

Brian Solis:

I always remember a quote from a very interesting, well-known advertiser, who was fond of saying to agencies and other marketers, “You’re not an effing storyteller!” This advertiser had read an interview with one of the most famous rollercoaster designers in the world, and this rollercoaster designer categorized his work as storytelling. For the advertiser, this showed how easy it is for us to believe we’re storytellers, just because we produce content or we produce experiences. He was making the point that being a storyteller takes much more than just saying you’re a storyteller. We keep saying it, not because it’s true, but because it feels good to say you’re storytelling instead of admitting you’re in marketing.

Personally, I think of storytelling as an aspirational title of sorts. I’m an optimist and so I want to believe that marketers do genuinely believe that they’re storytellers. What they need to consider though, is that this is a very sacred word. We’ve bought into the aspiration and the ideal of storytelling-based marketing, but we haven’t yet gone through the exercise of what it actually takes to become a storyteller.

I realized this several years ago when I was writing my book, X: The Experience When Business Meets Design. I was guilty of thinking that, because I was in control of the narrative, I was a storyteller. I wasn’t. My response was to find a storyboard artist to teach me the art and science of storytelling. That made a big difference, but I can tell you that even after going through that, I would never put storyteller in my title. It’s too sacred a term and we have to respect that.

Megan Golden:

You say in our book that marketers have ended up distracted by social media follower numbers, and lost their sense of purpose. How do you know when the purpose is missing? And how can you reclaim it through storytelling?

Brian Solis:

The challenge for marketing is that it’s adapting storytelling, it’s adapting social media, it’s adapting mobile, it’s adapting all of these new channels on the basis of a classical foundation of what marketing means. It has a traditional matrix that has to adapt to new times, technologies and trends. That matrix ends up focused on the wrong things.

It’s not that marketers don’t get it. It’s more that they’re packaging technology into a construct that they know. It’s self-reinforcing. Executives therefore see marketing in these terms, and fund it and support it in these terms. They’re supporting what marketing is, not what it could be.

This is a time for reinvention and innovation. In the book, we talk about using storytelling not just as a guiding light for the future of engagement and experience, but also as a catalyst to drive innovation. What does it take to tell a great story? What does it take to really understand your audience? What does it take to be really compelling? What does it take to move, guide and inspire them?

The answers to those questions are going to take some marketers out of that old construct and start them building something new: a new generation of marketing that’s less about ‘Marketing’ and more about experience and engagement.

This raises the question: once I have your attention and you have my attention, what are we going to do about it? When you start thinking in these terms, you’re stepping in a new direction, and you continue to step in new directions as you pursue these ideas. I call it ‘progressive transparency,’ moving beyond what marketing used to focus on and taking an interest in ‘The Embrace’, or what happens when you engage.

The challenge that marketers have today is that their budgets, resources and expertise are all emblematic of how we viewed marketing yesterday, not of how marketing needs to be tomorrow. We get caught up in these cycles of allowing marketing to be driven and guided by executives, who want to see certain things communicated in certain ways. I mean the fact that legal has such a strong voice in what we can say and what we can’t say, or what the narrative has to be according to the “optics of the organization”. These are all designed based on yesterday’s view of what marketing is, and this holds marketing back from what it could be.

Megan Golden:

How were you originally connected with Hugh MacLeod and what is it about Hugh’s illustrations that you feel really bring your words to light?

Brian Solis:

I was part of the startup community that eventually became Web 2.0 and then developed into social media. Hugh was also part of that group. He was coming from Savile Row and leaving the advertising world behind. He was using cartoons to express some of the really amazing things that technology was starting to empower us with, and all of the paradoxes that it had introduced into our lives. He was also taking shots at the way marketing kept focusing just on the next advertisement. We orbited the same circles in the Web 2.0 world and in its earliest stage, that community wasn’t just about working. It was also about validation and self-help and support. We would meet for drinks and bring all of the entrepreneurs together to talk about what we were working on, and help us get everything to the next level. I just instantly bonded with Hugh. He’s a wonderful human being and so witty and clever.

Megan Golden:

You wrote a book a couple years ago, X: The Experience When Business Meets Design. In there you talked about the need for businesses to invest in experience architects. Can you explain how storytelling plays into the design of those experiences?

Brian Solis:

Once I got to the core of what an experience was, I realized that you can’t design experiences unless you’re intent on them. When someone comes into contact with your brand, your product, your service, your packaging or your representative, you don’t want them just feeling the value of those parts; you want them to feel more than the sum of those parts. You have to design the experience as a story where everything comes together into an arc that people will feel, walk away with, and talk about. So, it was very intentional way of looking at experiences. I think it was a little early as an idea, and now it’s starting to be appreciated a bit more.

So, the idea of becoming an experience architect is essentially not unlike becoming a storyteller. It’s about being able to build experiences by transforming every aspect of a company around the experiences you want to deliver.

The real challenge is that we approach all this acting like marketers. We talk like marketers. We measure like marketers. We talk at people based on what other people have approved us to say and none of it feels human. That has to change. The first step is realizing that we’re in denial. Then we can accept the need for change and start moving in a new direction.

“I love receiving generic emails and text messages,” said no-one ever. We have to understand that marketing is what it is. The reason it doesn’t have a seat at the table in most C-suite discussions is because it’s not aligned with business growth and it’s not aligned with customer experiences.

But it could be! Marketing doesn’t have to be a discipline or a function. It could become the work that customer experience teams are doing by using communication, touchpoints, technology and channels to deliver experiences holistically. I think marketing’s futures are bigger than we give them credit for because we’re still stuck looking at what marketing was rather than what it could be. The reason storytelling in marketing matters is because it starts to force us to move beyond that. When we accept it as the sacred term that it really is, it absolutely demands transformation. It’s not just another marketing tactic.

—

Note : This article was originally published on www.briansolis.com

Brian Solis

Brian Solis is principal analyst and futurist at Altimeter, the digital analyst group at Prophet, Brian is world renowned keynote speaker and 7x best-selling author. His latest book, X: Where Business Meets Design, explores the future of brand and customer engagement through experience design.

How True Storytelling Can Save Marketing (And More…) was originally published on Shenzhen Blog

0 notes

snarkydefense · 6 years

Text

Quick Take: The Greatest Showman deftly tells the story of a charming hustler intent on bringing his dreams to vivid (and profitable) life. The character at the center of the action is, Phineas Taylor Barnum (Hugh Jackman) best known as P.T. Barnum.

The Greatest Showman‘s a story told with a deliberately light dramatic touch and bombastic savoir-faire. It’s less traditional musical biopic and more a stylistic “highlight reel.”

But while P.T. Barnum may be the story focus, it’s the people who make up his menagerie that give this film its purpose.

This film entices its audience room to engage and have fun while gleaning its message from the margins. So if you wait around for this tale to told through dialogue, then you’re going to miss most of the important (and interesting) bits and leave feeling like it’s a film with little substance under the glitter and glam.

The Greatest Showman delivers its character backstory through song and dazzling visuals. It entertains and keeps the film’s pace with a delightful syncopated precision.

The cinematography and set design are nothing short of amazing. The period costuming and site location establish time and place perfectly. Everything behind the scenes works together to capture the heartbeat of this period piece and sets a believable image of the times.

I’m pretty sure I could watch the opening sequence of The Greatest Showman once a day. Great staging, fantastic lighting, perfect vocal drop in. It has the rush of an opening night, that moment of great expectation and Hugh Jackman striking a dashing pose.

This scene does more than just set the tone; it sets the pace and The Greatest Showman doesn’t slow down for a single second.

Grade: B- (due entirely to the extraordinary visuals and accidental revelations behind all that dancing)

Hugh Jackman (P.T. Barnum) and Zac Efron (Philip Carlisle) star in Twentieth Century Fox’s THE GREATEST SHOWMAN.

P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman) and Charity Barnum (Michelle Williams) share an enchanting dance on a New York rooftop in Twentieth Century Fox’s THE GREATEST SHOWMAN.

Reality Check:

But this isn’t really the story of P.T. Barnum, showman, impresario and circus master. It’s a tale invented by screenwriters Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon and Director Michael Gracey’s vision of a savvy American nobody who built an empire and fortune out of his wit, hard work, and ingenuity.

And that’s not who P.T. Barnum was at all. In reality, he launched his career as a showman by exploiting former slave and extremely elderly Joice Heath turning her into an exhibit then authorizing her public autopsy after death.

He wasn’t just a “hardworking Joe” turned businessman made good. He was a social climbing, fast-talking, huckster who wasn’t above employing a good gimmick to make a name for himself. He repeatedly and shamelessly exploited others for his own gain.

Barnum’s motto might well have been, “scandal equals sales.”

Phineas Taylor Barnum is not a hero, he wasn’t a trailblazer; but he is very much so the embodiment of a capitalist-minded, win at all costs (as long as the profits wind up in my pocket) American businessman. He should not be lauded as a role model or example of how to get ahead. But this is America, so of course, he’s cast in an admirable light and given the “Hollywood” treatment.

So, how do you build a movie around such an unapologetic shyster?

With music, dancing, to die for costuming and sublime set designs. Naturally.

With a story that wholeheartedly distracts from a few truths: 1) there are plenty of people who believe that realizing their dreams are more important than people’s lives; 2) “American ingenuity” is usually just code for a willingness to lie, cheat, steal and shamelessly use people to get what one wants. Obviously.

By focusing on the dazzling extravaganza of it all and peppering the rest of the cast with people and story arcs that uplift and only hint at the grime behind it all. Of course.

This entire script is a lie. But that doesn’t take away from the fact this ensemble cast led by Hugh Jackman, Zac Effron, and Michelle Williams do a pretty solid job of selling it (jazz hands and all).

P.T. Barnum would be proud.

♦

After the opening credits, time swiftly rewinds to reveal a young Phineas and his father struggling to make ends meet and working for an upper-crust (socially and financially) family. Phineas lives in his head where anything is possible including marrying the daughter of his father’s employer Charity. Almost immediately, talking gives way to singing and the lyrics carry the story arc and character development forward right through to the end.

This part of the story is, for the most part, sweet and intended to have you rooting for Phineas to capture his dream, win his girl and sail into a great future. But while it offers insight into how Charity and Phineas grow closer and remain true..ish to each other and their hopes, it also reveals the beginnings of Phineas’s willingness to do anything to make a buck.

♦

Jackman plays Barnum with enduring wit and a charmingly slick edge. He’s a guy with his eye on the main chance and his head in the clouds. He’s promised himself a grand life and he’ll stop at nothing (and for no one) to make it happen.

It’s clear from the story angle, Gracey wants you to see Barnum as a man unafraid to step outside the norm (exploit), to innovate (cheat), and invent (lie). You’re supposed to be inspired by his ingenuity (sticky fingers) and quickwittedness (con); it’s supposed to showcase the American work-ethic and “bootstrapping” mentality at work, so to speak.

His relationship first with Charity and then with his daughters in the movie humanizes Barnum up to a point and the reworking of the Jenny Lind years serves to underscore that he’s not completely without loyalty (he so is) and integrity (just saying that word would totally give him hives).

I found this more accidentally unvarnished look at a man of his type refreshing. Jackman’s portrayal leans “into the light” but the overt inferences and his onscreen interactions tell the real tale. P.T. Barnum was a selfish, smarmy asshole of a man.

His use of the subversive wasn’t intended to benefit anyone although that was a very real secondary effect (the primary being he made money) for those ordinarily cast-out and shammed. Those “othered” by society found kinship, homes and a greater sense of safety working under his banner. He wasn’t a humanitarian. He didn’t give a damn about the plight of others unless it could make him a dollar.

So kudos to the film’s screenwriters for finding a way to paint Barnum as just a quick-thinking American with a dream and a heart of gold. It only goes to show what good writing and a loose relationship with the truth can really accomplish.

♦

Despite being issues of the day, the secondary storylines are decidedly modern feeling: A tale of star-crossed love (a story I’d much rather watch unfold with greater detail), the combustible public protests against his showcase of Oddities, the hostile environment his cast members navigated daily and the chokehold Barnum had over the players in his exhibits (let’s not pretend he wasn’t running a human circus).

All these story arcs serve to balance the scales (but not nearly enough) and insert a dose of the realistic into The Greatest Showman. Some of the musical numbers didn’t sync with the time period and therefore rang slightly false. They’re great songs but not always put to their best use. This may be due to the aggressively modern niche Ben Pasek and Justin Paul seem content to rest in.

Plus the story angle and direction took gross liberties with what truly would’ve been permitted which undercuts the emotional payoff in the end and makes it all just one more element of Barnum’s showcase.

There are moments where it’s clear Gracey wants you to see them as pivotal for Barnum emotionally. We’re to believe those moments are what shape his willingness to bring those living in the shadows to the main stage. Not that he’s playing to the public’s interest in the macabre and bizarre.

Gracey does a solid job of “show not tell” for the majority of the film but he’s occasionally a bit heavy-handed.

It doesn’t detract from the story or the glorious visuals but it does make everything feel as though it’s trying just a little too hard (because making P. T. Barnum not come across as the trash he is is hard work) and aiming to deliver the overall storyline with an edge that just a little too slick.

But anyone willing to can see P.T. Barnum was a charming flim-flam man who pitched the right scheme at the right time to the right banker to secure funding with a wink, smile and some slick talking and slight of hand. He saw a niche market he could capitalize on and goes for it with no remorse.

I will not be surprised if most critics flat out do not like The Greatest Showman.

The Greatest Showman is a song and dance extravaganza that’s anchored in joy, light, pain, hubris, laughter, and promise. It’s far more than a simple “boy makes good” story.

Go, have fun but remember this is “theater” at its best; don’t get blinded by the lights.

Overall: 2.75 out of 5 (because truth in advertising damn well matters)

*originally posted on tggeeks.com

Repost: Now Watching: The Greatest Showman | Movie Review Quick Take: The Greatest Showman deftly tells the story of a charming hustler intent on bringing his dreams to vivid (and profitable) life.

#(dir) Michael Gracey #(original music) Ben Pasek and Justin Paul #(screenplay) Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon #Hugh Jackman #Keala Settle #Michelle Williams #Rebecca Ferguson #Twentieth Century Fox #Zac Efron #Zendaya

0 notes