14 min read

Out of all the cartoons I watched as a kid, there are two I remember fondly: Twinkle, The Dream Being and Widget the World Watcher. Back then, children’s programming was commercially viable, not just a requirement for networks using the public airwaves. Both shows concluded long before I first watched them, surviving only through syndication — Hanna-Barbera's business model is alive and well. I must’ve guilt-tripped my parents into buying something I saw advertised in a children’s show commercial break more than once. When I think about it, today’s kids not having that shared experience is sad, but I digress.

The eponymous protagonist of Twinkle used magic to make himself buff just before fighting Diva Weed or any of her minions. It dealt in the power fantasy trope wildly popular in the 80s: think Rambo or Conan in children’s wrapping. The only method Twinkle beat the bad guys was through overwhelming strength, and a ‘believe in your dreams’ upfront message stood in stark contrast. Cartoon violence was all the rage in the 90s, and a buff alien was simply cool. I drew that depiction more than once, though those drawings were lost to time.

On the other hand, Widget took teaching kids about environmental hazards to task. It was, in essence, Captain Planet for younger crowds. While its storylines depicted more fantastical scenarios, they were still based on real events. Compared to its counterpart in the environmental cartoon aimed at teenagers, it served as a cushion for impressionable young minds.

One afternoon, I was at my grandma’s house. The apartment she had at the back, one my parents and I lived in when I was a baby, housed one of my adult cousins. At the time, he was out working; he typically left his apartment unlocked as a relative lived in the front. Widget was about to air, and I ran towards his TV set to record that week’s episode with a VHS tape in hand. There was a tape in his VCR player. I took it out, recorded the episode, and put the original tape back in. However, curiosity got the best of me. I *had* to know what was on that tape I took out.

It was a porn tape, featuring adult star Ron Jeremy.

I’ve heard about Jeremy in passing over recess. His sheer output in the adult entertainment industry of the 90s was notorious: porn watchers were likely familiar with him. The boys among us snuck into their parents’ bedrooms, seeking forbidden secrets — “boys being boys.” Ultimately, they’d stumble across issues of Playboy magazine and videos featuring the man with the biggest girth they’d ever seen. Now, I was experiencing this firsthand. I felt aroused: not abnormal with pornographic content, but it was the first time I saw the sexual act in such rawness. That by itself was shocking, but where was it coming from? It didn’t come from the actress… but the actor.

Many thoughts ran through my head; I didn’t know what to make of them. What is this feeling? Why am I focusing on the man’s penis? I’m a boy — I’m supposed to like girls… I can’t talk about what I’m feeling with my parents, or my cousin for that matter… What cut through the spiral was my dad at the front gate. I wouldn’t tell a soul.

Looking back, if Jeremy were *at least* a handsome man, I could understand why I fell for him. He isn’t — in fact, he often performs with his shirt on, hiding his hairy chest and his beer belly. It makes that whole event even more perplexing, as I’m not into chubby men.

I wouldn’t look at guys in the same way as before. For instance, some time after, I watched the Blade movie. The climax belonged to Deacon Frost, portrayed by American actor Stephen Dorff — his unbuttoned shirt exposed his bare, hairy chest. I could not stop staring at his physique. What if he were as big, or bigger, than Jeremy…? Whether a cousin who was watching with me noticed my physical reaction, I can’t remember. Hell, I can’t even remember if the reaction was low-key... Just what is *wrong* with me…?

I began seeing two of my close friends differently. One, I snuck a shirtless photo of him. The other, in many a crude teenager joke, brags about his size. In one of many hangouts over at his grandma’s house, I asked him, point-blank, to show me — crassness begets crassness. I usually hung out with him when he wasn’t with his clique. It worked for me in two ways: I never liked how he seemed to draw people to him like moths to a flame, though in this metaphor, I am but one more… and he’d never know how I felt, despite my not-subtle advances…

Even acquaintances fell to my lustful eyes — I watched the guys play basketball, hoping they’d sweat enough for them to take off their shirts. As the chubby kid, my eyes went straight to the ones who had the physique I didn’t have and never could have. I told myself how I was merely appreciating how good they looked, but that was just a lie…

Continuing this trend of falling for shirtless men, Rurouni Kenshin’s Sanosuke Sagara caught the attention of a queer kid who didn’t know he was queer. His upper chest, barely covered by a white happi jacket, was a sight for sore eyes; even more when he loses it. I’d also gawk at Tidus, the protagonist of Final Fantasy X, from previews in GamePro or Game Informer. The rising star of the aquatic sport blitzball had his spin on the Zanarkand Abes outfit: a stylized overall, with both short and long trouser legs and a hooded yellow jacket that barely covered his chest. His disheveled look was charming, the sun-kissed tan only adding to it. While it may seem logical for daytime athletes to be tanned, this is merely a rationalization to keep this nebulous feeling at bay.

Tidus isn’t the only character who meets the criteria of ‘attractive shirtless guy’ — Wakka also fits the criteria. However, I didn’t feel anything towards him. Maybe mild annoyance at how he seemed to be among the weakest party characters, only bested by Rikku. I started to notice how the sources of my obsession became more targeted, slowly becoming my preference — my ‘taste,’ so to speak. There was this harmful misconception that gays liked all guys, which is utterly ridiculous… since those kinds of comments came through bullying, it struck deep within my psyche. Society taught me to hate myself.

Then, I was introduced to hentai by a younger cousin. He was into Pokémon, as was I. One day, likely during a sleepover, he shows me this illustration of Misty lying on top of her Starmie, naked. I didn’t feel anything toward it; however, artists drawing fictional characters that way blew my mind. I lamented how there wasn’t an equivalent of that for guys, so I settled for sexually suggestive images. It titillated me — it was all it needed to do. I didn’t know yaoi existed until much later.

Then came Hao — or Zeke, as I came to know him.

But who is he? Hao Asakura is the main villain in the supernatural series Shaman King. Originally a peaceful man, he had a front seat to the corruption of the Heian period, seeing humankind at its most primal and cruel. This gradually turned him into a misanthrope, realizing how humankind wasn’t fit for the world they lived in. His madness was manifested when he began talking of his aspirations for a shaman-only world; as an all-powerful shaman, he *could* make it happen if left unchecked. Not wanting to be complicit in his crimes, the Asakura family fought Hao and killed him.

Before dying, he partook in the Ritual of Taizan Fukun, which gives shamans control over their souls and their reincarnation. For his second life, Hao chose to be reborn five hundred years after his death into the Patch Tribe, the officiants of the Shaman Fight. Undeterred by his first failure, his choice had the explicit goal of stealing the Spirit of Fire, aiding in his quest to become the Shaman King. His overwhelming power could tame an elemental spirit, but he once again fell to a member of the house he founded. Finally, his third reincarnation returns him to his original bloodline — he was determined to stop the Asakuras from undermining his shaman empire.

Foreseeing his plan, the Asakuras determined that Hao should be killed right at birth. The woman who gave birth to him was pregnant with twins; during the night of labor, he was born first. Before the father could execute, he hesitated. This window was wide enough for the Spirit of Fire to sweep in and rescue Hao from his impending doom, burning the man’s face in the process. The plan failed, but it’d be up to his twin brother to eventually stop him.

The twin in question? Yoh Asakura, the protagonist.

I’ve always singled out Hao as the one who made me realize I was gay. This realization arrived in the same way the Jeremy tape did: something I stumbled into rather than sought out. Hao didn't choose me, and I didn't choose him.

He’s an enticing villain, sure: his sly smile, his menacing aura, how he doesn’t fit the villain stereotype… and a character whose bare torso is kept just out of reach beneath a white poncho. The drape was similar to those used by the Patch Tribe priests — a nod to his second life as an officiant of the shaman fight. Wind gusts delivered scarce, revealing moments, akin to an anime’s beach episode, and the ultimate unveiling happened during the anime-only climax.

During the Gate of Babylon incident, the X-Laws went after Yoh, hoping to draw Hao out. Inside Babylon, the twins face each other: Hao was satisfied with Yoh’s progress and declared there was no longer a need for the shaman fight. When everyone trapped inside Babylon broke out, Hao heads towards the Great Spirit. No shaman was capable of showing any meaningful resistance, the Patch Priests included. Only Yoh and his group had the mettle to go after him. During the final battle, he had his poncho undone — fan service, perhaps, but one all too familiar for that gawking teenager.

Deep down, I knew the constant gawking over guys could only mean I wasn’t growing to be your typical heterosexual male. These feelings were constantly repressed under the weight of relentless bullying, preventing me from embracing who I truly was. I didn’t lack role models, either: there was a visibly queer classmate I remember for his love of Christina Aguilera and Jennifer Lopez. In fact, whenever I come across Aguilera’s Spanish version of ‘Come On Over (All I Want Is You),’ I think of him.

Reggaetón — raw, street-born, aggressively masculine — was the sound of the moment, and pop music was its cultural opposite. My obsession with the Pokémon soundtrack drew less fire than what he had to endure: pop music was ‘girl music,’ and he got relentlessly picked on because of it. Apparently, thinly veiled homophobia had a soundtrack, but the details hardly mattered. I was relieved that it was him and not me, though that relief typically didn’t last long.

Even with all that, I sensed a quiet resolve. He never apologized for the things he liked, while I was concerned with self-preservation. Having been through my own share of it, I felt a kinship — I would’ve loved to get to know him better, though I couldn’t be seen talking to him. After graduation, I wouldn’t see him at school anymore. I believe he moved to a school in another town: whether it was a relocation, the bullying being too much, or something else entirely, I don’t know. My only hope is that, wherever he is, he’s doing alright and happy living as his true self. If I had a chance to talk to him again, I’d thank him for his courage. He was more a part of that journey than he ever knew.

I questioned whether I was gawking at men because they had the physique I didn't. No... that wasn’t it. What I was feeling wasn’t jealousy; this wasn’t the chubby kid wishing he was born thin. This was something else entirely. Jeremy, Frost, my two close friends, Sanosuke, Tidus, Hao, and many nameless, topless strangers... if they’ve met my criteria, I’d be gawking. Coupled with my willingness to let my hormones take over, I could only take this to its logical conclusion. The hellish fires Hao commands cleared away the fog I wandered through for years.

I like men. I can only fall in love with men. I want to be with men.

But I couldn’t tell anyone.

Bullying severely affected my self-esteem; I wasn't ready to assert that I was gay. Putting words to this feeling and the discovery that followed was far from a triumph. Society remained set in its homophobic ways: ridicule by the media, largely led by a gossip show hosted by a puppet that dominated Puerto Rican television for years, abstinence-based sex ed imparted by adults who believed queer elders who died in the AIDS crisis of the 80s had it coming, and harmful stereotypes remaining at large, with no allies in sight. Queerness was isolating.

All that gay kid could do was hide in the closet, not by choice, but out of fear of the worst of society. They're called homophobic, as if the fear belongs to them. But I knew what fear looked like. It looked like me.

A month ago, I came across a video feature on Hiroyuki Takei, the author of Shaman King. It was posted on Archipel, a YouTube channel run by French ex-pats, and whose work I’ve featured before. The interview was conducted sometime during late 2019 — the b-roll shows him working on the nineteenth chapter of Shaman King: The Super Star. He was contemplative throughout.

Listening to his story, I heard a man who wasn’t sure about his achievements. Takei’s clearly passionate about manga, no doubt about it, but he doesn’t think highly of himself as a manga author. I beg to differ. Takei’s part of one of the most storied assistant stables there is: the ‘Watsuki-gumi.’ He has a strong sense of character design, one that Nobuhiro Watsuki recognized; his contributions to Rurouni Kenshin went far beyond backgrounds and screentones. It wasn’t just luck, or being in the right place at the right time — his skill is the real deal. While his signature work isn’t as popular as that of former stablemate Eiichiro Oda, his work still garnered a passionate following.

He recognizes that Oda’s talent made him realize, perhaps bittersweetly, that the mainstream wasn’t for him. It guts me to hear this self-deprecation, or what comes across to me as such. And as I look back on my life and what little I know about Takei, I may have more in common with him than I thought. This isn’t me trying to establish a parasocial relationship, though I relate to some of his anxieties.

Like Takei, I know what it is to feel unneeded — bullying has a way of convincing you of that. Like him, I found both relief and frustration in a pivotal moment of reckoning. In his case, the cancellation of Shaman King. In mine, finally having a name for something long felt but unspoken, but also knowing I couldn't say it out loud. And, like him, I've arrived somewhere quieter: my identity as a gay man is part of who I am, not the whole of it — something I carry rather than define myself by.

Takei’s not just another manga author for me: his work is instrumental to my discovery. For whatever value the words of this internet stranger hold, Shaman King absolutely deserves its place. His guiding star is sharing “alternate ways of thinking” about manga, and I happen to know someone who is living proof that his work reached further than he realizes.

Myself.

42 min read

NOTE: This post is a rewrite of 'A Post About Itachi Uchiha And The Images I Use Of Him,' originally published in 2023. 'Masquerade' is the living document of my online self, as told by the various Itachi illustrations I've commissioned over the years — so far.

Sections

The Masks Before

Meeting Itachi

Vector Itachi (2013)

blazpu Itachi (2020)

OMORI Itachi (2022)

Keito Itachi (2023)

Lancha Itachi (2025)

Have you thought of how you present yourself online? Do you use your real name, go by an alias/username, or something else entirely? Some don’t think there’s a difference between the real and the online self, whereas others embrace that difference as if it were a mask to wear. As I’ve become increasingly privacy-conscious, it’s a scary thought to go online as ‘myself.’ When the Internet is as omnipresent as it is today, it’s all too easy for the line between the real and online self to blur.

Now, stop me if you’ve heard this phrase before from your parents: “Don’t talk to strangers.” I’ve heard that a lot from my mom whenever I was about to go online. I was told this enough times that it stuck; nonetheless, I ventured off into the World Wide Web, looking for the friends I could never make in real life. In this masquerade, we were all outcasts — how could I not talk to strangers, especially those who are more likely to understand what I’m going through? My mask-wearing was circumstantial, with the choice often not as binary as many might think: I’ve gone without a mask, embraced wearing said mask, and have worn it all chipped up, replacing it be damned.

Today, the man who goes by Tyson Matsuki online and the one behind him are often the same person. What separates these two halves is like that chipped mask, of which the extent of the damage is something I'm still examining. It wasn't always this way. When I first adopted Tyson Matsuki as my online identity, I fully inhabited 'Tyson Matsuki,' a character I'd created: good-looking, athletic, fashion-conscious — everything I could never be. I wanted to escape the reality in which I didn’t win the genetic lottery, wasn’t popular with either the boys or the girls, and was seen as having ‘weird’ tastes and personality. Growing up in the late 90s as a nerdy, overweight kid with queer leanings was tough, to put it mildly. I liked my online self far more.

Regarding queerness, although I never explicitly labeled 'Tyson Matsuki' as a queer character, he was coded as such in his fashion sense — skin-tight ninja attire, vanity eyeglasses with lightning-bolt temples, piercings — and the way he carried himself. I'd picture my younger self drawing those scenes, grinning like a total pervert. But it wasn't all about appeasing the middle leg; there were intimate scenes between him and another guy in the cast, just hanging out. Two men, enjoying each other's company, trusting of each other enough to be vulnerable, and neither one lusting for the other. It was a thinly veiled cry for help, given I didn't have those kinds of friendships with my guy friends. I'll move on, but I promise more to come in a future Free! piece, in which the friendships between characters are my highlight.

The first mask I wore was of a character I was fond of in my early years, as I woke up early Saturday morning to catch airings of Rurouni Kenshin. Sanosuke Sagara, a former Sekihōtai militant turned fighter-for-hire, harbored deep resentment for the Meiji government that had his role model and captain of his unit executed for ‘spreading lies’ about tax reforms. What began as a job turned incredibly personal as Sanosuke realized he was fighting the legendary Battōsai, Kenshin Himura, whose work during the revolution was instrumental in establishing the very regime Sanosuke loathes. Despite losing their brutal duel — or perhaps because of it — Sanosuke joins Kenshin's group as a right-hand man.

On many a LatinChat room, ‘Sanosuke’ stood out for a handle that wasn’t typical in the community there. Among a sea full of first names with an assortment of numbers and symbols, I took a fictional character’s name as my handle. Among the many ASL messages I sent and received, an experience I still remember from those days is getting catfished. ‘She’ convinced me to hop on a voice call on the now-defunct MSN Messenger, which I sheepishly avoided, saying how I didn’t have a microphone — I did, one of the flimsy ones. Then I heard a man speaking, and the call disconnected shortly after. When I tried to confirm who, exactly, I had heard, he ghosted me.

From chat rooms to forums, a new mask: ‘Dark Bot.’ Based on Perfect Dark’s DarkSim, it spoke to my multiplayer skills at the time; my cousin was constantly frustrated that he couldn’t beat me, and I thought I’d stroke my ego. The handle was used either standalone, though it was rarely available as such, or with the addition of an identifier at the end: either 007 (Dark Bot 007) — combining my two loves — or PR (Dark Bot PR), a statement of where I hail from.

There was a forum that used to be my home long ago, and I began visiting shortly before playing Kingdom Hearts for the first time. Still wearing my ‘Dark Bot’ mask, once the action RPG got its grip on me and wouldn’t let go, it was time for a new one. Habitual readers of my work know I prefer Riku over Sora, so why did I go for the protagonist’s name for my new handle? Aside from being the most recognizable character in the series, I found his enthusiasm contagious. I wanted to convey that, somehow — there’s just one problem: I was an edgelord. I got into fights with other forum members constantly until I was eventually banned.

Around this time, I'd become friends with someone really into visual kei: essentially Japan's take on glam rock, with a strong focus on the look, not just the music. One band he was particularly fond of was the GazettE, and that affinity rubbed off on me. If I remember right, as far as the outfits went, he’s partial to Aoi and Reita, the backup guitarist and bassist. I gravitated towards Ruki, the singer, borrowing his name.

Whether I reflected on my actions or not after I was banned, one thing became clear: I didn't want my messiest behavior tied to my actual name. I needed separation — I’d repurpose the name of an old character as an alias for my online persona. When I eventually returned to that same forum from which I was banned, the teenager known as 'Ruki' was no longer using his real name.

He was Tyson Matsuki.

When the forum owner, Lancet Jades, confronted me about the matching IP address, I lied about having no relation to the banned member — but Tyson Matsuki already was who I'd been presenting myself as. The handles would change over time, but Tyson Matsuki remained constant. That alias is old enough to drink now.

One evening, while hanging out with the ‘visual kei friend,’ he came up with the idea of catfishing guys on PlayStation Home. We needed fake names, fake profiles, and ‘fake’ handles. He’d gone with ‘Kiyoshi,’ whereas I went with ‘Kanaye.’ He was far more successful at catfishing than I was, even getting guys to buy PSN cards for him — never a dull day as he concocts his latest mischief scheme, whether it’s on PS Home or on World of Warcraft. When I joined him over at the MMORPG, I named my Blood Elf rogue 'Kanaye' on the Darrowmere server. It’d also become my handle until 2016 in favor of the one I use currently.

‘chemicalsora’ was a throwaway name created for the then-nascent video-sharing site YouTube in 2006. I wasn’t going to watch any videos on my dial-up connection back then, so it primarily served as a repository for videos I wanted to watch on a faster connection: the ‘watch later’ before YouTube implemented a proper Watch Later feature. The library computers at the college campus I attended had access to broadband internet. I’d go before class started, procure one of the stations, and watch videos or browse deviantART — as an aspiring illustrator, I had an interest in the work of other illustrators. Maybe I always liked art.

Predictably, ‘Sora’ was already taken. So what was I into at the time? I was still going as ‘Sora’ on forum boards, especially as Kingdom Hearts 2 was released months earlier. I was also heavily into the emo rock band My Chemical Romance. ‘mcrsora,' nah… ‘RomanceSora,’ look at me, trying to be popular, I hate this… how about ‘chemicalsora’… Chemical sky? It… doesn’t sound half bad!

How did a throwaway username become the handle I use to this day? As I took YouTube seriously as a video producer a decade later, I needed to unify my brand with my social media presence. To get ‘Kanaye’ as a channel, I needed to open a new one — you couldn’t switch channel names back then. ‘chemicalsora’ was a tenured account, I could quickly apply for monetization… until Google started requiring a certain amount of recurring watch time alongside the channel’s tenure.

I was forced into adopting ‘chemicalsora.’ On the bright side, I didn’t have trouble securing that username on any social platform! Except for Instagram, where someone was sitting on the name. I was never able to contact them to obtain the name…

Anime has been one of my loves since I was a child. Starting with Rurouni Kenshin during the late 90s, the period story was eye-opening — animation shows can, and did, tackle serious topics. That said, I wasn’t above kids’ stuff. A memory from my childhood has me running home after school to catch the Pokémon anime, which aired on local TV. Since my dad has cable TV and my mom didn’t, I’d program my VCR at his house to record Digimon, Shaman King, and Yu-Gi-Oh! episodes, which aired on Fox’s children’s programming block on Saturdays. As I reached my late teens, I felt as if I had outgrown anime... until I discovered Death Note.

The medium became something I enjoyed passively because I didn’t have easy access to it. By the time I could do something — namely, when I had access to high-speed internet at mom’s house — I was engrossed in online multiplayer. Anime took a backseat as I indulged my obsession: video games.

TV Tropes defines an antihero as “a character who lacks a handful of the traditional attributes of a hero but is ultimately heroic. They may be bewildered, ineffectual, deluded, or merely apathetic. More often, an antihero is just an amoral misfit.” I’ve liked characters whose motivations aren’t clearly defined ever since I can remember. James Bond, Beyblade’s Kai Hiwatari, and Shaman King’s Tao Ren, to name a few, all share the designation of antihero. Even as a kid, I thought of life as having many shades of grey; I like it when the media I watch reflects that dubious morality in seemingly plausible ways. In my view, a skilled writer can make a compelling antihero immensely potent for any story.

Naruto was big in the 2000s. The brat who wanted to become Hokage was known to everyone who read manga or watched anime; it was so big, it was part of ‘The Big Three,’ a colloquial term for the most visible series at the time: Bleach, One Piece, Naruto. To my knowledge, the ninja series was the, if not one of the, first known by fans and non-fans alike. My first exposure was in Viz’s Shonen Jump in late 2005. I recently subscribed to the magazine after having bought an issue at Borders, which had Naruto plastered all over the cover. Around that time, Naruto was being dubbed for American TV. I recall owning DVDs of the series, though I don’t recall how many — up until whichever got to the end of the ‘Land of Waves’ arc.

Its overexposure clearly reflected the series’ importance to Viz; nevertheless, it wore out its welcome. I liked it well enough, but not enough to become a fan. Sure, I browsed through the pages, but I hardly paid any attention. It could’ve suffered a worse fate: being ignored, as I did with the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga series. There might have been a seedling of a future fan deep within, as I owned a bandanna like the ones used in the series. I think it had the Konoha logo...? Looking back, it was a harbinger for my wardrobe being centered largely around my media interests, even to this day.

At anime conventions in the late 2000s, cosplayers wearing black cloaks with stylized clouds showed up en masse. They were cosplaying as members of ‘Akatsuki,’ a group of rogue ninjas who, at the time, were the main villains in Naruto. I think people were captivated by their mysterious aura, even when they knew Akatsuki’s end goal. I wasn’t a con attendee in those days — Puerto Rico cons focus far too much on comics, and assume overlapping interest; it couldn’t be farther from the truth in my case. This meant that I was largely oblivious to the phenomenon, only learning about it in retrospect. The Akatsuki that rose to prominence had ten members, and one stood out above the rest — to the fandom at large, and eventually, to me: Itachi Uchiha.

I first met Itachi in the August 2007 edition of Viz’s Shonen Jump. After the Konoha ninjas repelled Orochimaru’s attack at too great a cost, Itachi visits his old home alongside his partner, Kisame. A wanted criminal visiting the very home he’s been exiled from was a thinly veiled message to whoever becomes Hokage after the Third’s death: “I’ll be watching.” At the time, I didn’t know what to make of it, and it didn’t help that I was fully on Team Sasuke — there’s another antihero! When Itachi pins down Sasuke after deflecting his Chidori, Kakashi's signature lightning attack, passed down to his student, I hated the elder brother. But hey, that's what you're supposed to do with villains, right? I didn't see this battle on the page or in its proper context at the time; I might have caught clips, but I didn't watch the full episode until my first proper watch sometime in 2011.

After that confrontation, Itachi wouldn’t appear until Shippuden. I must’ve gotten to the second series sometime in the summer of 2012, if my Twitter logs are anything to go by. Akatsuki’s plans for world domination took center stage, and the Konoha ninjas would have constant run-ins with the cloaked men, including Itachi. His first encounter with Team Kakashi's Naruto revealed the Sharingan’s evolved form: the Mangekyō. Itachi was stalling for time, as the captured Gaara’s tailed beast was extracted from him. Kakashi orders Naruto and Sakura not to look into Itachi’s eyes, lest they be trapped in his Genjutsu. As the camera continuously focused on Itachi’s visage, I was the one who became trapped. This mystique, the sense that he was more than what meets the eye, that he’d never reveal his hand… he wasn’t the only villain in Akatsuki, but he’d become the one I’d gravitate towards.

Some time after, Sasuke would become strong enough to face Itachi at the Uchiha hideout. He doubted Sasuke’s resolve; Itachi warned him to come only after he’s obtained the Mangekyō, but even without it, Sasuke remains a formidable foe. Zetsu, who was watching, quips: “The Sharingan is a ninja’s weapon. A weapon is only as powerful as its wielder.” Itachi watched in disbelief as the younger brother broke through his Tsukuyomi, realizing his typical Genjutsu approach won’t work. It became this epic battle, and I was totally mesmerized. I refused to go to sleep until I knew what happened.

In his final moments, Itachi walked towards an exhausted Sasuke, only to die next to him. Sasuke didn’t kill him, though he was very close to doing so — no, Itachi succumbed to his unknown illness. As Tobi tells Sasuke about Itachi after his defection, I was convinced of how badass he was. There was merit to the hype. Hints of a deeper reading loomed at large, but only the superficial detail mattered to me.

On October 28, 2012, I “became” Itachi, wearing his image as my mask ever since. Who I was to the internet before this was ever-changing, and I wouldn’t settle on anyone in particular. Itachi is everything I love about the antihero archetype. Knowing who I am, I don’t see a scenario in which I would have *not* fallen in love with the character, given similar circumstances.

The late 2000s were a different time at YouTube. Gaming videos weren’t novel to the platform, but what was new was the so-called ‘gaming commentator’: a type of creator who rose alongside consumer-grade video capture cards, enabled by Hauppauge’s HD PVR. They recorded their gameplay and discussed various topics, ranging from commentary on the footage to personal stories.

I first heard of Stuart Brown, owner of the YouTube channel ‘XboxAhoy,’ sometime around mid-2010 when his Modern Warfare 2 weapon guides were recommended to me. While he’s very much a gaming commentator, his videos were unlike anything being uploaded by his peers. More than the actionable advice, what stood out was their production value. Brown brought his skill set, honed by years in his web development trade, to a scene that had grown stale. It was a breath of fresh air and showed what gaming YouTube could be.

In the circles I hung in, the one series I saw with the highest production value was TeamFourstar’sDragon Ball Abridged. These videos took clips from the iconic battle series and added humorous commentary, referencing pop culture and occasionally poking fun at the official Dragon Ball dub. They later created Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged, taking the lessons from their earlier project and raising the bar, all while remaining true to their irreverent humor. These productions required nonlinear editing software, which was rare in the consumer market, and the skill set to operate said software.

There wasn’t a gaming equivalent on that level. I believe Brown was just that. His weapon guides were immediately useful when I transitioned from Uncharted 2 multiplayer to MW2. But beyond the actionable advice, I wanted to know how they were made — the level of care demanded understanding. I was confident that the graphics work could be replicated in Photoshop, a raster graphics program in which I am somewhat proficient. But Brown primarily uses Illustrator, the vector graphics equivalent of Photoshop. At that time, I knew very little about how to operate the software, despite efforts to learn. For now, though, what I saw was magic being done in front of my eyes.

I quickly became a regular on his videos' comment sections and his subreddit. I had questions answered in his 'Bonus' series, was fortunate to interview him for my now-defunct Call of Duty podcast, and even gifted him games I’m fond of. No longer a fan, I was now a colleague. Perhaps even a friend.

It would be five years before I truly took YouTube seriously, but even then, I had aspirations. With the experience of uploading video versions of the podcast under my belt, I wanted to branch out: dust off ‘chemicalsora’ and indulge in slightly more serious content. Given how I’d cemented my ‘brand’ around Itachi, it’d perhaps work, but definitely not with a screenshot of the actual anime. I didn’t want Viz on my back, and I could have some plausible deniability while I was at it.

I had never commissioned art before, and I didn't know how any of this worked. To my knowledge, Stuart doesn’t do commissions. Was I inspired by what I saw from his work that I told myself I needed to have something done by him? I sheepishly approached him with what I wanted — he was the one I trusted with a request like this. The worst that could happen is getting turned down...

...but he indulged me. After discussing payment terms, I sent him the full screenshot; he delivered the illustration in less than a week. It was a three-pack: the original image vectorized and two color variants. Considering how I thought of Itachi at the time, the black-and-orange variant accentuated his badass look. I settled on that, with the other variants seeing limited use.

I didn’t plan for Vector-tachi to accompany me for such a long time. As an underpaid worker, the realization that I couldn’t afford another commission stung. That said, I sketched ideas on a new ident that I’d hoped Stuart would take on years later, but it never materialized. I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go with this new illustration — I may have those sketches somewhere...

Whenever I got bored with the image, I’d replace it with a headshot of Seishiro Tsugumi, a supporting character in Nisekoi. There might have been others, but the memory eludes me. I thought I'd eventually put Itachi's mask down... but I never did. You don’t get to choose what you’re known for; reputations can be nurtured, but success isn’t guaranteed.

After years of being underpaid, I switched to a job that gave me more spending power than I ever imagined possible. No longer being part of the worker class was exciting, but it wasn’t a jovial moment. The imposter syndrome lingered, whispering that I didn't deserve this opportunity. But I couldn't listen to that voice. I can’t be beating myself over what could’ve been if I want to keep my sanity. Better things are possible, and I most certainly deserve those.

Think of the opportunities! I could travel! I could now see my online friends in person! Among them, someone I’ve known since the early Tumblr days (love you, Sam!), completely on a whim. In that moment, Tyson wasn't just a performance, but he also wasn't the whole picture. While happy to keep the ruse should the need arise, with these friends, I could just... be. The visage didn't matter; they were meeting the same person either way.

By the late 2010s, Twitter was full of people arguing and bickering. It was so widespread, the website came to be known as 'the hell site', and I doubted whether it was meant to be ironic. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone indoors, there was a notable decay in the quality of conversations. The circumstances were already taking a toll on my mental health, and this so-called ‘community’ made it worse. I had no choice but to withdraw: I spoke less, made fewer inflammatory statements, and wanted nothing to do with the daily discourse. Fan artists are the one thing that gave me peace in those distressful times.

My Persona 5 obsession continued, seeking fan art of it long after its release. With Persona 5 Royal fast approaching, there was an uptick of it — amongst the flood, one colorful portrait of Makoto Niijima caught my attention. It was drawn by a user with a peculiar profile picture: P5’s Morgana chomping on a cigar.

Meet Blazpu, a Vietnamese artist.

While his profile picture suggests he’s a Persona fan artist, don’t be fooled: Blazpu’s actually quite versatile. He works with strong brushstrokes, the kind where you can trace the artist's hand as it moves across the canvas. His style has charm: his characters smile, giving the impression they’re happy at being painted — or in the case of his Vanitas illustration, completely unhinged! A well-rounded artist with a distinctive style — it’s no wonder that he has the engagement and following he does.

Among his illustrations, he posted commissions from people who hired him. It's odd; I don’t remember seeing an ad for his commission services. Perhaps he had a system in place that I was unaware of? He didn’t have a website listed on his Twitter bio or a Carrd-like profile with all of his links. In any case, to me, it looked as if he took requests from Twitter. I was interested in freshening up my image after years of Vector-tachi hanging around: at the time, I’d been promoted, and I wanted a reward. I reached out, and wouldn’t hear back until about a week later.

Commissioning Blazpu felt strange, only because my experience with Stu was so unorthodox. It was... normal, transactional even: I was someone who liked his art, occasionally commented, and that’s it. One could even argue that Blazpu was my first commission.

I sent a quick sketch of a pose based on an illustration he did in which I wanted Itachi on. He was appreciative, but I thought he was too informal on his terms. There was no system in place: no minimum revisions, no estimated time of delivery, and no communication on whether the artwork could be used for commercial purposes. It was all vibes, for lack of a better word. Still, if he continued to be hired, then something was going right? Either way, that’s not for me to worry; we’ll make this work somehow.

Two weeks after the DM back-and-forth, he sent the line art. Everything looked okay to me, though I couldn't really picture the final result yet. He sent the invoice, I paid him, and everything went smoothly after that. Once the illustration was done, I asked for the .psd file — despite mild pushback, he sent it over. This puzzled me: if Stu sent the .ai files without me asking, why would Blazpu question what I wanted to do with them? There was certainly no nefarious intent, and AI feeding wasn’t a thing at the time. I didn’t know of ways to remove backgrounds without access to the main file, and I thought I’d have a use for it past saving in different file formats… but I never did. It’s sitting in the folder I made to collect the artworks.

The best way I can describe this Itachi is as having a blank expression. He didn’t have his Sharingan eyes, which made the illustration strangely welcoming. I didn't know how long blazpu-tachi would stick around as my profile picture, but one thing was clear: commissioning artists to create something meaningful had become more than just updating an avatar. In a time when Twitter felt hostile, and the pandemic kept everyone isolated, these collaborations were one of the few bright spots I had left.

This is more than a story about a mask — it’s the story of an online friendship, immortalized.

Back in 2016, nascent chat app Discord sold itself as *the* chat app for gamers. It’s this generation’s TeamSpeak and Ventrilo: two voice chat platforms used by PC gamers in the 2000s. Chances are, if you raided in World of Warcraft, you used either program to coordinate with your party. Discord’s server functionality caught on with Patreon creators looking to make a curated space for their supporters to chat about shared interests, and the creators themselves participated in the conversations. A noble goal, but not every online personality was as social: there were also spaces where the creator was present... and also absent. Whether they were busy or felt obliged to offer Discord server access as a perk, these invisible creators sat behind several layers of moderation; never to be bothered, never revealing how they behave in a casual environment. It’s been my experience that this type of server is clique-esque in nature, which heavily turns me off. I join servers from online personalities not because I want to be in the loop with the creator’s latest works, but because I want to see how they engage with their followers. I’m likely in the minority here...

Forums were on their last legs, largely replaced by social media. The G4 Forums, which I used to frequent, folded shortly after I joined Twitter alongside the network it’s named after. Then the Xbox Forums, which I tried to make my home, increasingly made me uneasy the more I used them. I left chat apps behind when I joined Twitter in 2012, and I didn’t know what to expect — it felt like a regression, and I didn’t know whether it was a positive one. When Stu launched his Patreon campaign in 2016, promising access to his Discord server, I joined both Patreon *and* Discord. I already had his ear: we spoke via Twitter DMs and sometimes e-mail, but those channels felt more formal. Here, I could engage in casual conversation not only with him but also with like-minded people.

Sometime after, I heard about a place called ‘Anime UK News’ from a guy I spoke to somewhat regularly. He held the community in high regard, and I was curious to see what it was about — our nationalities didn’t align, but our interests seemingly did. I was already acquainted with many a UK person: Stu, Sam, Bish, etc. The natural next step was to join a proper UK server. Unfortunately, the guy who brought me in was banned shortly after I joined. His bitterness became apparent through the many snide remarks he posted about the server’s administrator. We were nothing more than acquaintances; it’s no skin off my back.

In early 2021, a discussion among some server members and Donut — the artist this segment focuses on — culminated in Donut making a joke I found in poor taste. I block people openly, as I don’t want to see posts from those who upset me, and she got hit with it. Little did I know how much she agonized over the incident, how she didn’t mean to offend me. It wasn’t until a mutual friend brought up that she wanted to make amends, and that I should give her a chance. And I did. We began talking about our shared interests and the things I thought she’d like. Much later, we’d talk about life, work, and the things that happened in our day.

One of those shared interests was OMORI. I've written elsewhere about how the game made me feel, but here I want to focus on when it came into my life. Donut and I both purchased the game during its first-anniversary sale on Steam. I'm not sure how she came to buy the game, but she felt equally endeared and emotional toward its themes. Our Twitter DMs are full of OMORI fanarts, memes, and official content from the creator herself, OMOCAT. From a misunderstanding to speaking as if we had known each other forever, this friendship developed under unorthodox circumstances and is all the more beautiful because of it.

My mind wasn’t in the best of places. During this era, I’d grow more reclusive, much like the world around me, which grew silent under COVID-19 lockdown orders. Having my freedom stripped away by the snap of a finger contributed to my already deteriorating mental health. Even as I surrounded myself with things that made me happy, including an enhanced edition of Persona 5 — a game I’m very fond of — I was far from it. The isolation and the overwhelming stress from work drove me towards bad eating habits, resulting in an increase of 35 pounds over roughly half a year. With curfews still in effect, if I went out to run errands, I had to be back home by 9 PM, and the many government alerts sent to my phone reminded me. Anything later and I’d risk being sent to an actual cell instead of the four walls that imprisoned me for the better part of a year. And counting.

Donut was struggling to make ends meet as the cost of living in the UK rose. Having heard about her situation in one of many ‘how’s life going’ conversations, I was gutted. Dealing with the same scenario myself, I could offer only words of encouragement, as money was also tight. One day, I saw her post about opening up commissions to her close group of followers. I knew Donut drew as a hobby, and why not — if you do a thing well, might as well get paid for it!

I couldn’t tell you how the ‘Itachi in the OMORI art style’ idea came about. Still, I felt it could work: her chibi/cute style was perfect for the concept. We both felt strongly about the game, and I wanted to help her, even in a small way. I told her about my idea, and she was delighted, agreeing to do it without a second thought — not only was she drawing about her obsession, but she’d do so for a special friend. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy with blazpu-tachi! But I wanted a more whimsical picture for the more intimate setting of Discord servers and direct messages. It’d see use on Twitter, but it was never meant as the primary showcase.

A key question that arose in the process was which background felt like Itachi. OMORI’S EMOTION system depicted the character’s status through emotions: neutral, happy, sad, angry, or afraid, alongside a thematically apt background. The trouble was that Itachi didn’t fit any of these rigid categories. His demeanor was more nuanced: “…there's an aura of melancholy around him, but he never shows it — SAD wouldn't really fit. Neither would ANGRY…” Looking back, the seeds of a different read on Itachi were being planted. I didn't realize it then, but I was starting to ask: who was Itachi, really? What did he mean to me? Could he be something other than my longest-serving mask?

There’s something special about OMORI-tachi. Unlike Vector-tachi and blazpu-tachi before it, this mask was more intimate. It’s the embodiment of the special connection Donut and I have, a reminder of how a piece of media brought us into each other’s worlds. If it weren't for OMORI, we wouldn't be friends. I would’ve forgotten why I was upset at her, and we’d chat from time to time… but me lighting up whenever I get a message from her? All thanks to OMOCAT. Her willingness to transform her pain into art gave us OMORI.

And OMORI… gave us each other.

As Twitter got ever more enshittified under Elon Musk’s ownership, my days on the platform were numbered. I started spending more and more time on Instagram — never mind that I’m trading one evil billionaire’s site for another.

Since the beginning, Instagram has been a photo-first site. Before netizens normalized posting everything about their lives on social media, Instagram users did it first, posting banal stuff such as selfies, what they ate, and, more interestingly, the novel things that happened in their lives. As the platform grew, the scope of posts broadened.

I mostly followed cosplayers. Two that come to mind are Leon Chiro, an Italian artist with abs to die for, and Geheichou, a Spaniard whose prop making is second to none — and a cute guy in his own right. At one point, my Explore page contained either anime, cosplayers, attractive men, or any combination of the three. The more I browsed, the more accurately the algorithm understood me; it was so unsettling that I had to force myself to log off on more than one occasion.

I came across Keito during the COVID lockdown years, when I saw his full-color sketchbook illustration of My Hero Academia’s Izuku Midoriya, themed like a stereotypical villain. Seeing traditional artwork of this caliber is rare — and impressive. Even more so, given that he claims he’s a ‘self-taught artist.’ He’s notable for cosplaying alongside his artwork; since he draws character fanart in everyday clothing, the outfits that inspired the artwork may be in his wardrobe. Some pictures are digitally altered: his Venti cosplay has the side braids layered in. The hair color might also be the work of Photoshop, but then again, colored hairspray exists. Some of his off-cosplay pictures show him with dyed hair, so maybe...?

The thing I remember Keito most for is his love of the yaoi manhwa BJ Alex, and his frequent cosplaying of the titular character — he even made a replica of BJ Alex’s mask! Keito’s suggestive cosplays intrigued me: not only did I start seeing in him an attractive young man, but I also ended up checking out the series, which became the first webtoon I’ve read.

BJ Alex follows Ahn Jiwon, a model university student by day and the adult streamer ‘BJ Alex’ by night, and Nam ‘DG’ Dong-Gyun, someone who developed feelings for his favorite ‘broadcast jockey.’ Jiwon successfully keeps his streaming life secret from his university peers until a department drinking night ends with him taking a blackout-drunk DG home. When DG vomits on Jiwon's sweater, and Jiwon cleans up, DG notices the telltale marks that reveal Jiwon is BJ Alex. The mask comes off — Jiwon was brash, uncaring, and all about the carnal desire. The man DG lusts for was right in front of him, and it’s clear their relationship started on the wrong foot.

I’m reminded of a former coworker who’s into BL Korean dramas. He often shared posts from KR drama fan pages showing two men kissing passionately. It stopped short of showing intercourse, lest it anger the Facebook overlords. Needing context, I watched these scenes in their entirety: they’re just as explicit as the clips I’ve seen. BJ Alex is no different.

Ever since I’ve met Keito, a blip registered in my gaydar. I ignored it, thinking it was a mere coincidence. True, his artworks skew heavily towards male characters, often in various states of undress, and he takes good care of his appearance. This isn’t enough to assert he’s a gay man, but having read BJ Alex and considering how big a fan he was, it told me that Keito is, at the very least, queer. Y’see, the relationship of straight men with queer media is fundamentally different from that of queer people: they may tolerate it, but becoming fans of it? Highly unlikely. I’ve yet to meet a straight fudanshi.

Sometime in 2021, he pivoted to working digitally as he polished his skills on the medium. I vaguely recall him mentioning how he has tried digital artwork before, but it didn’t stick. It would seem that swapping the sketchbook for an iPad & Apple Pencil did the trick, as most (if not all) of his artwork to this day is digital. Then, in 2023, he was confident enough in his skills to begin taking commissions. As soon as I saw the announcement, I jumped at the opportunity.

Watching Street Fighter 6 gameplay reminded me of Akuma’s signature pose: his back to the camera, looking over his shoulder, with the ‘ten’ kanji character clearly visible. Itachi could look very badass like that! I sent an Akuma fanart as reference: “I’m picturing an Itachi with his back to the viewer, looking over his left shoulder with a faint glow in his eye due to the Sharingan.” He asked what the Sharingan was and whether I could send him references of the character; I sent him a Fandom wiki page. Keito appeared to have limited knowledge — he knew who Itachi was, but wasn’t aware of the minutiae. I should’ve realized this was a red flag...

While coming along nicely from the thumbnails, the full piece told a different story. My initial excitement gave way quickly to unease. Something about it didn't click, even as I struggled to pinpoint exactly what. I ask myself questions without answers: Did Keito not seek additional references? Am I expecting too much of someone new to commission work? Was there no way to make this work?

Days after our business was done, I tried to make the illustration tolerable to my tastes, but I was unsuccessful. It became clear to me that Keito's unfamiliarity with the source material resulted in a piece that, while certainly capturing a badass character, was not Itachi. Denial led to disappointment — mostly at myself — followed by acceptance and regret.

All I could think about was how I asked for this. There’s only so much one can gather from references, and the essence of who the character is isn’t one of them. Still, we both thought it could work if the conversation is anything to go by. I saw in Keito not only an attractive young man but also someone whose art I genuinely liked. He may have seen in me an opportunity to make money, despite his unfamiliarity. We both should’ve backed out of the request. I let my excitement cloud my judgment.

Given the circumstances, there’s no way this could’ve been anything other than a soulless rendition of Itachi. Was he at fault? Was I at fault? I’d argue we both share the blame for this not working.

Full of regret for what could’ve been, I had no choice but to wear blazpu’s crafted mask once more…

This time, I'd be weighing things very differently. Liking their art style wasn't enough; they also needed to be familiar with Itachi — though not necessarily a Naruto fan — and have the technical skill to depict a particular interpretation I sought for this piece. Maybe I was setting impossible standards for myself, wanting all these criteria met. The Keito commission had left me with regrets about that balance, and I didn't want to make the same mistake twice. Trying to put this hesitancy into words is harder than I thought... hopefully, it'll all make sense by the end.

After years of thinking of Itachi as this cool, badass character, I began to consider the weight he actually carried. Itachi knew about his clan’s planned coup, and if it happened, it’d be the bloodiest event in Konoha history since the Nine-Tails’ rampage eight years prior. The Uchiha leadership, including Itachi's own parents, expected him to side with the clan when the coup began, using his skills as a capable ANBU against the village he served. Of course, the Konoha elders knew. After uncomfortable conversations, Danzō presented Itachi with two scenarios: let the coup happen, watch civil war tear through Konoha, and lose Sasuke in the bloodshed. Or kill the Uchiha himself, become a missing-nin, and live forever as the villain in his brother's story, with Sasuke's survival as the only guarantee. Itachi was between a rock and a hard place — both options equally horrifying.

The day before the massacre, he watched Sasuke from afar — really afar — as he and Naruto competed in track and field. I want to think he was having one last look at his little brother before crossing a point of no return, before becoming a criminal of the highest order. Just before killing his parents, Itachi cried. It sank in what he was doing.

Itachi played the villain to the very end, all to protect Sasuke. Even when the mask slipped in his final moments, there was no time to explain — only a poke to Sasuke’s forehead before dying. Itachi took his dark secret to the grave. Later, when he was reanimated during the Fourth Shinobi World War, those themes of regret resurfaced. Itachi revealed how he wished it all could have been different, that his loyalty to both the Uchiha clan and his village didn't have to be such a heavy burden to carry. He didn’t seek Sasuke’s forgiveness for what he’d done, but made sure to let him know that he loved him — and always had.

I don't think I'm qualified to comment on Masashi Kishimoto's handling of Itachi's characterization, but I strongly relate to that interpretation — to the idea of someone carrying irreversible choices made under impossible circumstances, living with grief over doing what seemed right while knowing it would haunt them.

Nearing 40, with more time to myself than what's healthy, I've been reflecting on my life up to this point. The burdens I carry, the regrets I have... I find myself wishing for a time machine so I could go back and do things differently. Maybe I'm only running away. People would say that your 'self' is an amalgam of all the experiences you've had, and that you shouldn't wish to change things but instead wish for serenity. I find this to be nothing but a white lie, the kind people tell themselves to sleep better at night. I refuse to accept being told that these feelings — this regret, this desire to rewrite things — aren't human, especially as society grows ever more reticent about rocking the boat. At the same time, I am also complicit, given that I want to live as my authentic self for whatever's left of my life in peace.

I wanted someone who could capture this turmoil: this melancholy, this wistfulness I feel I have in common with Itachi.

When I committed to Bluesky full-time, I sought illustrators in the fandoms I followed. I eventually came across Lancha, a German artist, through our mutual acquaintance KasuTama. The first piece of hers I saw was an intimate Mydei x Phainon illustration that leaned more tender than smutty. She described it as "the most spicy you will ever get from me," which was unfortunate — I appreciate smut — but her depiction brought out a softness that felt perfect for that moment. I knew she was someone whose art journey I wanted to follow.

Months later, notable AU stories featuring Alien Stage's Ivan and Till were released, and I surmised they inspired her illustration of the two boys passionately kissing. By this point, I was convinced her rendering style — something close to watercolor painting — wasn't a one-off for the PhaiDei piece. This illustration had me closely studying the toning of their hair, particularly Ivan's. It was as if a violet or magenta light source was accentuating the highlights and shadows. Very lovely!

Watching her work on Ivan and Till's hair made me want to understand her rendering process more deeply. I discovered she did occasional art streams, and sometime in September, I dropped by during breaks at work, watching as she worked her magic. Appreciation became admiration. Although I'd been contemplating the concept for a new Itachi ident for some time, I couldn't realize it without funding — fortunately, I'd be able to afford it soon. On a later stream, I asked whether she did commissions. She responded affirmatively and linked her VGen profile.

Months of engaging with her work, an appreciation for how she conveyed emotion, and she did commissions? That sealed the deal. The question was: did she know Itachi Uchiha? Would she be willing to draw him?

Despite my confidence, I felt anxious throughout. The Keito experience still lingered, and I had the perhaps mistaken impression that some illustrators are too proud to draw "old" characters. Had she said no, I'd be devastated — that would've been the end of the road, and I dreaded going back to the drawing board. Vetting takes considerable time: Do I like this person's art? Do I like them as a person? Can they bring my particular vision to life? My overthinking nature really did a number on me.

Fortunately, not only did she know the character, but she was up to the task.

I prepared a quick mood board with the pose and several images of dresses — perhaps too many. All I wanted was to communicate how Itachi's robe should look crumpled across the ground. Only after I sent it did I realize I'd omitted the most important part: his expression. This could make or break the illustration. I could only hope she'd capture it with just the "wistful/melancholic" description.

I was surprised by the amount of freedom I was given. It's one of those situations where I wondered whether I was being too controlling or too lax — then I realized: I chose her for her style. I told that voice inside my head to go away, assuring her that while I had a vision for the piece, what I ultimately wanted was her take on it. I wanted this to be more of a collaboration, not me dictating what to do to get what I want. In retrospect, given my prior experience, I was perhaps too lax. It was a roll of the dice — I could only trust her to deliver something I'd be happy with.

We agreed on a pose that looked best among the sketches. There was even a variant with crows flying. While I appreciated the thoughtfulness of adding Itachi's signature corvid, it would've veered toward the badass look I didn't want. Some days after, she sent the lineart. It felt as if a huge weight had lifted from my shoulders. No longer was I fearful that I wouldn't like the final result. Not noticing anything that needed fixing, I gave the go-ahead. Around mid-December, I received the final piece.

"Your capturing of the mood I wanted was beyond what I was expecting... like, I'm legitimately floored by this." I meant every word. Not only did I get a new Itachi to use as an ident, but it's an illustration I actually love. Conveying my idea and overcoming my trust issues were genuinely tough, but the result was worth it — I won't regret trusting Lancha to capture what I had in mind.

7 min read

As I write this, we’re gearing up to our timezone’s bidding farewell to 2025. I’d like to have this out before then, so I’ll do my best to shoot from the hip, as it were.

Ever since I started writing, it’s as if I can no longer put my thoughts together concisely. An overthinker yesterday, an overthinker today, an overthinker tomorrow — I’ve had a lot on my mind and, in these final hours, I’d like to go over notable events I’ve experienced throughout my year. As pessimistic as I can be, there are things worth celebrating; if nothing else, I want my future self to have a record of who Tyson was in 2025.

2025 was the year in which I’d leave mainstream social media behind. I closed my X account the year before, and it was the turn of Meta’s platforms: Facebook and Instagram. When human Q-Tip Mark Zuckerberg began spouting about how slurs towards my people were no longer considered policy violations, I concluded that Zuckerberg didn’t want people like me on his platforms. And look, I am also tired of having to care for situations that no one else seems to, brushing them off as not a big deal or as being dramatic. To which I ask: what will it take for you to care? Or at the very least, see my point of view and empathize? Is your comfort more important than our safety?

For stuff I particularly feel strong about, I believe in not just talking the talk, but also walking the walk. If I have to endure inconveniences to make my point, so be it: I’m a hater with conviction. Increasingly, we in the LGBTQ+ community only have each other, with even so-called “allies” abandoning us.

The year before, an ADHD diagnosis and subsequent treatment would be life-changing in more ways than one. I’ve begun to reap the rewards, especially with stuff in which I knew what I needed to do, but never followed through.

On the economic front, filing for bankruptcy meant I’d no longer be a prisoner to my crippling debt or to the meager income from food delivery services. I found out the hard way that being successful in this field requires a time commitment I neither can nor won’t give. While I don’t doubt that people have made a living doing so, I must be realistic: my day job gave me far more income in a day than what I’d get in a week from them. Not having to rush out every other night, seeking income that might not be there, was truly liberating.

I’d also get great news from work, as I was offered a higher position with a higher salary. It dawned on me how my current employer gave me in two years what I never got with my prior employer in six: a chance at higher responsibility. Jokingly, my boss told me how his husband had a speech prepared if I said no to the opportunity, telling me off over the phone — it wasn’t necessary; I reiterated my appreciation for both of them. I’m deeply grateful that he saw in me the potential to do much more, even at a point at which I believed I didn’t have potential other than being another cog in the machine.

On the health front, the time I spent making my tenth Crumbl Cookies delivery of the night was reclaimed to go back to the gym. I kept my membership for the barbershop, but I wasn’t using the facilities, which is the whole point of having a gym membership. At first, progress was slow, as I worked towards a place where I could see a benefit. Today, I’m lifting over 100 pounds in almost every machine that targets arms, shoulders, chest, and upper back. For the coming year, I want to incorporate an abdominal routine and potentially add a fourth day to the schedule.

That was a major life change in and of itself. The second aspect arose from a severely limited budget, which necessitated changes to my diet. I’d imagine I’d still lose weight in this situation if I didn’t exercise, but it certainly made acclimating to it all the easier. It sounds clichéd, but it surprises me how many people believe exercise alone achieves weight loss. Far from it, it’s the least important aspect — want to lose weight, control your diet.

Today, I weigh what I last weighed over a decade ago. I’m still not where I want to be, and I’ve seemed to hit a wall as of late, struggling to get further down. As long as I stay the course and remind myself of why I do this, I’m sure I’ll overcome it.

In relationship building, I am working to avoid situations where I know I might snap at someone. I’ve gotten better at checking myself before I do or say something hurtful, not from a place of empathy but a place in which my selfishness will get the better of me. I’ve also accepted that there are acquaintances I will never get along with, and it’s best for me to remove myself from that environment. When I care about keeping up with just one or two people instead of the whole group, it’s an overall net positive. Will 2026 be the year in which I mellow down? I don’t know, but I aspire towards it!

In routines, not only have I become a regular at the gym, but I’ve also become a regular writer. I can't emphasize this enough: this was truly unheard of five years ago. I was very vocal about how the aspect of video production I enjoyed the least was writing — years later, I’d pump ten thousand-plus-word pieces out as if I had nothing else to do. Having traded casual gaming time for writing, there’s a degree of truth to that.

What started as a means to keep the website open, as my budget went through deep cuts, has grown to be an outlet for creative expression that I greatly enjoy. It seems I’ve done nothing but write since the summer, with every moment I had to myself thinking of stuff I want to write about, how I want to write about something, or writing about that thing.

I’m proud of what I’ve put out so far, with each post better than the last one. Even so, I have my favorites: I’ve prosecuted Nintendo as they geared up for the Switch 2 launch in ‘Angel Nintendo,’ shown skepticism over Persona 4 Revival in ‘TV Station: Offline,’ and been genuinely excited for a new game in ‘Long Wait to First Light.’

I’ve also explored my vulnerable side through my writing: I recounted my online history on ‘The Internet Died,’ spoke on the bittersweet feeling of growing up when I covered Kirby’s Adventure for the fifth Media Log, and had an existential crisis when covering Given’s themes of loss for the eighth Media Log.

2025 was bleak overall, with the world sliding back into authoritarianism; it’s important to celebrate the small victories whenever possible. For the first time in a long while, I’m starting to feel as if I’ve found a purpose. Wandering for a majority of my life, I didn’t know what I wanted to do or what I was brought to the world to do. Having at least a hint of what could be gives me an euphoria unlike any other. Whether I’ll find my true meaning in 2026 remains to be seen; I can only continue walking and see where this road takes me.

I hope you’ll continue watching over me in 2026. Happy New Year, everyone.

69 min read

Prior Entry | All Media Log Posts | Next Entry

Please be advised these posts aren’t spoiler-free.

Sections

Dear Diary

Power On: The Story of Xbox

Intro

The Renegades

The Valentine’s Day Massacre

The Final Design

The Crunch

The Gamer’s Social Network

The Red Ring of Death

The Motion Revolution

The Disconnect

The Clean-Up

The X

The True Winner

This is "Dear Diary," a rebrand of the Media Log prologue that better captures what the section really is. But, why a rebrand? Two reasons: one, I think it was a natural evolution; it went from speaking about the thought process behind creative decisions I make to taking some space to put my struggles into what is my most important output currently. While I believe my writing has my personality all over it, this section shows a more human side — the joys and sorrows, the triumphs and defeats. In a world where creative work is rapidly devaluing since AI companies decided their products must have a "creative" use, I have to assert my humanity — I must.

And two, it gives the wrong impression when the first section is entirely self-serving, especially when someone may come specifically for my take on a series. Which is fair — I'm not expecting every reader to be familiar with the format of the Media Log. Titling the section sets expectations accordingly; you can skip it if you don't want to read. It's unfortunate, but I understand if readers don't have the time and/or interest to go through my musings.

I’m just happy readers deem my words to be worth their time, however finite that time may be. If you’ve enjoyed these musings before, thank you — I hope to keep meeting your expectations.

With the announcement and rationale out of the way, I have an anecdote to share, inspired by the open enrollment period for health insurance happening nationwide as I write...

I’ve been seeing a therapist. As of late, I don’t think going to those sessions will produce anything of note.

Ever since the divorce of my parents, I’ve been in and out of therapy. It largely stemmed from my refusal to accept that they were separated, which threw a wrench in their efforts to remake their love lives. I must’ve visited around five different therapists throughout my teens, with one of two situations happening: one, either they’ve found me a hard patient to work with, or two, mom pulled me out of those sessions after some time with no visible progress. I didn’t enjoy the feeling of being treated like cattle — I’m just one among many they see every week, just another one for the insurance to pay (or deny!) for their services. Surely they mean well, and they’re prepared in the nuances of their profession, but feelings seldom care about the facts.

Little did I know that I would be one among many who decided whether their claim was approved or not many years later…

Very briefly, I’m employed by an insurance company handling behavioral health claims. I’ve seen claims like those my current therapist and psychiatrist would submit to get paid. What I’ve seen both fascinates me… and scares me in equal measure. Frankly, when doctors say the US healthcare system is broken, believe them — and this is coming from someone inside the belly of the beast. Despite my belief in a single-payer healthcare system, this job is what’s putting food on my table now.

Prompted by a situation in which I believed I was misdiagnosed, I found that insurance companies have these customer-facing reports on how you use the insurance, including the diagnoses the doctors have reported. I’m aware this data has always been collected, but I’m not sure if it was a document we could always request. It wasn’t until insurance mobile apps started showing up that gave visibility to these, with the apps needing to do more than just contain the digital card for their coverage.

When I saw my report, I saw some creative billing going on. Mind you, it’s not that any of the diagnoses I saw are *wrong.* However, going off who was doing the diagnosing, I wondered, ‘how is this relevant to the condition I saw X doctor about?’ One that made me laugh was a diagnosis by a vascular doctor I saw about a problem in my legs, which I suspected was circulation-related. Not only I saw the circulatory-related diagnoses, but I also saw E66.0, or ‘obesity due to excess calories’ as defined by the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), a medical classification list maintained by the WHO, currently in its tenth revision. But… we didn’t talk about my weight during the consultation? He literally diagnosed me by eye…

Then again, it might very well be what they need to do to get paid — no doctor I’ve seen will disagree that I have an obesity problem. As for how it affects me as a patient, my line of work taught me how certain procedures can only be billed with certain diagnoses. Gross mischaracterization can lead to denied benefits and a not-so-pleasant invoice letter to the patient. To return to the anecdote that first brought me to this thought, when I was seeking an Adderall refill, I saw a diagnosis on the prescription that I don’t think accurately captures the ADHD I have: F90.1, or ADHD hyperactive.

I’d think F90.0 — ADHD inattentive — fits me better, but then I thought about how it may have been better to be coded as hyperactive to avoid pushback at the pharmacy. Given how difficult it is to navigate the US healthcare system, I’ll take whatever advantage I can get. And I *need* that Adderall, even if I’m ‘misdiagnosed.’

Back to my therapist anecdote: right about as I exited college, I just… gave up. The therapist I was seeing at the time, who I believe was also a psychiatrist, offered to put me on antidepressants. I refused. By that point, there was nothing left for us to talk about.

After roughly nine years, I sought therapy again. I was dealing with major emotional distress caused by my job at the time; the best advice the therapist gave me was, “Have you tried looking for another job?” Lady, I’ve told you *repeatedly* how there are no jobs that pay what I earn… A couple of months later, I sought someone else; this man only did telehealth. All I needed to do was turn on my laptop, connect the webcam, and we’re off. It was nice.

Some sessions in, I began to feel… aimless. I’m literally paying a stranger to listen to my troubles, distressing over petty stuff — there was even a time when I foolishly decided to take it ‘easy’ on him by talking about something positive that happened, despite life around me crumbling down. That was the breaking point: I was falling back into the same resistance, the same refusal to engage. I couldn’t do it anymore. I ended up ghosting the guy; I think he got the message.

Two years later, I felt ready to seek therapy again. Or so I thought. When I first saw the new therapist, we went through the initial interview: why am I here, what do I hope to achieve, yadda yadda yadda. By the end, he assigned me homework: read a book called Your Erroneous Zones by Wayne Dyer. I might’ve given the impression that I’m a reader, as I was already blogging at the time, but that has a very important asterisk: I can only get into the reading if it’s something that interests me. Psychology books… weren’t going to do it for me.

Every time I’ve gone in, he asked if I had read the book. Every time I’ve said no, I have not read it. This is where the friction began, with him questioning — rightfully so — what I aimed to get out of the sessions. I was shocked at how the pleasantries seemed to come off, but I didn’t feel offended. If nothing else, I appreciate how forthcoming the question was, considering a society that often dances around the issue to protect someone else’s feelings.

I took the question seriously. After some soul-searching, I convinced myself that I wasn’t going to finish the book, nor was I going to listen to that podcast he suggested. By this point, it must be something subconscious. The only thing that makes sense to my rational side is that I never fully grew out of my rebellious phase. As it pertains to homework, I’m no longer a student; I left that at school many years ago. If I wasn’t going to get guidance on what I initially sought help for, it’s time and money I’m losing.

I had to stop seeing him. Not because I thought he wasn’t a good fit — quite the opposite, it might be the case that what I need a no-bullshit therapist to whip me into place. But my mind was in another place; I thought I was ready to commit to therapy. I wasn’t.

I'll continue wandering aimlessly, I guess... still trying to place a pin on whatever's wrong, still looking for meaning in a journey that might not have a destination…

⁠‘Power On: The Story of Xbox’ is a six-part docuseries produced by Ten100 released to commemorate Xbox’s 20th anniversary. It tells the story of the Xbox brand, from the DirectX team who championed the idea of a ‘Microsoft console,’ up until the unveiling of the Xbox Series X.

This retelling should be taken as Microsoft’s version of events. The unprecedented access to key information and staff was thanks to Tina Summerford, the current head of programming for Xbox, who pitched the idea of making an Xbox retrospective. Certain events can be independently verified, but others largely depend on primary sources and should be treated with caution, particularly when they support a compelling narrative. I’d encourage my readers to analyze this series with a critical lens: the story you’re being told is how Microsoft would like for you to see what happened, not what actually happened.

First, some back story: how did I get into Xbox? Let’s go back to 2002, the days when friends went to each other’s houses and shot the shit in the bedroom, as the adults claimed the rest of the house. One of my friends was an early adopter of the Xbox. What stood out to me was the fact that Agent Under Fire was among the games he owned. He knew I was a huge Bond fan, so he let me play through some of the missions — an opportunity I couldn't resist. Most games I played were shooters, giving me practice with 'trigger' buttons like the Nintendo 64's Z button. So I felt comfortable with the 'Duke' controller’s triggers.

Everyone I knew had PS2s, but I just wasn’t interested. As I saw my cousin sharing Xbox games with the other kids in the street, I felt left out. I was the uncool kid, what with his old PlayStation and Nintendo 64. My dad got me an Xbox for Christmas that year, bundled with Sega GT 2002 and Jet Set Radio Future. I especially loved JSRF and still listen to its soundtrack to this day. That friend I mentioned before, I got to play Halo thanks to him; I got so into it, I’d use my allowance money to buy the special edition of Halo 2 when the game released. I begged Mom to take me to GameStop — somehow, I managed to get it on launch day.

“Xbox almost didn’t happen.”

This statement is uttered by many who worked on the original Xbox. As it comes from sources with vested interest in Xbox’s legend, it can’t be taken at face value. What we do know is the state of both Microsoft and its soon-to-be competitor, Sony, during the late 90s.

Microsoft, a software-focused company led by Bill Gates, experienced rapid growth as its two main products, Office and Windows, gained widespread acceptance in the early days of computing. This made them arrogant —  a trait best displayed during the antitrust hearings — while simultaneously skittish and paranoid. In Gates’s eyes, anything could be a threat to their empire — who could say whether Lotus Software, Apple Computer, or one of the many Linux distros suddenly rose to challenge their dominant position? The mere chance meant they could leave nothing to chance.

Mostly recognized for its consumer electronics, the Japanese giant Sony cemented its dominance in entertainment with the 1995 launch of the PlayStation. Before this, Sony was already everywhere: TVs, handheld cameras, Walkmans, music, movies, and more. In any entertainment technology, Sony had a presence. Such widespread success bred a sense of arrogance similar to that of Microsoft’s. Yet, as they prepared for the PlayStation’s successor, Sony may have overextended itself.

The PlayStation 2, designed with a multimedia focus that reached beyond gaming, prompted Sony to prepare a powerful strategy. There was speculation that the PS2 could integrate seamlessly with other Sony devices, making it a potential PC replacement at home. Recognizing this, Sony marketed the console as the centerpiece of the living room, often displaying setups that included only the PS2 while omitting traditional PCs — even Sony’s own VAIOs. Microsoft saw this positioning as a direct threat to Windows. Before the company could officially respond, four bold Microsoft employees, the so-called ‘renegades,’ set out to challenge this threat.

Seamus Blackley, Kevin Bachus, Ted Hase, and Otto Berkes, developers on the DirectX team, made it their mission to persuade a company that has never produced hardware to get into that business, and not just any hardware, but a game console. In hindsight, it’s natural for a team that oversees the toolset that enabled graphics applications on Windows to suggest this kind of hardware. Before DirectX, running graphically demanding games meant shutting down Windows entirely to free up system memory. In fact, a game console represents the next frontier for DirectX. Its codename was ‘DirectX-Box,’ or just ‘Xbox’ for short.

Microsoft wasn’t unfamiliar with games. Windows included games whose sole purpose was to acclimate users to the graphical user interface and published titles like Microsoft Flight Simulator, but the software giant never prioritized games. They were viewed as just another useful tool in Windows’ toolkit — in fact, the ‘Games Group’ was staffed by a small team. This would change when Ed Fries left the Office team for the games division, with many of his colleagues calling the move career suicide.

Under Fries’s leadership, the team’s profile grew as they landed major publishing deals. One notable example was Age of Empires, a real-time strategy game that incorporated elements from Sid Meier’s Civilization and featured technological eras as a gameplay element. The game’s unprecedented success eclipsed the team’s earlier projects, which had been treated more as a hobby. Amusingly, after the launch of Windows 95, Fries recalls the group wearing shirts emblazoned with ‘Microsoft Knows Games.’ Anyone seeing someone wearing that would be tempted to give the nerd a wedgie — even after AoE’s success.

These efforts not only bolstered the Games Group but also DirectX as a development platform. Fries is a potential ally for Xbox — convincing him to join Team Xbox would boost their proposal’s credibility, as the troublemakers’ pitch is repeatedly shot down. Not only that, but Fries was among Gates’s most trusted men. When the four men came to Fries with their pitch, he was more than happy to help move it forward.

When Sony announced the PlayStation 2, its bold vision shook Microsoft executives, including Gates. From a risk assessment of the Emotion Engine to emails circulating through every game-related group within Microsoft, the renegades saw their chance to pitch their project. “Not only do we have a perspective on this, we actually have a presentation, a PowerPoint deck that we’d like to share with everybody.” With Fries backing them, they meant business.

The first meeting with Gates put the Xbox team against the Windows CE team, which had ex-3DO people among its ranks. With differing opinions on how the company should tackle this imminent threat, it was up to them to convince Gates which group should lead the initiative. Team Xbox was a group of naïve idealists, whereas the CE team was more conservative in their approach, having learned hard lessons from the 3DO’s failure. Allegedly.

A quick crash course on the 3DO: it was both a console specification and a licensing model. Imagine Microsoft licensing an exact Surface hardware spec to different manufacturers, while collecting royalties on every hardware unit and every piece of software sold — that was the 3DO model. Since manufacturers received no game royalties, they had to profit from hardware sales alone — the opposite of the razor-and-blades model Nintendo and Sega had perfected. Panasonic launched its 3DO at $699 in 1993 dollars. When adjusted for inflation, the 3DO remains one of the three most expensive consoles ever released, surpassed only by the Neo Geo and the CD-i.

None of the arguments by either camp fully convinced Gates. Fortunately, the Xbox team had a trump card: a working prototype. It was built with slightly aged, off-the-shelf PC parts, and running a heavily modified build of what is assumed to be Windows 98. Pair the removal of bloatware, BIOS modifications, and a week of no sleep for the renegades, and the result was a device whose killer app was booting from cold to operational in four seconds max. Gates could not believe what he was seeing — he asked the prototype to be shut off and booted multiple times again. “Why the fuck doesn’t Windows boot like that all the time?”

Anyone who used Windows 95 or 98 recalls the famously slow boot times. Storage technology’s limited I/O performance didn’t help matters, but the real issue was Windows’s proliferation of start-up components, which contributed to a bloated and sluggish system. Microsoft wouldn't prioritize efficiency for years, only addressing boot times as hardware improved enough to mask the bloat. That’s why the prototype’s achievement was so remarkable: on the same hardware used for Windows 98, it was possible to demonstrate a fully operational environment that loaded in virtually no time at all.

Gates was on board. However, the $500 million initial investment was a tough ask. Steve Ballmer, the de facto CFO, needed to sign off on the project — and he wasn’t a fan. A second meeting was called; Ballmer sat on this one, alongside sales, marketing, and software executives. He goes over the bill of materials for the console, making it painfully evident that the Xbox team didn’t think that far ahead. The economics looked horrible, even more so under a razor-and-blades business model.

Unable to counter the financial argument, the Xbox team fought back in the one way they knew: reiterating what’s at stake. The executives might’ve been content with their empire built atop Office and Windows sales, but not the renegades. They strongly believed that a Microsoft that didn’t bet on this project would be relegated to stagnation in a rapidly evolving market. The Xbox project allowed the software giant to bank on its expertise and developer acceptance of the DirectX toolset to expand its utility past the personal computer. Given Sony’s credible threat, $500M was nothing compared to what they’d lose.

Ballmer pledged his support and, with it, Microsoft’s wallet.

Now that the Xbox project is greenlit, the fact that Microsoft has never made hardware dawns on Team Xbox. They didn’t have manufacturing partners to lean on, let alone their own plant.

One possible solution was to strike a deal with the OEMs. They got laughed out of the room. A Sega partnership was briefly considered and quickly dismissed. Sega was a sinking ship — Microsoft wanted no part of it. And when the software giant knocked on Nintendo’s door with a buyout offer, they got told off. Ironically, Team Xbox used tactics Team CE would’ve had they won the bid, with similar results. A sense of urgency drove everything: the Xbox *had* to be announced at GDC 2000, only months away, and Team Xbox felt like a fish out of water.

Conversations about the Xbox’s OS began before any hardware talks. The box shown at the Gates meeting ran a build that wouldn’t be viable in the final product — and neither was a full Windows build. The NT kernel, the brain of the eponymous operating system, is an option, but the Windows team wouldn’t give it up. One night, as the division gears up for the release of Windows 2000, the renegades broke into the server room and stole the kernel. Work on it began immediately, reducing an already small footprint even further: from 4MBs to about 200kbs.

On February 14 at 4 PM, Team Xbox convened to review the project's latest updates and request additional funding. Robbie Bach, E&D division president, dubbed this meeting the 'Valentine's Day Massacre' — "all Valentine's Day activities are now off." The executives endured over 4 hours of heated debate, keeping their spouses waiting past dinnertime as they fought to save Xbox.

Gates wasn’t happy with what he read on the pre-meeting deck. He thought he agreed to a games-only Windows box, when the reality was far from it. Feeling swindled by Team Xbox, he lashed out: “This is a fucking insult to everything I've accomplished at this company!” As Ballmer goes over the business case, the P&L assessment is even worse than the one from the first meeting. It was a back-and-forth shouting match until Bach said, “Well then, let’s not do it. We haven’t announced anything.” That didn’t lower the temperature, as the arguing shifted to the sunk cost of the initial investment.

Someone in the room asked, “What about Sony?” Gates weighed which option he disliked less: launching a product that contradicted the principles behind Microsoft's success or letting Sony take over the rest of the household. That framing sealed the deal: Xbox got the additional funding it needed, and the project could move forward. When Xbox veterans say "Xbox almost didn't happen," they refer to this meeting. Even those who weren't in the room knew how high the stakes were — and how close it came to death.

With the Sword of Damocles lifted, the clock was ticking toward GDC. When designer Horace Luke was tapped to create a proof-of-concept for the hardware, he made a statement: a metal X that could not be confused with a PC whatsoever, despite offering familiar PC tools. Fitting the components inside the metal X was complex — imagine Tetris with a motherboard. More importantly, these were working prototypes, not just design mockups.

The team brought three of these prototypes to GDC. All three failed. As the auditorium filled up, Blackley frantically soldered backstage to get them working for the demonstration, which he’d also be responsible for giving. The people in the room know Blackley for Trespasser, a game set within the Jurassic Park universe, which featured the first full physics engine in the medium. But instead of it being lauded for its impressive tech, it was fresh on the attendees’ minds as a commercial failure. Even as the room was skeptical, the demos went without a hitch, including a physics-based one, informed by Blackley’s experience with the tech. More impressively, they were running from the prototypes with failsafes ready in case the stage prototype crashed.

After surviving GDC, the box needed a proper name. It was never meant to be called ‘Xbox’ — it was used while a different name was settled on. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on market research, only to come up with names like ‘Frixion,’ ‘Vybe,’ and ‘Xantra,’ among other terrible choices. Their winner was ‘11X,’ because ‘it goes to 11,’ a Spinal Tap reference. Evidently, this wasn’t working. “Alright, we’ll get on Xbox” — but was it going to be ‘Microsoft Xbox’ or just ‘Xbox’? As journalist Tom Russo noted, the Microsoft name was a liability. “Might as well call it ‘Nerd Box,’ right?”

Sony beat Microsoft to market by six days *before* Xbox was announced at GDC, putting them in catch-up mode. Informally, Xbox aimed for a launch in November 2001 but only confirmed it at E3 that year. Writer N’Gai Croal notes that most companies take up to seven years to develop a console; Microsoft had just 18 months from announcement to launch. Pure madness.

Not only that, there were shakeups within Team Xbox. Rick Thompson, the man Ballmer tasked with oversight of the Xbox project, left Microsoft, leaving Bach to pick up the mantle in what he describes as “the worst 18 months of my professional career.” A man who doesn’t play games, barely understands the gaming business, and often was the adult in the room among a group of ragtag kids. Bach could not be less qualified to lead the Xbox team if he tried.

By CES 2001, it had been a year since the Xbox was unveiled. The final hardware design was revealed on stage, with designer Horace Luke stating how it was “quite a miracle to fit everything in that box.” It retains the ‘X’ motif, integrating it into the chassis. Dwayne Johnson was hired to help pitch the console while in character, sharing the stage with Gates and the final Xbox design. With no games to showcase, an entertaining back-and-forth between the two men serves as the perfect distraction.

Microsoft's compressed timeline meant they couldn't have titles built from scratch. They needed either games already in development, ports, basically anything that could hit the November launch window. Among the pitches received, there is one from a studio that wants to revisit a title they previously released on PC. They thought that, with sufficient investment and care, the game could work in 3D. Microsoft disagreed — they didn’t believe the game could successfully make the transition.

That game… was Grand Theft Auto III.

It sold 14.5 million copies, defined the early 2000s, and became one of the most lucrative console exclusives in gaming history. Ironically, Sam Houser — Rockstar's co-founder — vouched for Xbox at GDC the year before. Houser believed in Xbox; Xbox didn't believe in him. GTA3 eventually came to Xbox, but by its 2003 release, Sony already seized the cultural zeitgeist and the sales that came with it.

At Microsoft's GameStock event in March, the rushed launch became painfully evident: a slim selection of titles, none of which fully utilized the hardware's capabilities. Instead, the showcase featured a cult classic stolen from Sony, a repurposed Dreamcast game, and three forgettable titles in Amped, Azurik & NFL Fever. The event was largely forgettable, if not for Halo’s live demonstration.

Known for Marathon and Myth, Bungie was the id Software of Mac gaming, but being king of a niche platform didn't pay the bills. The Myth II disaster left them financially vulnerable — as they worked on multiple prototypes to secure immediate funding, their reserves continued to dwindle. One of these prototypes was Halo, which Fries’s employees encountered while scouting for games. Seeing potential, Microsoft threw Bungie a lifeline with one condition: give me Halo. The game that would have theoretically been released on Macintosh became an Xbox exclusive alongside the studio that made it, much to the dismay of their fans. Gross mismanagement is in Bungie’s DNA — but that’s a story for another time.

The final litmus test for Xbox was that year’s E3. It was a disaster.

Microsoft delivered its 8 AM presentation to a hungover media group fresh from Sony’s event the night before — and they weren’t in the mood for disappointment. When Bach attempted to do a live demonstration of the Xbox, the machine failed to turn on. No one thought to test the hardware beforehand — the same team that needed last-minute soldering at GDC hadn't learned their lesson. The incident was embarrassing, but survivable after PR does its damage control. What wasn’t survivable was the killer app, Halo, failing to impress on the show floor.

Unfinished software running on unfinished hardware — whichever the culprit was, the result for the attendees is the same: it’s a bad demo, and they wouldn’t let Microsoft live it down. Peter Moore, Sega of America’s COO, delivered a brutal assessment: “Retailers aren’t gonna stock you, developers aren’t gonna develop for you, and consumers think the product’s not very good and it’s too expensive.” Electronic Arts’ CEO Larry Probst was even blunter: “Microsoft has a lot to do over the next few months. They are on a death march now.”

Probst didn't know how right he was. The six months between E3 and launch became exactly what he described: a death march, and a self-inflicted one at that. Microsoft had never created a consumer electronics device of this complexity and had to navigate a wide range of logistical and regulatory challenges. Bach recalls sending staff to China solely to procure hard drives faster than the existing supply chain could deliver, then having them carry the drives back as hand luggage. The crunch, the sheer velocity at which they had to move, the stress… it was chaos.

However, the documentary frames this as a noble sacrifice. Let there be no doubt: this is corporate propaganda. Team Xbox wasn't a scrappy startup; they were Microsoft employees backed by billions in corporate wealth. The death march wasn't inevitable — Microsoft could have hired more staff, extended the timeline, or scaled back the launch. Instead, they chose to exploit their existing workforce, repackaging the casualties as 'dedication.' That one nervous laugh from a nameless Xbox veteran on their failed relationship? That's not passion. It's someone who learned to normalize abuse, and they’re not the only one.

By November 2001, Microsoft launched the Xbox — but at what cost? Many nameless employees whose stories we'll never know, as well as all of the original renegades. Hase and Berkes left early in development; Blackley and Bachus departed shortly after launch, citing Xbox as their biggest achievement to date. They were just as burned out as the rest, with one key difference: they could afford to leave. Their future ventures failed, but they'll forever be known as the 'fathers of Xbox.'

That looks damn good on a resume.

The spotty quality of Halo’s E3 build, Xbox’s alleged ‘killer app,’ spelled trouble. Six months before launch, drastic decisions had to be taken.

Crunch, a term used since the ‘80s, is the industry's name for mandatory overtime. Typically invoked when a non-negotiable deadline looms, and work has piled up beyond what the team can reasonably manage. They almost always choose crunch. It costs management nothing: software developers don't receive overtime pay, no matter how many hours they work.

During crunch periods, workweeks can range from 60 to 80 hours, with extreme cases running even higher. Staff often sleep on-site and have little contact with the outside world, including friends and family. Developers who prioritize work–life balance or expect paid overtime would be better off steering clear of the games industry. This practice is heavily romanticized by all parties involved: publishers, studio heads, gamers, and journalists.

Fries sequestered all of Bungie’s staff from the end of E3 until those discs had to be pressed. To have any chance of hitting the November 15 launch date, Halo’s scope had to be drastically reduced: levels needed to be cut and reused, inefficient code rewritten, and extensive shortcuts taken. The only way you can achieve all of that in just four months — an objectively worse timeline compared to the Xbox hardware team — is with “full-on, old-school crunch.” What else could a bunch of Midwest and CA transplants even do, refuse?

Crunch culture claimed countless developers whose stories we'll never hear — social media didn't exist back then, and they had no voice. Even today, with platforms to speak out, developers without industry clout remain voiceless. Studios still treat crunch as a rite of passage. HR claims it's optional; managers punish those who refuse.

It’s at this point that I introduce Frank O'Connor, EIC at Imagine Media (Future US) and future Bungie employee. Commenting on Bungie's intense crunch period, O'Connor remarked: "The one positive thing that comes out of crunch is ideation and invention and polish."

Bullshit.

O'Connor's comments are incredibly tone-deaf, made worse by the fact that he wasn't there crunching alongside the Halo team. This is the equivalent of someone who's never worked retail explaining to cashiers how Black Friday is actually fun and brings out everyone's best work. It's management mythology, completely disconnected from the lived experience of the people who suffer through it.

That Bungie's crunch was a footnote, and the Xbox hardware rush got two chapters to itself, speaks volumes — the people who actually make the hardware worth a damn are belittled in the process. This dismissive treatment, only to evangelize their platform, is upsetting. Developers have real power in this give-and-take, but seldom the means to follow through. Money talks, and they don’t have the capital that a hardware manufacturer has. The power dynamics are less a quid pro quo than a parasitic relationship, and until collective bargaining exists in game development, this exploitation will continue unchecked.

Halo’s multiplayer mode did what the single player couldn’t: prove beyond doubt that it wasn’t just a novelty for Xbox, but something with lasting power. You can play with your siblings, relatives, or friends: they only need a spare controller or bring their own to frag each other. Done this way, up to four people could play on a single screen. There was also System Link: a form of LAN (local area network) that permitted up to four Xboxes to ‘talk’ to each other when connected to a network switch. It allowed for up to 16 players, a first for consoles.

Because of this, LAN parties were born. Friends and strangers bonded over pizza and soda, all while fragging each other, with passions running just as high as split-screen matches. Strangers became friends, friends became rivals —  the essence of gaming as a social activity. The sheer popularity of these proved Microsoft’s skepticism over the built-in Ethernet port to be unfounded. Now that J Allard has his case study, it was time to move on to phase two of his plan: the ‘global couch.’

It’s worth noting that Allard wasn’t interviewed for the documentary. He appears only in b-roll, while Jeff Henshaw explains how the service came to be. It feels odd to have the person who was tasked with the execution talk about the vision. Allard’s final email before leaving Microsoft didn’t suggest any bad blood, but this choice — having Henshaw, rather than Allard, front the story of Xbox Live — strikes me as a subtle form of revisionism.

Xbox Live is a social gaming platform — the first of its kind — which promised to bring everyone together around multiplayer gaming. To use the LAN party example, what if, instead of 16 people playing in the same place, they were in different parts of the country, or even the globe? That’s the promise of Xbox Live.

For this to work, some aspects had to be standardized. The online identity and friends list weren’t tied to a single game, but to the service itself. Voice chat became the main communication method, leading Microsoft to develop protocols for scalable, low-latency VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) — years before Skype would make such technology mainstream.

I want to call this comparison out, as Skype is now dead. For over a decade, Skype was video calling — the verb, the platform, the default. 'Skype me' meant video chat in the same way 'Google it' means search. It dominated until Zoom captured the pandemic boom, Discord won over gamers and communities, and Microsoft's own Teams cannibalized business users. Skype was outlived by the VoIP technology that Xbox Live helped pioneer.

The service was subscription-based: Microsoft sold $50 starter kits with a headset and a one-year subscription. The Ethernet port was already controversial, but charging for something that PC gamers got for free? Allard had to contend with entire departments telling him it was a bad idea, with Drew Angeloff serving as the main dissenting voice in the documentary. The overall sentiment was that Microsoft is committing highway robbery with this subscription.

There was no world in which the starter kit was a value proposition for anyone other than the hardcore gamer, and even that was doubtful. By the end of the 2002 holiday season, the number of Live-enabled titles was in the low double digits, and even fewer were truly worthwhile. Put simply, Microsoft was asking buyers to take a leap of faith on a nascent service: one without games that could showcase its potential, one with voice chat limited to in-game use — unlike PC tools like Ventrilo and TeamSpeak — and one that looked like double-dipping: $50 for broadband, $50 for the service.

Allard’s choice of Ethernet for the Xbox excluded swaths of potential customers. The rural US was left out. People with financial difficulties were left out. US territories were left out. For those of us who drew the short end of the stick, Xbox Live felt like an exclusive cool-kids club we just weren’t invited to. In Puerto Rico, broadband wasn’t available until 2005, three years after the service launched; cable TV company Adelphia bet on the new technology to increase its business, leveraging its existing infrastructure. As dial-up was so common, many people — my mom included — saw little reason to move to a faster service. As a full-time high school student, Xbox Live was financially out of reach. So, while I had an Xbox, I didn’t get into Xbox Live, not even when Halo 2 launched.

And speaking of Halo 2…

The game was on life support. The follow-up to Halo was originally scheduled for release in 2003. It didn’t — the weight of expectation crushed the studio. Halo 2 was a mix of ideas with no real cohesion, akin to throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. Or, as Bungie writer Joseph Staten put it: “We were really good at coming up with great ideas. We weren't quite as good at production discipline and figuring out how to right-size all those ideas, fit 'em into a box, timeline, and ship on time.” It’s easy to be honest in hindsight; how gamers didn’t realize this until a decade later is shameful.

Fries saw trouble. Eventually, Bungie studio head Jason Jones requested a one-year delay to rework the game. Fries brought the request to Bach, who called a meeting and held a vote. Fries was overwhelmingly voted down — the original date would stand. He stormed out, threatening to resign. Bach went after him, and the delay was granted. Fries would still leave six months later.

Bungie cost Microsoft one of its life-long employees.

Peter Moore, already employed by Microsoft when Sega abandoned the hardware business, joined the Xbox group upon Fries’s departure. He’d manage the latter half of the Xbox’s life and oversee its successor.

The Xbox 360 was a gaming console with a multimedia approach, positioning itself as a device that even non-gamers can use. Microsoft didn’t win the battle against Sony, but it reached a stalemate over the living room. With a rumored fall 2005 launch for the PlayStation 3, Moore issued his directive: Xbox *must* beat Sony to market. And they did, releasing their console a full year before the PS3, after Sony ran into trouble with the fledgling Blu-ray format.

Regardless of what Sony thinks, Xbox began the seventh generation of video game consoles; for the first time, they finally had mindshare and momentum.

Until three red lights blinked to life.

According to Xbox’s support documentation, what became known as the ‘red ring of death’ (RROD) indicates a ‘general hardware failure.’ Usually, it’s just the three blinking lights, but sometimes error E74 appears on the display. By the summer of 2006, early 360 adopters had already filed hundreds of reports about hardware failures, yet Xbox figureheads continued to dismiss them as “isolated issues.” The problem, however, became so significant and widespread that it even made national news. It’s one thing for the gaming press to criticise, but when traditional media start echoing those critiques, Microsoft is compelled to respond.

Users reported that their boxes ran hotter than usual before the RROD appeared; silicon heats up during use, and lower power consumption means less heat is emitted. Microsoft’s response, then, was to address the console’s power consumption with the roll-out of four distinct motherboard revisions between 2007 and 2009: Zephyr, Falcon, Jasper, and Tonasket. However, these motherboard revisions did little to mitigate the problem. A ‘general hardware failure’ doesn’t aid in diagnosing the issue, but what was even more perplexing was how this also puzzled Microsoft engineers. They know it’s a heat dissipation issue, but which component was failing? The heatsink, the thermal paste, or something completely unrelated to the cooling system? Ultimately, the engineers’ attempt to pin a root cause to the phenomenon is comparable to a headless chicken running around.

It became evident that the standard warranty policies wouldn’t suffice. The 90-day period was extended to a full year, including repair reimbursements if the customer paid Microsoft for one, followed by free shipping to the manufacturer’s repair centers. Finally, when it seemed like nothing they did was working, the one-year warranty was extended to three years for *all* 360s manufactured since launch, at a staggering cost of $1.15 billion. The initiative, spearheaded by Moore with Ballmer’s blessing, was presented as Xbox acting in its customers’ best interests, but here’s the kicker: even the replacement 360s died on the user. Same use cases, same results. If they worked, then the money would’ve been a worthwhile investment — but it was nothing more than an attempt to save face, not to mention the amount of money being but a drop in the ocean of Microsoft’s wealth. The first three years of the 360 were dark days for all parties involved, especially those who trusted Xbox with their money.

Four years after the carnage, the biggest gaming magazine at the time, Game Informer, surveyed their readers on console failure rates. The results were published on issue 197 for September 2009, and they were damning: 54.2% of Xbox 360 owners had experienced a hardware failure. Compare this to the PS3, which had a failure rate of 10.6%, and the Wii at 6.8%. Worse still, 41.2% of those who'd received repaired 360s experienced a second failure. Even after proving that the ‘fixes’ were just as flawed as the original, 36.4% of these users still purchased replacement 360s. Microsoft had successfully trapped them in its ecosystem.

While all of this was happening, I was in a completely different place, gaming-wise. As I got into games like Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy, I felt Sony’s catalog spoke more to my tastes — and it just so happened those experiences were exclusive to the PS2. So in 2005, I traded my Xbox for a PS2. I’d be a Sony customer for the remainder of the decade, getting a used PS3 in 2008 in preparation for Metal Gear Solid’s final entry. Then, a year later, I got a 360 Elite (matte black finish, bigger hard drive) to play the Xbox exclusives. It didn’t RROD initially, but it was banned from Xbox Live after I decided to undergo the JTAG modification to play burned (i.e., pirated) games.

A console built for online play that I couldn't connect with was useless. I cut my losses and got its cheaper brother, the 360 Arcade, after realizing I could use most, if not all, the accessories from the Elite with it. Unlike last time, I wouldn’t dabble in piracy, but I would rub shoulders with the RROD. My 360 Arcade was likely a Jasper model, one we were repeatedly told addresses the underlying cause of the hardware failure… and mine got it anyway. I’m not a careless user either — I didn’t keep the 360 on the floor or in a room with no cooling…

Back then, I was a Sony partisan who took satisfaction in Xbox's failures. Watching this documentary, however, genuinely made me angry — not as a fanboy, but as a consumer. Let’s go over Xbox’s sins with the 360, beginning with its development timeline: August 2004 to November 2005. If Xbox’s two years were harsh enough, the 360’s *fifteen months* screamed ‘hold my beer.’ That we didn’t hear of an exodus of engineers during development is miraculous, and there’s no doubt in my mind how, for some who left, it soured this class of workers on Microsoft’s approach and perhaps engineering as a whole. Previously, they'd relied on off-the-shelf parts; this time, they used custom architecture with an even shorter timeline. They’ve been burned by this before — doubling down and making it even shorter this time cannot be interpreted as anything other than negligence, plain and simple.

The documentary states that the first batch of 360s had a very low yield, with the highest number achieved being 60%. Good production lines achieve yields above 90%; even if you don’t reach a perfect 100%, you should still aim for it. It’s downright absurd that the testing methodology was questioned — when 40% of your units fail QC, the problem isn't the tests, it's the product.

It’s also claimed that engineers “solved technical issues” that allowed them to “chip away at the bone pile” of some 600,000 failed consoles and improve yields before launch. But what issues were solved? What changed in the manufacturing process? How did units that failed testing suddenly become sellable? The documentary never explains this, and here’s why that matters: if Microsoft had already identified and fixed defects serious enough to cause 40% of units to fail in production, why didn’t those fixes prevent the RROD epidemic that followed? The deafening silence suggests these weren't real solutions — they were adjustments that got consoles out the door without ensuring they'd survive in customers' homes.

When Microsoft could no longer ignore the problem, and everything finally came to a head, the least they could do was offer an extended warranty while they worked on a solution. Portraying it to the public as Xbox acting in its customers’ best interests — and even implying customers should be grateful — is disingenuous. It wasn’t until the Xbox 360 S that the underlying problem that caused the RROD was addressed, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how independent researchers figured out what the issue was years before Microsoft came clean about it. Until then, business as usual, nothing to see here.

The culprit? Improper lead-free solder that cracked under thermal stress. Not just any lead-free solder — Microsoft had chosen a formulation unsuitable for the 360’s extreme thermal cycling. Whether this was cost-cutting or incompetence doesn’t matter; the result was the same: the fix required a complete hardware redesign. Until then, Microsoft continued selling and repairing consoles with the same defective solder, because properly fixing the issue would have meant admitting that the entire product line was fundamentally flawed.

The cynic in me thinks they only felt empowered to disclose the RROD’s root cause after a class action lawsuit filed against the software giant over the hardware defects was killed by the Supreme Court in 2017. No individual has pockets deep enough to rival the might of Microsoft’s legal team — and we all saw how powerful they are on the antitrust case. The fact remains that they knew.

They knew for *fifteen long years.*

Their engineers knew. Their marketing teams knew. Robbie Bach knew. Peter Moore knew. Steve Ballmer knew. *They all fucking knew.* Moore left Microsoft after securing the three-year warranty mea culpa. Coward.

There’s no room for a charitable interpretation here: Microsoft sold defective consoles at $400 a piece, and they haven’t been held accountable for that — and likely never will. It doesn’t matter that Sony shot themselves in the foot multiple times over the PS3’s lifespan: the Xbox brand should’ve died right there and then. The RROD saga was a brazen violation of consumer trust done in broad daylight; the fact that Microsoft employees got ugly sweaters referencing the RROD in 2024, going all ‘haha, remember when that happened?’

Fuck right off with that!

Deep breath. We should discuss Kinect…

A seismic shift occurred when Nintendo released the Wii. Instead of a traditional gaming experience, the console popularized motion controls as a core gaming mechanic. Its primary input was a controller that emulated a TV remote control, colloquially known as the ‘Wiimote.’ For gamers, this came out of left field; however, its resemblance to an everyday item appealed to people who weren’t typically gamers. Parents were playing with their kids. Grandparents were playing with their grandchildren. Suddenly, games were good for you.

The unlikeliest party brought about the motion revolution, and everyone wanted a piece of the pie. Sony responded by releasing the PlayStation Move, and Microsoft concluded a four-year journey with the Kinect sensor, both in 2010.

The story of Kinect begins in 2006, when a Microsoft employee saw a demo by the Israeli company PrimeSense of depth-sensing cameras. They saw the potential for an application on the Xbox platform, and talks began. The biggest champion was Don Mattrick, Moore’s successor; he even went so far as to say that the traditional controller is an obstacle to accessibility. Whether he sought a pet project to call his own or, unlike his prior employers, worked at a company that made hardware, the motivation is hardly relevant given the events at the time. That Mattrick already had an interest in the technology is a happy accident — Microsoft didn’t know how popular motion gaming would become. Then again, given its uninspired efforts to compete against the iPod and iPhone years later, Microsoft often was the one left behind.

Eventually, Microsoft’s motion-tracking software and PrimeSense’s depth-sensing hardware converged into a viable product. At its 2009 E3 conference, Microsoft announced Project Natal, the codename for Kinect, with a simple pitch: what if your *entire body* was the controller? Onstage, the company presented Natal-enabled game demos alongside technical showcases of the device’s capabilities. Among them was Peter Molyneux’s Project Milo, a Natal-adapted experiment in “emotional AI” that invited players to interact with the eponymous boy.

Just like how Xbox Live was effectively a second launch for the Xbox, Kinect was that for the 360. Select titles were updated to add Kinect support, all while adding family-friendly titles to the already vast 360 library. Despite navigating uncharted waters as an input device, it managed to sell eight million units in two months. This reeks of funky math — I suspect the 360 Kinect bundles were counted among this number, likely bought by people whose console had died on them. After all, that’s how I came to own a Kinect; after my 360 Arcade gave in to the RROD, the 360 S with Kinect bundled was already out. I needed a new 360, and I must’ve certainly thought how the Kinect wasn’t how I liked to play games, but *what if?*

I was part of the market that Microsoft tried to enamor with Kinect: the core gaming audience. It was a fun little novelty, but it was ultimately doomed to be stashed in the closet next to the Wii. I’m sure there were newcomers, but those would’ve been few and far between, as mobile gaming rose astronomically alongside the popularity of Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market. Games such as Angry Birds, Bejeweled, and Tetris were perfect for quick sessions, proving an apt distraction for idle thumbs.

Even as the market didn’t favor Kinect, it found a second life in uses outside gaming. As the first consumer-priced depth-sensing camera, the peripheral was enthusiastically embraced by the hacking community for its limitless potential. The medical field, in particular, used it to aid the rehabilitation of stroke patients or as treatment for autistic children — these, alongside other unorthodox applications, came to be known as the ‘Kinect Effect.’ Rather than ending these experiments, Microsoft supported these by granting access to the peripheral’s software with their blessing. Statements about how gaming-first tech paved the way for innovations outside this field, while eyebrow-raising, are correct when referring to the Kinect.

Did I use it often? Not really. I'm not the type of gamer who relishes playing with others, nor am I into party games, which Kinect had in droves — it became a mere microphone to bark voice commands to. I also found it cumbersome for menu navigation: the Kinect dashboard, a mere reskin of 2008's New Xbox Experience, did away with 3D perspective tiles in favor of a flat 2D design better suited for motion controls. The presence of a ‘Kinect Hub’ in this dashboard makes painfully evident that this new dashboard wasn't built with the peripheral in mind, despite bearing its name. The mismatch would be addressed in 2011's Metro dashboard, unifying the interface for both controller and Kinect navigation as part of Microsoft's broader Metro push; Zune HD used it, Windows Phone used it, and Windows 8 used it.

Kinect is a genuinely impressive peripheral — it could’ve been remembered fondly as this interesting device that enabled truly outstanding stuff. However, that’s not what Kinect is known for today. Its villification would come far too soon, and by no fault of its own.

With its highs and lows, the Xbox 360 cemented Microsoft as a formidable foil to Sony. Talks of Xbox succeeding because they got lucky were shut down, and the anticipation was palpable for the 360’s successor, despite the RROD crisis. The Xbox One would be Mattrick’s second — and most important — product launch, acting upon the lessons learned throughout the 360’s life, all while continuing to build relationships with both publishers and developers.

Closing in on ten years since the introduction of the 360, media consumption has dramatically changed: the staying power of online multiplayer as a social activity, the meteoric rise of streaming services, and the ubiquity of smartphones. With Kinect’s less-than-stellar adoption rate, Mattrick’s Xbox went all in on multimedia, based on internal data which showed the 360 being used more for multimedia applications than gaming. If the data pointed towards that, then the natural last frontier to conquer was television.

While largely irrelevant today, cable TV dominated the early 2010s, even as streaming platforms like YouTube began encroaching on its territory. Picture a typical living room: a TV with a 360 and a cable box, both connected. Want to watch TV? Switch inputs away from Xbox. Want to play games? Switch back. By 2013, about half of cable households had DVRs built into their set-top boxes, making it easy to record shows with a button press. Smart TVs existed only for early adopters with money to burn — most people had just upgraded from CRTs to LCD TVs when analog broadcasting ended. What if there was hardware that could make your existing cable box truly ‘smart,' all while eliminating the input switching hassle? This was the spearhead of Xbox One's multimedia proposal.

The gaming story of Xbox One, outside Microsoft’s campus, looked far less flattering. There were strong rumors that the console was ‘always online’ and would severely restrict used games.

At the time, publishers and console makers were increasingly frustrated with GameStop’s parasitic business model. The once-dominant gaming retailer — destined to become a meme stock in the next decade — bought games in bulk and sold them in its stores. When customers traded those games in, the titles went right back on the shelves as ‘used,’ with all the revenue flowing to GameStop. Sales associates were heavily incentivized to push used games, and performance metrics centered on how many used products a given associate or store could move.

An attempted counter to this was ‘online passes,’ championed by Electronic Arts, which gated the online multiplayer behind a one-time fee. However, if you bought the game new, there was a voucher code inside that gave access. There was pushback — it’s the one occasion in which you could meritoriously levy the ‘greedy’ accusation towards publishers. Fortunately, EA’s practice didn’t catch on — they dropped it after three years, even — but the genie was out of the bottle: a war on physical media was being waged.

The 2009 introduction of Games on Demand, the branding for digital downloads of full retail games — the kind you’d see on a GameStop shelf — came too late to make an appreciable difference. The convenience factor hardly mattered: price-conscious customers noticed how digital titles didn’t receive the deep discounts physical media did, whereas customers with a spotty broadband connection or whose data was capped found the sizable downloads impractical. The Xbox Live Marketplace would continue to be known for its smaller-scale Arcade titles, and as a viable option for self-publishing for budding developers with no publisher backing. For retail titles, though, physical games and sharing with friends remain an important aspect.

Then came May 21, 2013. A day that’ll live in infamy for Xbox.

The bizarre two-part unveiling strategy for the Xbox One began by showcasing the final hardware and walking through its multimedia features; the games would be revealed at E3 the following month. When Xbox announced the event, they didn’t hint at this strategy; instead, they invited gaming influencers to campus and gamers worldwide to watch the presentation. It became a painful, hour-long slog with no games, but plenty of buzzwords: cloud, smart devices, and of course, TV.

Gamers are a cynical crowd — and now, they have social media. That the eighth generation’s first unveiling was a flop of this magnitude meant that a treasure trove of memes went live on Twitter instantly. The key photograph of Xbox One was repurposed as an image macro, with derivatives depicting the many ways this reveal failed the core gaming audience. Microsoft had a severe PR problem on its hands, and Mattrick made it worse with his non-answers to the then-always online rumor. Body language in public speaking is important, and Mattrick’s disregard for the question confirms what former Microsoft employee Adam Orth said about “an ‘always on’ console” months before the reveal.   

After Mattrick’s comments, Xbox PR was deployed to try and clarify them, doing their best before E3. But Mattrick wasn’t done, oh no. Seemingly unsatisfied with the fire he had lit during the first event, one Microsoft was actively and unsuccessfully trying to put out, he threw napalm at it in an aside with hype man Geoff Keighley after the E3 presentation:

Note how Keighley gave Mattrick an out, and he didn’t take it.

The reaction to these comments, much like the launch event, was swift — it turned many Xbox loyalists into PlayStation lifers. Mattrick might as well drop by Sony HQ to collect his paycheck, perhaps an ‘employee of the month’ plaque. Many 180s happened after E3: the confusing game-sharing model Xbox One put forth was scrapped, the ‘always online’ requirement was dropped, and so was the plugged-in Kinect requirement. This last was a half-measure, as the box still included the peripheral — a stark reminder that it *used* to be mandatory to have it plugged in.

True, the original Kinect’s challenge was courting game developer interest without a sizable install base, but making the successor ‘a core part of the experience,’ marketing speak for mandatory, wasn’t the way to go. Kinect didn’t linger in irrelevance; it was burned at the stake as the crowd read the indictment: Kinect added $100 to the price tag. Kinect took valuable resources away from developers. Kinect is worthless to gamers. With the vilification of Kinect complete, Xbox’s next head, Phil Spencer, was forced to cut his losses and kill Kinect, all to appease a crowd that no longer trusts Microsoft.

I'm appalled that Mattrick appears in this documentary at all. His first public statement on Xbox One — a full decade after abandoning it — comes in a documentary bankrolled by his former employer. He offers no apology, no accountability, no recognition of the damage he caused. Watch his interview: there's no remorse.

Because Mattrick didn't just leave Microsoft after the Xbox One struggled. He left before the console even launched. Two months after the catastrophic May reveal, with the backlash still raging and Microsoft frantically reversing DRM policies Mattrick championed, he took a job at Zynga and disappeared. He set the Xbox One on fire, then walked away before it hit shelves. He never faced a single customer who bought the console he designed. He never answered for the $100 price gap or the forced Kinect, or the always-online arrogance. He just left Spencer and the Xbox team to spend the next decade cleaning up his mess.

Moore at least faced the RROD crisis. He didn't run the moment things got bad — he stood in front of cameras, announced the warranty extension, and took the criticism. Only after publicly acknowledging the disaster did he leave. Mattrick couldn't even manage that. He caused the disaster, saw the backlash, and was gone before the console hit shelves.

And in this documentary, he still believes he put Xbox "on the right path." If the right path means an identity crisis so severe that Xbox increasingly resembles Sega's slow march toward irrelevance, then sure — he succeeded. Xbox One launched 5 million units behind PS4 in its first year and never caught up. Microsoft has since spent the entire generation in damage control for the decisions Mattrick made in 2013 and refused to face consequences for.

If Xbox dies, I want Donald Allan Mattrick's name and cowardice to be thoroughly documented in every single retrospective and singled out as the man who killed the Xbox brand.

Having recently graduated from college around the time of the Xbox One’s release, I was underemployed, broke, and facing the start of my student loan repayment. Most of my paycheck went toward cellphone service and internet; a $500 console simply wasn’t realistic for my budget.

In the fall of 2014, GameStop announced a partnership with Comenity Bank to launch its store card. Marketed as a way to make the hobby more affordable, at an interest rate starting at 29.95% APR. On one of my visits, a store employee pitched the card just like they pushed trade-ins, used games, or a Game Informer subscription. I already had a few store cards, but I thought, eh, why not — I’d give it a shot.

I was approved for a thousand-dollar credit limit. Suddenly, the Xbox One became affordable. I couldn’t buy it then, but I’d definitely drop by later to grab one.

A Kinect-less SKU for $399 existed as early as the summer of 2014, but with all of this existing inventory to sell, one way to get rid of it is via game bundles. For $450, the buyer got the console, the Kinect, and a digital code download for the bundled AAA game. I didn’t have any particular affinity for the peripheral, but it’s all about optics: the extra $50 seemed like it was for the game, NOT Kinect. I’d spend roughly the same amount if I went Kinect-less with a separate game.

The value proposition, however weak it may have been, was there.

Microsoft was undergoing significant changes. Over the summer, Ballmer unveiled “One Microsoft,” a sweeping reorganization that consolidated divisions and aligned them under a single umbrella. The goal was to “innovate with greater speed, efficiency, and capability in a fast-changing world.” Under this structure, Xbox OS moved into the Operating Systems group, with Xbox engineers working alongside Windows engineers, while Xbox hardware shifted to Devices and Studios. The result was a split Xbox division spread across two engineering groups, neither led by anyone with Xbox experience — let alone gaming industry experience.

Six weeks later, Ballmer announced his retirement.

Meanwhile, Mattrick’s hasty departure threw the Xbox division into chaos. With no dedicated Xbox head appointed, the division reported to Julie Larson-Green, head of the newly formed Devices and Studios division. Larson-Green was a programmer by trade with zero gaming industry experience — the parallels to Robbie Bach’s story draw themselves.

The many 180s Xbox One performed were the result of decisions by committee, more interested in putting out the fire Mattrick lit than ensuring Xbox One’s success. The company-wide reorganization under “One Microsoft” and the new CEO search were a two-fold blow for Xbox: it’d run rudderless, and replacing the rudder was not a priority. By the time Spencer was appointed as Xbox head in March 2014, newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella had been at the job for less than a month.

The gaming community, meanwhile, was radicalizing. Feminist Frequency founder Anita Sarkeesian faced harassment campaigns, the proverbial canary in the coal mine for GamerGate the following year. Larson-Green, a woman inheriting Mattrick’s disaster, received her share of misogynistic backlash. This was the landscape Xbox One launched into: corporate dysfunction intersecting with cultural toxicity.

When Spencer took over, Xbox One was, in his own words, “outsold six or seven-to-one in the market, maybe eight-to-one.” For context, the PlayStation outsold the Sega Saturn 11:1 in lifetime sales — a catastrophic defeat nearly two decades prior that began Sega's spiral out of the hardware business. That this is the only comparable example spelled trouble. Sony was going in for the kill; Spencer had the unenviable task of stopping the bleeding and stopping it fast. Fortunately, he had a plan on how to do so.

Spencer’s Xbox put gaming front and center. The cleanup initiative started by reassuring game developers that Xbox would be a reliable partner. Around this time, the PC indie scene delivered standout titles like The Stanley Parable, Papers, Please, and Don’t Starve, among others that were notable even if not always commercially successful. In contrast, PS4 offered no path for indie self-publishing unless developers secured a publisher or were prominent enough for Sony to approach them directly. The revival of the independent developer program, now known as ID@Xbox, combines the Xbox Live social features of Arcade with the self-publishing capabilities of XBL Indie Games. Intending to rival Steam, Xbox positioning itself as a place where indies could have easy access to a platform used by thousands is good PR.

Microsoft is no stranger to studio acquisitions, and they’d make a key one. (Not ZeniMax, that comes later.) Xbox saw an opportunity to appeal to gamers who were starting families of their own and sharing their hobby with their children. They’d go on to acquire Mojang, the studio behind the popular sandbox/survival game Minecraft — beloved by kids who would spend hours playing, draining the batteries of their parents’ smartphones and, later, their hand-me-down iPads. The acquisition announcement, a move to help the fledgling developer develop the game for years to come, was met with skepticism. A common sentiment was how Microsoft sought to ‘ruin’ Minecraft by making it exclusive to Windows and Xbox.

They didn’t. Mojang continues to support all its active SKUs with Xbox’s blessing, all while the series continues to capitalize on its newfound fame. It became a cultural touchstone; what Kirby is to my gaming journey, Minecraft is to many Gen Zers — we passed on what we love to the next generation, and they’ll pass it on to their children, and so on.

Xbox Game Pass, often described as the “Netflix of games,” also launched during this turbulent period. The subscription service initially offered access to a curated library of 100 games, but it has since grown to include titles from both Microsoft-owned studios and third-party developers, as well as PC versions when available. Unlike other similar services, Xbox offered the full game, with no restrictions or artificial tolling, so long as you were subscribed.

Over the years, much has been said about the sustainability — or lack thereof — of the Game Pass business model, particularly about whether sacrificing exposure to preserve margins is worthwhile. At the time of writing, the most recent controversy surrounding the service arose over the summer, when it was revealed that Game Pass’s operating costs exclude first-party development expenses. To better illustrate this, imagine a bakery that’s already struggling to stay afloat. The owner goes to a bank to ask for financing. When the books are opened, the bakery looks profitable — but only because the accounting counts sales minus employee wages, and nothing else. What about rent, utilities, and supplies? While technically correct in isolation, this can only be interpreted as bad-faith accounting alchemy from Microsoft's accountants.

But back to Game Pass — the value proposition was succinctly captured by Sarah Bond, who helped architect the service: “We heard from people who said buying multiple $70 games is actually just not economically possible.” Game Pass fixes the affordability problem for players, but it does so by undermining developers and introducing a fresh wave of issues. There’s no easy answer, and it’ll all depend on the type of gamer facing that choice.

I'm facing this dichotomy firsthand: Metaphor: ReFantazio is on Game Pass right now, but I'm choosing to wait until it goes on sale. I don't want the pressure of rushing through an 80-hour JRPG because the game's time on the service is limited. In contrast, GameFly — the physical rental service — gave renters control: keep games as long as you want, no due dates, no arbitrary removal. Game Pass flipped this relationship. Microsoft controls when games disappear, and I'm left racing against a clock I can't see.

Alongside Game Pass, backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 and original Xbox was also announced. Neither PS4 nor Xbox One launched with this feature, and if it were up to Mattrick, it’d never do so. The engineering challenge was that the Xbox One's x86-64 architecture couldn't natively run the Xbox 360's PowerPC code. Each game had to be reverse-engineered, translated into an intermediate form, and recompiled for the new architecture. Ever since the PS2 era, the feature has been a darling of the gaming community. But it is so often written off as a thankless endeavor that diverts manpower to something realistically used by only a single-digit percentage of the overall player base.

What the Xbox engineers accomplished is nothing short of technical wizardry. Their approach was also very consumer-friendly, as it respected existing game collections. Own a copy of, say, Final Fantasy XIII for Xbox 360? The game is backwards compatible! Insert the disc, and the emulator version will download from the Marketplace. The disc itself serves as your license to play the title. In contrast, Sony required repurchasing PS2 games digitally on PS4, with no path to use your existing collection, and never achieved PS3 backward compatibility at all.

After the release of the Xbox One X in 2017, a mid-gen refresh targeting 4K gaming through raw horsepower rather than Sony's upscaling approach with the PS4 Pro, Nadella appeared to have given Spencer a blank check. With it, he went shopping for studios — after all, what worth was there in having the most powerful console of the generation if there were no games to play? Among the acquisitions were Ninja Theory (Hellblade), Playground Games (Forza Horizon), and Obsidian Entertainment (Fallout: New Vegas).

Oh, and speaking of Fallout: In 2020, Xbox acquired ZeniMax for $8.1 billion — their largest acquisition to date, at least until the Activision Blizzard deal several years later. With this purchase, Microsoft became the parent company to six studios: Bethesda, Arkane, id Software, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, and ZeniMax Online.

Xbox became the proprietor of a vast library of intellectual property. And that 8:1 ratio when Spencer came in? It was dropped to 2:1. While this is but a sample of what happened under Spencer’s Xbox, he managed to fend off what seemed to be utter annihilation, setting the stage for what’s next for Xbox.

The documentary ends on a high note with the unveiling of the Series X at the 2019 Game Awards. The omission of the Series S is a byproduct of principal photography ending before it was announced. While I don't intend to do a full postmortem on a console whose story is still being written, omitting the two-console strategy Microsoft embarked on would be equally incomplete. Thus, I’m extending the timeline to November 10, 2020: the release of the Xbox Series X/S.

By late 2019, Microsoft's product strategy for the upcoming generation had largely written itself. The Xbox One X catered to hardcore gamers seeking maximum performance. The Xbox One S became the budget option for price-conscious gamers. Game Pass was becoming an increasingly important aspect of the overall strategy, and garnered the acceptance Microsoft hoped for.

The Series X/S has been in development since at least 2018, when Spencer confirmed that Xbox was working on their next offering. Industry informants highlighted an interesting development: Xbox’s next console was described as a ‘family of consoles’ codenamed ‘Scarlett,’ but sources of the day could not indicate how many. Months later, it surfaced that there were two: a high-end variant called ‘Anaconda’ and a lower-end one called ‘Lockhart.’

Announced at E3 2019, ‘Project Scarlett’ was pitched as a single product. When Spencer spoke of its key features: 8K resolution, SSD storage, and raytracing, it’s evident he was talking about Anaconda. After the Series X unveiling in December 2019, the Scarlett codename was used to refer to both the family of consoles and the Series X — Anaconda just... disappeared. A marketing spree was planned for the console the following year, only for it to be shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. All this talk about the Series X, but where was Lockhart? Rumors insisted that it exists, and interest continued to grow over the months.

Then came the leaks: in August 2020, a controller packaging confirmed the product name, followed by reveals of the console’s form factor and marketing materials in September. Xbox was left with no choice but to officially confirm what everyone suspected: the Xbox Series S, a digital-only, less powerful little brother to the Series X, which still promised to deliver next-gen performance. The reception was, by and large, positive: an affordable next-generation console, contrasting with the $500 price tags of the PS5 and Series X. It’s effectively a Game Pass console, what the One S was to the Xbox One family. Some drawbacks were theorized, but these wouldn’t become significant issues until much later.

‘Xbox Series X/S’ began to be used in all of Xbox’s marketing material. If the ‘Series X’ name was bad, this contraption is even worse. The problem with 'Series X/S' as a name is that it isn't actually one — it's notation. The family doesn't have a name separate from the products. PlayStation has 'PS5' and 'PS5 Digital Edition': both are PS5s. Nintendo has 'Switch' and 'Switch Lite': both are Switches. Microsoft has... 'Series X/S'? You can't pluralize it. You can't shorten it without losing meaning. Even saying 'I bought an Xbox' doesn't work: most assume it's the newest one, but which one? It's not a family name; it's an admission that Microsoft couldn't commit to either a unified brand or distinct products.

This leads me to how they're trying to have it both ways. The centerpiece of Xbox's offering is the Series X — early demonstrations of the platform's capabilities featured it exclusively. So why sell a lower-end version? Establishing the higher-end model as the baseline while simultaneously offering a less powerful one cripples the higher-end console by proxy. When titles must run on both the Series S and X to pass Microsoft's certification, which hardware will developers optimize for?

Microsoft took the wrong lessons. I should know — I bought in anyway.

I was optimistic heading into the generation. Microsoft had spent years acquiring studios — Ninja Theory, Obsidian, Double Fine, and the massive ZeniMax purchase. The Series X/S strategy made sense on paper: premium power and an accessible entry point. Game Pass meant day-one access to everything. I got a Series X near launch — miraculously easier to find than the PS5, which took me over a year of monthly Best Buy check-ins. I had the hardware. I had owned an Xbox One X. The Series X's value proposition to me was… playing the same games, slightly better.

COVID severely disrupted development pipelines across the industry. Sony and Microsoft both launched their next-gen consoles with relatively weak exclusive lineups. The difference was that Sony's studios recovered and, within 18 months, delivered titles such as Returnal, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and Horizon Forbidden West. Microsoft acquired studio after studio and still couldn't produce a competitive exclusive pipeline. The Series X wasn't just "a more powerful Xbox One X" at launch — it remained that way for years.

Microsoft kept solving problems they'd already solved while ignoring the ones they hadn't. They built the most powerful console (again). They created the best backwards compatibility (again). They offered the cheapest entry point with Series S. They did everything except the one thing that mattered: make games people had to buy an Xbox to play.

Ever since the video game crash of 1983, US-based console manufacturers had become largely irrelevant, especially after Nintendo released the NES in 1985. Even under new leadership, Atari would never reach the highs it did with the VCS/2600. It'd take two decades and a superbly confident, bordering on arrogant, competitor to awaken the kraken. Just on its historical value alone — the one thing the industry won't preserve because it's not profitable — Microsoft's entry into the video game space is notable.

An unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Sony was the name in consumer electronics: Sony TVs, Sony DVD players, Sony media players — you get the idea. Four men were the harbingers of a future in which Microsoft's position as the dominant desktop operating system would've been threatened if the company didn't act. Many billions later, they've managed to keep Sony in check. Only a company with Microsoft's deep pockets could've achieved this.

As Xbox celebrated the massive success of the 360 during its late years, another war was being fought. A war Microsoft knew about and belittled. There was no harbinger this time; if their response to the iPod were any indication, it would be too little, too late — and consumers reward execution over invention.

When Microsoft and Sony were battling for control of the living room, smartphones and tablet computers already existed. They weren’t yet widely known, since they served highly specific user groups. One notable pre-2007 smartphone brand was BlackBerry, especially popular among executives who wanted to carry their offices in their pockets —primarily for email.

Tablet computers emerged shortly after laptops became widely available, marketed as a high-end choice for early adopters eager to stay on the cutting edge. They were essentially larger PDAs and could handle many of the same tasks as a laptop, though precise work still favored a mouse over the tablet's main input method: the stylus. Owning one often meant you were a true tech enthusiast — not only were tablets expensive, but they also came with significant drawbacks.

Android began life as a digital camera OS in 2003 before pivoting to smartphones. Like its competitors, it'd also target business customers, with revenue coming not from license fees but from developers paying to list their apps on the Android Market. Then, the industry's rumor mill murmured incessantly about an Apple smartphone — until it ignited when the iPhone was announced in 2007. A sizable portion of the keynote was dedicated to demonstrating multi-touch: there was no space for styluses in their vision of what a smartphone should be. Seeing this, Android would pivot once more: from business customers to mass consumers. The consumer smartphone was born.

The iPad in 2010 effectively killed netbooks. Chromebooks learned from that failure, but couldn't compete against the shift in how people use computers. In response, Google developed a tablet-first version of Android: Honeycomb, later merging tablet and phone interfaces in Ice Cream Sandwich. Android was proving itself to be a versatile platform for mobile devices. Whether Android tablets succeeded is irrelevant — what matters is that many preferred these devices over laptops for their ease of use, aided by years of conditioning to smartphone UIs.

The final piece of the mobile revolution was the mass adoption of digital distribution. Apple's App Store and Android's Android Market — later Play Store — set the benchmark for devices expanding their core features, aided by both first- and third-party developers, transforming them into internet communication devices.

As the internet was more deeply embraced, user-friendly devices proliferated, and social media rose to prominence, all the pieces fell into place exactly as they needed to. Allard’s vision of an internet-connected society ultimately came to pass — just not through Microsoft’s hands.

Microsoft invested billions to counter the threat Sony posed, but they were battling the wrong competitor the entire time. As the tide turned against them, they weren't nimble enough: Zune didn't kill the iPod, Windows Phone didn't kill the iPhone, Surface didn't kill the iPad, Bing didn't kill Google search — and Google Docs/Sheets/Slides became a more widely adopted version of Office, a core tenet of Microsoft's empire, for the modern age.

Game consoles as entertainment hubs are a noble idea, and they'd still be that if it weren't for the mobile revolution. By 2015, smartphones and tablets were not only ubiquitous but essential. A game console can never achieve this status. When you can watch Netflix, YouTube, or play games on an iPad, why would you turn on the TV? It’s funny to think how the whole premise of consoles is as an accessible way to play games compared to the PC — and it was genuinely tough back in the early days! They were bested by devices that could not only do what they do, but do it well enough that you don’t even need to turn the TV on.

Xbox had a rough 2025. After the banquets of years prior and the Series platform seemingly positioning them as having learned the hard lessons from Xbox One, Spencer and company appear lost as to what to do, sitting between a rock and a hard place. Former Xbox staff, including one of the renegades, are calling out the current leadership on this inertia and slew of bad decisions. Rumors of an exit from the hardware business are insistent. Xbox might become the next Sega, after all… Sony, on the other hand, fights for dear life. They're doing better than Xbox — which is to say, they're losing more slowly.

Microsoft’s “victory” ultimately proved pyrrhic.

Programming note: The Media Log is moving to an episodic, non-monthly format, starting with this post.

As I've taken to writing longer and longer posts, keeping a monthly cadence for this series has become impossible. Burning myself out over self-imposed pressure to maintain a schedule isn't ideal. I wouldn't want that to be the reason I stop writing.

Hopefully, this frees me to focus on commentary on more timely events. For example, back in August, the role of the critic was questioned when Team Cherry prioritized backers over reviewers for Hollow Knight: Silksong — no review codes before launch. While gamers are quick to huddle up into tribes, hurling insults from side to side, there was some interesting conversation in lesser-trafficked circles.

As I consider myself a critic, I wanted to weigh in, but I was stuck writing the Given Media Log. I may still do so, but I only mention this as an example of what I’d like to do more of, moving forward.

I know what I want to cover for Log Number 11, but I want to work on some posts I’ve had on the back burner first.

That’s it from me. See you soon!

53 min read

Prior Entry | All Media Log Posts | Next Entry

Please be advised these posts aren’t spoiler-free.

Sections

Hikaru no Go

Intro

Summary

Takeshi Obata

Yumi Hotta

Yukari Yoshihara

Is HikaGo Queer?

An update on the PC repair story from the last log: yay, it’s now fixed! But what happened?

Previously, I left the story at the point where I needed to search for PC repair shops. For my research, I used Google Maps — a search for ‘pc repair shop’ within 10 miles of my house gave me some options. Most of these put their phone repair services front and center, and it makes sense: very few people are going to these places asking for computer repairs. It’s perhaps assumed that, if you have a custom-built PC, you know your way around hardware. It couldn’t be farther from the truth: hell, building mine gave me many headaches as I kept bothering people who were more well-versed than I am. Though not the real-life ‘friends’ who mocked me in the group chat.

Some suggestions point to areas that I know for a fact are not commercial ones — budding entrepreneurs who appear to work out of their houses. I was already thinking the worst, and this fact does not help matters. I didn’t want to lose my tower, and I’ve little recourse to get it back if it’s on their property, even if I involve the police. Like these, there were three options, and they’re all out of the running.

Looking strictly for stores, there was one that was about a half-hour drive. I look for any establishment-specific social media, seeking an answer to the question: ‘Do you service PC towers?’ This option made no mention of computer services at all; I concluded that this place handles only phone repairs, and I didn’t even bother calling to confirm. The second place, a place run by insurance carrier Asurion, looks promising. Their website advertised PC repair services, although I saw many pictures of laptops — maybe they’re limited to that? The place is about a ten-minute drive from my house: it’s already looking attractive, as it’s a place I can drop by after my work shift ends. I called, seeking confirmation on whether their PC repair services were limited to laptops only, and the gentleman confirmed they weren’t.

Okay, so I have a candidate. In the same mall where that shop is, there’s a Best Buy. One day, when I was in the area either having dinner or shopping for groceries, I dropped by the Geek Squad desk to inquire about their services. The response I got was that PC repairs were limited to in-warranty items only. Essentially, if you bought the item at Best Buy and it is under warranty, Geek Squad will service the item. Neither criterion applied in my case.

There was one last place I hadn’t checked, and I should have before settling on the repair shop I’d use. This one is at an even shorter distance, about a seven-minute drive. Like before, I checked their social media for details: they mostly focus on phones, but the person sells laptops. They use WhatsApp Business, so I tried reaching out through there first. After some time without hearing back, I call the number on the page. A man answers the phone — I asked my questions, and got my answers. He struck me as trustworthy by his voice and how professional he carries himself. I’m going with these guys.

I’d leave the tower at the shop after being paid, when I could cover the deposit fee if asked in advance. A lady manned the counter; the technician was nowhere to be seen. I was told he was seeing a client, as he works on-site at times. I thought I couldn’t leave it at the shop, but the lady assured me it was okay if I wanted to do so. I took her up on the offer, briefly explaining what was wrong with the machine, and left my contact information.

And then I waited.

One week.

Two weeks.

Three weeks.

I took time off for my birthday, and it was almost up. I was worried — we’re almost at the end of August, and not a single call with an update. I called on a Friday, intending to follow up on the servicing. The technician answers. He'd been trying to reach me for weeks, he says, but kept hitting a disconnected number. When we compared digits, the culprit emerged: the lady at the counter had misspelled my number. With all those 2s, I've been making jokes about this for two decades. Today, it wasn't funny. He asked for my credentials as there were diagnostic tools he needed to run with the PC booted up on Windows. I was startled —  he was able to boot up the machine after all. But… I thought I needed a new motherboard?!

I’m told one of the Windows updates failed to install. An update so pivotal that it took the whole operating system out, which is why I didn’t even see the bootloader. I’d think he was able to troubleshoot the hard drive on another machine before putting it back, and the diagnosis tools are to account for any blind spots outside the main issue. I now felt comfortable giving the credentials to my Microsoft account so he could get into my Windows user account.

He reset the password to make it easier for him to log on. I was going to reset it anyway, as the password is considered compromised when given to someone you don’t fully trust, even if given on a need-to basis. Now, onto the scary question: “How much do I owe you?”

“$85.”

I let out the biggest sigh of relief. That amount was completely doable for me. It was a Tuesday when I was able to drop by the shop, and my time off was over. After numerous phone conversations, I finally met the technician in the flesh. Prompted by his question about where I use the PC — he’d seen overheating cases before — I mentioned something that had been nagging at me for months: the thermal paste on my processor. “It didn’t fail any stress test I ran, which accounts for temperatures,” he assures. I suppose this is one can I’ll continue to kick down the road — unless I start seeing 60 degrees on average under little to no workload.

As I get in my car, PC in hand, I’m humbled by the thought of why many people, both newcomers and enthusiasts alike, avoid updates like the plague. It’s nothing insidious, but rather living by the adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” And now with that bug biting me, I won’t be that enthusiastic about checking for updates on Patch Tuesdays — or anytime during the month, really. I’ll let them come to me, and I’ll address them then.

…which is funny, considering I’m drafting this post on my MacBook Air running Tahoe. I never made any claims about consistency in my views!

Now that I'm no longer staring down a motherboard replacement, I can return to what really matters: ghosts, child prodigies, and whether Hikaru no Go holds up in 2025.

“Go? What’s that?”

Go is an ancient board game originating in China, and is believed to be the oldest that’s still played to this day. Two opposing players aim to fence off the most territory by using black and white ‘stones,’ the name for the game pieces. It presents an interesting dichotomy: Go’s easy to pick up, more so when the player is already familiar with games around capturing territory; even when this aspect is missing, you can learn the rules in minutes.

It’s also deceptively complex: on a standard 19x19 board, black can play one of 361 possible moves in a fresh game. And it doesn’t get easier as stones are put down, as strategy becomes ever more crucial to the player’s victory. There is no luck in Go either — only good or bad strategies. Its status as a ‘mind sport’ when played professionally is well deserved; even professional players don’t have it all figured out, and they continuously evolve their game, moving up the ranks in whichever federation they belong to.

When I was a kid, my dad got me a PC clone with Windows 98 running on it. Along with the installation disc, there was a separate game demo compilation disc — maybe something the PC shop did or something distributed only in Latin America. One of the demos was Age of Empires, an RTS game made by Ensemble Studios. Described as “Civilization meets Warcraft” — neither of which I have played — the player is the leader of an ancient civilization during the Stone Age. You command your fellow citizens to gather resources, establish new civilizations, and advance their technology through different ages. Also, defend yourself from rival nations.

“How is this relevant to Go?” Let me finish, and you’ll see.

As far as PC gaming is concerned, this was my origin point. When I wasn’t playing the Nintendo 64 or PSone, I was playing that game for hours on end, much to the detriment of my mom’s utility bill. While I never got the full retail version, unfortunately, my dad’s compadre owned the second installment, and he lent it to me. I had a CD burner and was making a little bit of money selling pirated records, so I made a copy of the game, only to never play it. Back then, one rudimentary DRM application was pinging an online server to confirm the license was valid. His key was already tied to his PC, and I didn’t have internet at my house — I couldn’t even get a keygen if I wanted to! I kept playing the original demo, getting somewhat good at it, even managing to fend off attackers in the demonstrably harder mode.

Fast forward some years, and I gave Go a try. It felt like being back home; the strategies I employed in all of those hours playing Age of Empires gave me a rudimentary understanding of strategy on a Go board. I’d ultimately give it up, not even managing to be somewhat decent at the game. Go’s strategy is far more complex than civilization building, and while I was frustrated that I couldn’t devote myself to the game, I have a genuine appreciation for it. If I ever wanted to go back, there are at least three sites I can go to play.

I first found out about Hikaru no Go because of Death Note. Both share an illustrator, Takeshi Obata, whose work on the latter raised him to be one of my favorites. The best way I can describe his art style is ‘detailed and meticulous.’ In addition to that, his linework is spectacular; you can tell the man spends a lot of time on his panels. I didn’t know if the style was unique to Death Note or the concept, but if that’s the way he draws, I want more of it.

Looking through his past work, there was one published a year earlier in the West, one ‘Hikaru no Go.’ It was one of the series published in Viz Media’s monthly Shonen Jump anthology. Looking at the timeline, it would’ve been on print in 2004, around the time I was a subscriber. Did I read it there? I honestly can’t remember, but the possibility nags at me… What I do recall, though, is asking my dad to buy the first volume of the series on DVD when we were at Suncoast one evening.

Newer anime fans don’t realize how good they have it, when an inexpensive subscription gets you all the anime you want and more. In those days, $30 got you… three episodes on disc? Four, if you were lucky. A home video model not dissimilar to the one Japan operates on, even today.

Hikaru no Go is a coming-of-age manga written by Yumi Hotta, illustrated by Takeshi Obata, with technical supervision — basically, that the Go games depicted within are accurate — by Yukari Yoshihara 2-dan at the time of debut. It ran from 1998 to 2003, spanning 23 volumes, and had a TV anime produced by Studio Pierrot and a live-action series many years later. We’re touching on the TV anime in this entry, which spans a gargantuan 75 episodes, adapting most arcs depicted throughout the seventeenth book, with some side stories coming out of book 18.

Hikaru Shindo is not a good student.

On his last social studies test, out of a hundred points, he got… eight. Thanks to this mediocre performance, he finds himself without an allowance. Rummaging through his maternal grandfather's shed with childhood friend Akari Fujisaki, he comes across a goban — a Go board — which looks quite old. Perhaps an antique shop will pay good money for it? Akari warns that he’s basically stealing, but Hikaru doesn’t feel guilty of what he’s doing — he wants money. He grabs a nearby piece of cloth and starts dusting off the old board. There’s a stain that won’t go away, no matter how much he wipes. It looks like a blood stain; Akari can’t see it.

“You can see it?” a voice asks. Thinking it was Akari, Hikaru responds annoyedly: “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” “You can hear my voice? You can really hear what I’m saying?” the voice asks in disbelief to a startled Hikaru, who now realizes they’re not alone in there. He demanded whoever it was to show themselves, and Akari ran off, creeped out by Hikaru seemingly speaking to himself. A figure emerges from the Go board, draped in magenta colored clothes and a white robe. Hikaru faints from the sheer shock of having met a ghost.

Fujiwara-no-Sai, the beautiful man who took a spot within Hikaru’s conscience, was a Go instructor to the Emperor during the Heian period. A jealous colleague of his suggested to the Emperor that the instructors should play against each other to determine who is the better player, and who gets to keep their job. During the high-stakes game, Sai noticed his opponent slipped a white stone he didn’t capture among his prisoners. Just as Sai called out his opponent for cheating, he found the accusation thrown back at him. None of the spectators noticed the alleged cheating, their eyes glued onto the board — including the Emperor’s, who shut down the player’s bickering. Unable to calm himself for the remainder of the game, Sai ultimately lost. Wrongfully accused of cheating, his reputation destroyed, and with no other way to make a living, Sai drowned himself in despair.

But his soul could not find rest.

Many centuries later, Sai appeared before a young Shusaku — then called Torajiro — when he came across a board that had stains from Sai’s tears. In the fiction of the series, Shusaku’s masterful play stems from Sai’s deep knowledge of the game. Shusaku knew how to play, but Sai played better; Shusaku became the vessel through which Sai played all the Go he could ever want, securing Shusaku’s place in the history books as one of the top Go players of the era, perhaps even in the entire existence of the game.

Shusaku succumbed to the cholera epidemic of 1862. Sai, once again, saw himself trapped in a Go board stained by Shusaku’s blood. After many years of slumber, he appears before Hikaru to continue his pursuit of the Divine Move.

Alas, Hikaru Shindo is not a good apprentice.

Go is an old person’s game. Why would a kid even play it? The thought of Sai not playing Go plunged him into despair, which Hikaru acutely felt. Perhaps as thanks for Sai’s help during his latest social studies test, and to avoid any further upset stomachs due to sudden mood swings, Hikaru reluctantly picks up Go.

He'd start attending a Go beginner class taught by Michio Shirakawa, 7-dan, at his local community center. The manga places these classes after Hikaru's first match with Akira, but the anime reorders things, moving the classes before that encounter. This does give Hikaru at least some baseline familiarity with Go before facing Akira — though the anime also cuts Hikaru's first-ever match against his grandfather entirely.

Hikaru goes to a Go salon in Shibuya, fulfilling Sai’s wish to play Go. The cashier, Harumi Ichikawa, is skeptical of a newcomer saying he’s pretty good when said newcomer doesn’t even know their skill level. Before she could find him a suitable opponent, Hikaru noticed a boy in the back and asked if he could play with him. The boy approached them and agreed to play Hikaru.

Akira Toya asks what Hikaru’s skill level is, getting the same answer he’d given Ichikawa. Amused by the answer, the stoic boy offers Hikaru a five-stone handicap. He was baffled and declined the handicap. Nearby patrons heard this in disbelief: Hikaru really doesn’t know who he’s playing against. As Akira offers the black stone bowl, he’ll play it by ear until he gets an idea of how strong a player Hikaru is.

As we get into the matches, a disclosure: I’m not super familiar with Go outside of what I’ve seen in the series, so I won’t go into explaining the strategies. Sai hasn’t played Go since Shusaku’s death over a hundred years ago. Now that Hikaru is letting him play, a flurry of emotions overwhelms Sai. It doesn’t matter if he can’t pick up the stones and play himself — he’s just happy that he can play, even if by proxy.  Just by how Hikaru places his stones, not to mention how he plays with a hesitancy so characteristic of beginners, Akira’s suspicions that his opponent was a beginner were confirmed. He also noted how Hikaru’s joseki — a standardized set of plays — is out of date, yet concedes that he’s making solid responses to his play.

Some moves in, Sai has a general grasp on Akira’s skill: he’s good… but how good? Sai directs Hikaru to make a move that, at that point in the game, wasn’t a good one. Akira stood there, petrified. “He played there to see how I’ll respond to it! Measuring my skill from a level far above me…”

Judging by the board, they played all the way to the end; Akira lost by two points. Hikaru was long gone when the whole salon huddled around the board, trying to get a grasp of what had just happened. Ichikawa, in disbelief, mentions how that boy stated he hadn’t played Go before, which rubbed salt in Akira’s wound. “Who is he?!”

A week goes by, and Akira’s still brooding over his loss to Hikaru. In the same corner of the Go salon, all by himself, he’s seen replaying their match over and over, trying to understand the meaning behind the moves. “It’s as if he were playing a teaching game…” (Sai would later confirm that was the intent.) For the first time, Akira turns down requests for teaching games from the salon's patrons, perhaps too consumed by being the student rather than the teacher. Ichikawa mentions she gave Hikaru a flyer for a youth tournament being held at the Nihon Ki-in — the Japanese Go Association; he looked uninterested, but what if…? Akira floors it towards Chiyoda, running into Hikaru as he was leaving.

As Hikaru commended the intensity of the young players, Akira stood still, not knowing how to react to what he was listening to — he chased after Hikaru because he wanted a rematch. This comes out of left field. “Do professional Go players make a lot of money?” Hikaru asks, confused by Akira stating he wants to go pro. As Akira lists the prize money for the different titles, Hikaru’s demeanor changed. Confident that Sai’s skill could win titles, Hikaru’s slip of the tongue made light of the journey to go pro in Go. This utterly infuriates Akira, prompting him to issue his challenge.

Hikaru Shindo is not a good sport.

Tokyo’s pouring rain, as well as all the patrons of the Go salon, bear witness to their rematch. Akira seems unfazed by all the attention, his burning gaze set on Hikaru. Sai faces a dilemma: should he pacify Akira, the one who bears his fangs at him? Or cut him down?  Having seemingly identified a weakness in the Shusaku diagonal, Akira plays a move that comes across as a taunt. This is no longer a teaching game — Sai is playing to win.

Ultimately, Akira couldn’t fend off Sai’s serious play. With no path to victory, he has no choice but to resign. If the first defeat was humiliating, the second one was a devastating blow to his self-confidence. Hikaru attempts to assuage Akira’s defeat, insincerely so, but his words fall on deaf ears. This is one game Akira’ll carve on his mind — the reason why Hikaru is a terrifying opponent.

Hikaru felt bad about beating Akira the way he did, demanding an explanation from Sai: “I had no choice but to sever his head with one clean cut.” The next day, Hikaru is just outside the Go salon where he played Akira, contemplating his place in the game. He’s been nothing but a vessel for Sai to play Go, and a genuine interest in the game is starting to take root. As he was about to leave, Seiji Ogata, who went outside to have a smoke, stopped him and dragged Hikaru into the salon. Akira’s not in today, but his father — Koyo Toya, the Meijin title holder — is.

No wonder Akira is so good at his young age: his father happens to be the Meijin, and he gets to play him every day. Toya Meijin, like the rest of the patrons, is in disbelief at how a complete unknown beat Akira. He was eager to play the kid who beat his son — twice — and see what kind of player he was. Hikaru didn’t want to, but Sai insisted, wanting to play the man who, like him, aimed to achieve the Divine Move. As Toya Meijin explains the training regimen Akira follows, Hikaru finds himself mesmerized — not by the words, but by how Toya places his stones, the precision and confidence in each move. As Sai barked moves and the game progressed, Hikaru’s intensity grew to the point where he managed to place a stone just like his opponent did — only to accuse Sai of taking him over as he ran away from the salon. The game didn’t last long enough for Toya Meijin to get an idea of Hikaru’s skill. For now, it remains an enigma…

Tired of warming the bench for Sai, Hikaru was determined to learn the game for real. He’d play in school tournaments, and eventually went pro in pursuit of Akira. This is now Hikaru’s Go.

You likely know Takeshi Obata. Death Note, Bakuman, Platinum End — all lauded works in which the Niigata-born illustrator had a hand in alongside writer Tsugumi Ohba. What you might not know is the years of blood, sweat, and tears it took to create works like the ones mentioned. Yes, he’s talented, every bit the ‘genius artist’ we know him as today. But success wasn’t always this way.

This is the story of Obata before he became someone important.

As a kid, Obata didn’t appear interested in anything but drawing. This hyperfocus led him to hone his craft to a very high level, and people in his inner circle noticed. He might have been a well-known illustrator and never made manga, but the manga bug could’ve bitten him in those early years. In interviews, Obata mentioned he’s a fan of Shotaro Ishinomori’s ‘Cyborg 009,’ almost to the point of obsession. He recalls rereading it over and over again and was along for the ride until its eventual end in 1981, when he was 12. While Obata never worked with Ishinomori as an adult, he cites him as a key inspiration for entering the manga industry.

Still undecided whether he wanted to be a manga author, Obata tested the waters by publishing a series in his school’s newspaper; he was in the third grade. What’s known about it comes from a Bakuman author’s comment entry. “It was a strange manga where the hero transformed into a disposable pocket warmer when he was in trouble.” The newspaper would also see a second Obata story featuring an old man as a main character. Why an old man…? “I like old people,” Obata admits in another Bakuman author’s comment entry, deadpan.

Other than the fact that these works exist and were once published, that’s it — nothing on how long the series lasted, no scans of the actual work, and no archivist has bothered preserving those issues, or even those dating back to the late 70s.

By middle school, Obata came around to the idea of becoming a manga artist. He began experimenting with longer pieces, which meant more artwork and more complex stories. The newspaper comics were short, and he needed to start developing the perseverance necessary to make it out there as a creative professional. A practice he had, dating back to his elementary days, was showing his illustrations to his friends — for this new endeavor, he’d close the sketchbook away from prying eyes. It’s not as if his immediate circle would think less of it. His passion for drawing and his being so good at it at his age earn him the title ‘once-in-a-decade talent’ in retrospect. Getting published is no small feat, even if it was in the school newspaper!

Fast forward to 1985, Obata attends Niigata Higashi High School. He joins that school’s manga club — which still exists today — but was he just another member? Did he ever become president of the club? Who knows, and even as I wonder, it’s irrelevant to his larger story. That middle school sketchbook, the one Obata stopped showing to his peers? It gave ample material for submission, specifically to Shueisha, the publishers of Weekly Shonen Jump. If he was ever going to become a manga artist, he needed to start getting in front of the people who could give him that chance.

The first one is called ‘Mars.’ During the summer of 1985, Obata submitted his manuscript to the Hop☆Step Awards, a monthly contest for new artists which ran in Jump during the ‘80s, under his name — this detail becomes relevant later. It got an honorable mention. The judges had high praise, with one of them quoted as saying, ‘for his age (16), solid art and story.’ But Obata wasn’t done. He’d set his sights on the Tezuka Awards that ran in the latter half of 1985 with a sci-fi one-shot: ‘The Myth of 500 Light Years.’ A story set in space, clearly inspired by his countless Cyborg 009 reads. You could even call it an homage.

He submitted Myth under the pen name Shigeru Hijikata, not his given name. He doesn’t win; instead, he becomes the runner-up. And the judges’ comments? Hiroshi Motomiya, known for 'Otoko Ippiki Gaki Daishou’ (An Exemplary Gang Leader), says, “The story is ordinary, but the artwork's level of completion is very high.” And the man whose awards carry his name? “He’s too good at drawing (considering) his age. He’s riding on the back of his art.” Both Motomiya and Tezuka trash Myth’s story, but commend the art. When three distinct industry figures complement the same thing? Hmm.

In 1987, fresh out of high school, Obata moved to Tokyo. He doesn’t immediately start working in the manga industry; instead, he builds his network and works odd jobs to sustain himself. Then, in August, he becomes an assistant to Ryūji Tsugihara, a manga artist who drew extensively from his expertise as a car mechanic. He’s tasked with drawing the backgrounds on Tsugihara’s latest serialization, a buddy cop action series called ‘Special Traffic Police SUPER PATROL.’

Also in 1987, an Obata one-shot was published in the Autumn Special: ‘Long Shoot.’ Think Slam Dunk before the series existed. He’d submit that entry under his pen name again; presumably, he did most of the work on it before joining Tsugihara’s team. Like Myth and Mars before, this one-shot failed to get traction for a potential serialization. To make matters worse, his day job saw a shake-up: SUPER PATROL was canceled in mid-November. Obata would learn exactly how merciless the manga industry is.

Fortunately, he didn’t stay unemployed for long. Once his work in SUPER PATROL was finalized, he joined Makoto Niwano for his first serialization, ‘THE MOMOTAROH,’ a gag pro wrestling manga. Obata quickly took to Niwano: not only was he charmed by the new author, but they also shared the same goals. Even today, Obata considers Niwano his mentor. Although his journey to this point is unclear — it was definitely difficult for me to research — a faint light shines upon the timeline when we get to MOMOTAROH.

Obata, reflecting on his days at Niwano's studio, recalls believing that speed was what was expected of his work. He shares an anecdote of how he’d finish the work of absent assistants, sometimes finishing up to 15 pages by himself. Niwano noticed and praised his speed, all while maintaining the quality that came to define his work.

MOMOTAROH was a gag manga, and Niwano was a gag manga expert. Obata wasn't opposed to doing humor, but he was eager to get back to story-based manga. However, all of his prior efforts failed to get traction. Perhaps he was unlucky? Maybe the stories didn't connect with his audience?

Obata’s editor at the time, Ibaraki Masahiko — a gag manga specialist and founder of Jump's GAG King award — encouraged him to pivot from story manga to comedy, hoping the genre shift might yield better results. He’d revisit his ‘old man as main character’ idea from his elementary school days with a one-shot: ‘CYBORG Grandpa G’, published in Jump’s 1988 Summer Special. It was very well received, enough to warrant a second one-shot — this time, published on the weekly Jump. Somehow, lightning struck twice on the same spot.

The general readership supported Obata’s gag manga and were asking for more. Shueisha complied, and during the summer of 1989, CYBORG G began its serialization. Obata left Niwano’s employ to do his own thing, and it was perhaps for the best, as MOMOTAROH would end its serialization in November. But how successful was CYBORG G? Let's just say that the ghosts of 1985 would haunt Obata once again.

It wouldn't finish the calendar year, ending after 31 chapters. Obata's beloved grandpa concept would not prove successful in weekly serialization, and it wouldn't be because Obata lacked comedic timing — Bakuman would later prove otherwise. Instead, there were two factors: one, cyborg stories were common in the ‘80s; the concept had been done repeatedly, from other cyborg grandpas to robot parents. And the second? Well… I'll let his next one-shot's outcome tell you why.

After recuperating from the brutal pace of weekly serialization, he submits another one-shot: ‘Detekite Oku Rei! Moritaro-kun’ (The Spirit That Comes Out! Moritaro-kun), in 1990's issue 39. After three years of gag manga, he returned to story-driven manga, only for it to be branded as another flop. Why…? Gag manga gave him his debut, maybe he needed to return to that…?

No — it was yet another harsh reminder that Jump readers cared little for Obata's stories.

Meanwhile, Obata's debut peers — what might be called the 'class of '89' — saw success much faster during Jump's Golden Age. Takehiko Inoue would successfully serialize the seminal sports manga Slam Dunk in October 1990, and two months later, Yoshihiro Togashi would do the same with Yu Yu Hakusho, a battle manga. Some years in, Takeshi Okano would illustrate the dark fantasy Hell Teacher Nūbē, which ran for six years. Obata was the only one who didn't see success in a time in which whoever struck gold struck it big. Still, he'd keep trying. After all, he's a long way from home.

For Obata's next work, he'd drop the pen name Shigeru Hijikata. A soft rebrand, as Obata had published work under his given name: Mars, and his elementary school newspaper one-shots. Perhaps he wanted to leave behind the identity that was lauded for its art, but trashed for its stories. Moving forward, he'd work as an illustrator for someone else’s original stories, with the occasional one-shot if time permitted.

‘Majin Boukentan Lamp Lamp’ (Arabian Demon God Adventure Tale Lamp Lamp), an Arabian-style battle fantasy manga, marked Obata’s debut as a manga illustrator, with Susumu Izutō writing the story. It began serialization in 1991's issue 52. Unless Obata was doing assistant work during the gap — the Moritaro-kun one-shot aside — it means he'd spent roughly a year between serialization work. Lamp Lamp would be short-lived, totaling 23 chapters and ending its run in Jump's 1992 issue 25.

And the consensus? Once again, Obata's art was universally praised. Some fans who appreciated the Arabian fantasy setting consider the series a hidden gem, and unlike many axed series, it managed to reach a conclusion. However, the series failed to break through. Critics took issue with one of the main characters, Lamp. Specifically, how his being the only fighter for the good guys meant battles became repetitive and monotonous. Lamp's simple personality meant enemy characters delivered constant exposition dumps during fights, and it killed the pacing. Even the protagonist's finishing moves were bogged down by over-explanation. The series also failed to fully exploit its Arabian setting, and Lamp's simplistic design didn't help.

After Lamp Lamp, Izutō’s name wouldn’t be in another manga. It’s plausible he left the industry altogether. Obata was, once again, left hanging. He was later tapped to illustrate a one-shot about Carl Lewis's story, written by noted sports writer Junji Yamagiwa, for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Could Obata find his groove in sports?

Sumo was experiencing a major boom at the time, thanks to the Hanada brothers (Wakahanada and Takahanada). The sons of legendary ōzeki Kenshi Takanohana, who held the rank for a record fifty tournaments, the brothers were driven to achieve what their father could not: promotion to yokozuna. Their father, now their coach, would guide them toward that dream.

Writer Masaru Miyazaki, who penned an ice hockey manga two years prior, was brought in to write a biographical drama about the brothers. With 'Grand Sumo Detective' by Taro Gachon having recently ended, Shueisha had nothing to capitalize on the sumo craze. They needed something fast; Obata was available after the Carl Lewis one-shot. The editorial department paired the two Niigata-born creators together for 'Rikijin Densetsu: Oni wo Tsugu Mono' (Legends of Strong Men: Inheritor of the Demon).

The work wasn't strictly biographical, but rather drama informed by real people and their accomplishments. The dynamic between the brothers was set up like a classic protagonist/partner relationship — think of the Sherlock Holmes/Watson dynamic. Their rivalry with Hawaiian-born wrestler Daikai (based on Akebono) is featured prominently. It had all the elements for a compelling shonen series. Obata could finally have his long-wished serialization!

… unfortunately, reality proved too perfect to make good drama. The Hanada brothers' rise was so meteoric and obstacle-free that it failed to generate narrative tension. Takahanada rocketed from debut to ōzeki in under five years with barely any setbacks — great for him, terrible for storytelling. As observers noted, if this had been pure fiction, editors would have rejected it as unrealistic wish-fulfillment. After all, why read dramatized accounts when the real thing was unfolding live on television? The manga's survey rankings dropped steadily, ending in the 1993 issue 23 after roughly 24 chapters.

The third consecutive cancellation. Sports wasn't it, either.

Obata's next serialization came nearly two years after Rikijin Densetsu's cancellation. Again, it was a pragmatic editorial decision: pair him with Miyazaki, who now writes under the pen name Sharaku Maro. This was their second collaboration.

Miyazaki had just finished ‘Kurayami wo Buttobase!’ (Blow Away The Darkness!), a police thriller about motorcycle gangs that ended after two volumes. For this new proposal — ‘Ningyō Sōshi Ayatsuri Sakon’ (Puppet Master Sakon) — he pivoted to mystery, maintaining mature themes while aiming for better alignment with Jump's audience. The pilot, published in Jump's Spring 1995 Special, performed well enough for serialization a month later.

Ayatsuri Sakon follows puppeteer Sakon Tachibana — grandson of bunraku master Saemon Tachibana — and his puppet Ukon as they solve mysteries. Japanese retrospectives compare it to ‘The Kindaichi Case Files’ for its unsettling atmosphere and the eerie environments where its mysteries unfold.

Contemporary reception was polarized. The mysteries themselves drew mixed reactions — some found them accessible and engaging, while the eerie, atmospheric horror elements divided readers. It was compared to ‘Detective Conan,’ which had begun serializing the year prior, but as a “darker, more mature” take on the detective format. Many readers found the grotesque imagery unsettling, even traumatic.

For Obata, however, Sakon marked a breakthrough: his art finally received the critical mass praise he and his editors longed for. Readers noted how his beautiful yet eerie illustrations perfectly captured the horror atmosphere — perhaps too well for Jump's elementary school demographic.

The core problem wasn't quality, but fit. Jump was attempting to compete with Kindaichi and Conan in the emerging mystery boom, but Sakon's mature content and multi-chapter story structure clashed with Jump's survey system and younger readership. Retrospective critics noted it would've thrived with Young Jump's seinen demographic, but editorial compartmentalization kept it trapped in the wrong magazine. The work was ahead of its time — atmospheric mystery-horror that needed a more mature Jump audience, which wouldn't exist for another decade.

Four cancellations. But this time, it was different — even if it ultimately lost to poor surveys, Sakon performed better than Obata's prior works, and was being cheered on by both passionate readers and the editorial team. The latter believed in the work so strongly that they approved a posthumous one-shot, published four months after the series ended. After ten years in the business, Obata had finally produced something that paid dividends for his career. He just needed the right match.

Two years passed. Then, one more manuscript.

Hikaru no Go.

The manuscript that would finally vindicate Obata's decade of struggle didn't come from him — it came from writer Yumi Hotta.

But first, a question: which Yumi Hotta are we talking about?

Yumi Hotta — the woman — was born Yumi Ota in Aichi Prefecture. Very little is known of her upbringing, even when she debuted as a manga creator at the age of 30. Her drawing skills are nonexistent — her writing skills? They’re solid. Her husband, Kiyonari Hotta, a manga artist of some renown, relished the opportunity to work with his spouse. He persuaded her into a collaboration for an entry in the now-defunct Manga Time Family magazine: an assortment of four-koma comics from various artists. She even got an honorable mention for their entry. You’d think that might’ve kept her going; however, it seems manga creation wasn’t an ongoing interest of Ms. Hotta’s, unlike her husband. There’s no evidence of any output from her in the time between Manga Time and HikaGo, a decade later.

And then there’s ‘Yumi Hotta,’ the entity. The story goes that Mr. Hotta, working as an illustrator for the Chunichi Shimbun, was frequently assigned work he might have felt uncomfortable — for whatever reason — being credited under his name. He’d take up a pen name, but instead of a random passerby, he took his spouse’s. Maybe he believed the subjects he illustrated were more acceptable when attributed to a woman? That being said, Mr. Hotta would still publish stuff under his name: most notably, a horse-racing strip series in the early ‘90s. There’s no evidence of any output from Mr. Hotta after the conclusion of the aforementioned work, or if there was, whether he took the credit or if it would be attributed to ‘Yumi Hotta.’

The pen name evolved into a husband-wife collaboration — ‘Yumi Hotta’ was already famous, so it only made sense to continue. Ms. Hotta writes, Mr. Hotta illustrates and/or polishes Ms. Hotta’s script. She’s the face of the duo; he remains backstage. This frustrated my search for his photo: I was extremely lucky to find a picture of her, but despite my best efforts, I found nothing for him. As most of his work predates the Internet boom of the early aughts, any public appearances Mr. Hotta made are likely lost to time. Not all old articles are digitized, nor are all interviews deemed worthy of preservation.

For HikaGo, Ms. Hotta started writing what would become Hikaru no Go as she became fascinated by the game. It’d be a work that’s solely her own, but Japanese sources suggest her spouse got involved some time during it, remaining until the end. It’s still a Yumi Hotta work, but the entity ‘Yumi Hotta,’ not the woman herself — perhaps the pen name being the same as her given name was a blessing in disguise, or perhaps it's made researching the truth nearly impossible.

I mentioned earlier how incredibly lucky I was to find a picture I could match to Yumi Hotta, the woman. But luck alone wasn't enough — verification required painstaking cross-referencing most writers would skip. I choose to do this work — hours, sometimes days, tracking down a single fact that might end up as a footnote. Not every reader will notice or care that I spent several evenings comparing photos across French manga sites and Go federation reports just to confirm one image. But this is the standard I hold myself to, even when the effort outweighs the visible result.

That said, the way I like to work has its limits. Setting aside the fact that some pieces of information can be hard to find, especially with work that predates the Internet, what information there is out there may not be factual. ‘Of course. After all, why would someone lie on the Internet?’  you may wonder in a very matter-of-fact, sarcastic way. I’d do the same, and I’m fully aware this can be turned against me. Assessing potential motivations of individuals is tricky, as are their credentials, and you can’t take everyone at their word. And in the age of social media, the stuff you put out there can and will be used against you.

To finish this aside: given this lack of information, I’ll inevitably have to resort to conjecture with the sparse facts that exist. My ultimate goal, then, is to weave a narrative that makes the scenarios at the very least plausible — and this is likely a leftover from my video-making days. Going into what-ifs is frustrating, especially with the amount of work I do, but with the alternative being not communicating the Hottas’ story? I don’t have much of a choice. The worst that could happen is that I misrepresent the facts, not out of malice, but ignorance.

Finally, Yukari Yoshihara, née Umezawa. She’s credited as the series’ supervisor; however, it’s more accurate to call her a representative of both the Nihon Ki-In and the larger group of Go professionals who contributed their expertise to ensure HikaGo accurately depicted the game.

First exposed to Go in elementary school, Yoshihara played with her father often, bonding over this shared experience. She recounts how learning Go was like learning Othello, a game she knew how to play. After quickly surpassing her dad, she began joining amateur tournaments, some of which she made the Top 10. Unfortunately, she’d never take home the gold — a crushing feeling for someone who hates to lose, and yet, there’s something about Go that clicked for her to keep at it. Yoshihara became a pupil of the late Masao Kato, known within professional Go as ‘The Killer’ for his attacking play style, at age 14. Initially, all she sought was to better her game, not pursue Go as her career. Hearing her say it, Kato convinced her to do so.

Many aspiring Go professional players start their journey well before their teenage years; some reach pro status before reaching adulthood. By this standard, she sought a teacher late, but so did Kato when he was a beginner. Perhaps he felt a kinship with her as a soon-to-be colleague. However, it wasn’t enough to be tutored by one of the best, as Yoshihara would find out the hard way. She couldn’t pass the pro exam, no matter how much she tried. By her admission, she failed the test about “14 to 15 times.” Doubt began to seep in: did she really want to pick up Go because she liked it, or because she hated to lose?

Faced with the realization that she had spent her teenage years on this unsuccessful pursuit, she quit Go; college life was up ahead, and she wanted to make the most of it. It wasn’t until later that she realized how the one thing that gave her such strong emotions, good and bad, was Go. She couldn’t imagine doing anything else — she didn’t want to.

She failed the pro exam again. In 1995, an opportunity arose for her to participate in that year’s women's special recruitment exam. On the train ride there, thinking about how this bet might not pay off — just like the others — and the prospect of facing another grueling league, weighed heavily on her. This time, though, she passed.

Yoshihara became pro at 22, just as she was about to obtain her bachelor’s from Keio University. There was happiness, there was relief, but there was also sadness, as her father could not witness her achievement. Still, I’m sure he’s watching from beyond, as proud as her mother and teacher were when they heard the news.

In 1996, the NHK Cup producers went scouting for hosts at the Nihon Ki-in. Fresh out of college and undeniably camera-ready, Yoshihara was selected. If her looks opened the door, she was determined to prove there’s substance behind it. She took on the two-year hosting role, in what became her first step towards becoming Go's most effective communicator.

Capitalizing on this newfound media attention, Yoshihara was tapped to host a series of educational Go segments for the NHK titled ‘Everyone’s Go’ (みんなの囲碁). Teaching Go to a large audience — a game she admits looks scarier than what it actually is — requires a different skill set than being the host of a Go championship. Fortunately, she’s a natural: she explains concepts so well that a child could understand them. And she often did, being hired for many a children’s Go class.

In 1998, before HikaGo hit the printers, Shueisha saw an opportunity for both institutional backing and ultra-targeted marketing that only the Nihon Ki-in could provide. The federation already had a youth outreach program aimed at enticing young people to try Go — how successful those efforts had been is debatable, but the Shueisha partnership offered exposure to an audience twenty times larger than anything they could achieve alone. When the publisher of the biggest comic magazine among young boys and girls in Japan comes calling, you listen.

And so, the federation’s facilities, personnel, and players were available for Hotta, Obata, their editors, and Shueisha to depict the game as accurately as possible, an opportunity they took advantage of. The exact circumstances behind Yoshihara's selection aren't publicly documented, but the logic is clear: by 1998, she was Go's most visible media personality, making her the natural choice for the Nihon Ki-in/Shueisha partnership.

As a professional player, Yoshihara currently ranks at 6-dan; she was a 2-dan when the series began and a 5-dan when it concluded. Sources indicate that her fuseki, or opening strategy, favors exerting long-term control over the board rather than grabbing immediate territory, a style known as the teatsui style (手厚い棋風 "thick/solid style"). Players of this style build positions that may not appear threatening at first but become decisive as the game progresses.

Following her three-year reign as Women’s Kisei in 2007, Yoshihara continued her work in Go promotion and education. One such initiative is GO ONLINE, an online tutoring platform for both Go enthusiasts and aspiring professional players. She and her colleagues can be booked for sessions in which they’d give tips, tricks, and advice — the sort of game review Akira and Hikaru would do together later in the series.

Whether HikaGo was successful in combating the perception that Go is an old person’s game is not for me to say. It definitely sparked an interest in both Japan and abroad. Of particular note is China’s reaction: watching Go — a game they invented — depicted both beautifully and accurately by foreigners is something they were grateful for. The series enticed kids to attend Go classes in droves once the anime debuted — and if Japan’s classrooms were full, imagine China’s. It was also a hit in South Korea and Thailand, though specific examples of its impact there are sparse.

Amidst this unprecedented wave of youth interest, Masao Kato found himself becoming the new chairman of the Nihon Ki-In. Whether informed by the federation's youth outreach efforts, feedback from young players, or conversations with Yoshihara, Kato understood what reforms were needed to capitalize on this moment. His proposed changes — reducing time limits, modernizing the ranking system, adjusting komi, among others — may have been seen as far too ambitious among the older generations, but were necessary if the sport was to meet the HikaGo generation where they’re at. Unfortunately, Kato died in December 2004, less than a year into his tenure, leaving his reforms incomplete. Korean and Japanese Go officials would later lament, "If Kato lived five more years..."

Kato's successor proved more cautious. While grateful for HikaGo’s role in renewing interest in the game, the new leadership lacked Kato's drive. The institutional momentum he'd built dissipated, and the Nihon Ki-in settled back onto familiar patterns — not out of malice, but through the quieter force of institutional inertia. The opportunity to transform Go for a new generation slipped away, leaving the game much as it had been before Hikaru ever picked up a stone.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t thought of HikaGo in a long time. It’s been a decade since I last watched it.

What drove this rewatch is a thinkpiece I read titled: “Why Do I Pursue You?”: Hikaru no Go and Implicit-Metaphorical Queer Storytelling. I’m always interested in arguments about queerness in Japanese media. I was into BLs way before I started exploring the analytical side; it’s partly fueled by my disappointment and dissatisfaction with Western media regarding how it depicts queerness. In my experience, I’ve found that Asian media not only portrays the queer stories I want to see, but does so much better than any Western media could. But I digress.

The author, frustrated by how queer readings are often dismissed in fandom discourse, argues in favor of reading HikaGo as implicitly queer. They point to the story's use of rivalry as a framing device, a rivalry that features an intensity rarely seen in sports anime of that era, as evidence that it can and should be interpreted this way.

This framing bothered me. But hey, let’s approach this in good faith — maybe I missed something during prior rewatchs compelling enough for me to agree. Does the argument hold up? Given how central the Akira/Hikaru rivalry is to their argument, let’s zoom out and look at it as part of the bigger picture.

It’s valid how Hotta wants to write a story about Go, considering how much it meant to her as a means to spend quality time with her in-laws. Equally valid is the following question: “Why would anyone read this?” Think back to how uninterested Hikaru was in Go when he first met Sai. To him, that’s something people like his grandfather played when they were bored — he only picked up a stone at Sai’s insistence. I think this is a fair description of the audience watching this. Furthermore, there are no examples of media focused on a board game that make for a thrilling watch before HikaGo.

The closest example I found is a drama film. 1993's Searching for Bobby Fischer tells the story of prodigious chess player Josh Waitzkin in his early years. Like Go, chess is a board game that suffers from the same challenge: it's visually static and difficult to dramatize. The film needed something else to make it compelling, and found it in the human drama surrounding the game — the father-son relationship, the conflicting mentors, and the shadow of Bobby Fischer's legacy. The film ends on a poignant question: Is pursuing excellence worth what it costs Fischer, who became a reclusive, troubled figure after his triumph?

HikaGo never explicitly asks this question, although the Sai Disappearance arc could be interpreted as touching upon it. Regardless, human drama worked for Fischer, and it’ll work for HikaGo. But wait, Hikaru and Akira are grade school children! What business do they have partaking in human drama?! Drama manifests itself in multiple ways — remember that Waitzkin, too, was a grade school child when his story took place.

Go is a mind sport. Rivalries have a track record of being a good fit for drama in sports. Hell, even far more visually dynamic sports engage the rivalry trope within designated spaces: think of Slam Dunk's rivalry between Kaede Rukawa and Akira Sendoh — intense, yet largely kept to the basketball court. And there are contemporary examples that, while inconsequential to our larger analysis, are still worth mentioning if only to illustrate how rivalries in sports have advanced: Blue Lock's Yoichi Isagi & Rin Itoshi, Free!'s Haruka Nanase & Rin Matsuoka, and Haikyuu!'s Shoyo Hinata & Tobio Kageyama.

Hotta isn't reinventing the wheel. What made the rivalry between Akira and Hikaru notable is its omnipresence. Initially fueled by Akira's refusal to accept being beaten by Hikaru, this mysteriously skilled newcomer, and his need to understand what drives Hikaru's Go, it escalates when Hikaru abandons his prior life in pursuit of Akira, even as Akira determines to get so far ahead that Hikaru could never catch up. This dynamic could be read as queer, but I propose a more straightforward reading: it's the intensity required to make a story about Go work as a weekly serialized entertainment. The rivalry had to be omnipresent because the game itself couldn't carry the narrative weight on its own. For instance, I watched some of Yoshihara’s matches to get a feel of her prowess as a Go player, including the one linked in her section above. I assure you, if I weren’t invested in the subject matter, I would’ve closed the video or gone watch something else after a few minutes.

Now, why does the rivalry take this specific form, this all-consuming obsession? It’s clear from the start that Akira's entire identity revolves around Go. He has no friends his own age; his only meaningful relationships are with his father (his Go teacher) and other adult Go players. A flashback from episode 66 later confirms how this isolation predates Hikaru entirely. So Akira’s obsession with Hikaru isn’t the cause for this narrow focus; it merely shifts it, and there are many clear examples: episode 3, when he issues his rematch challenge after Hikaru’s crass comments under the pouring rain. Episode 7, the first meet-up at Haze Middle, in which Akira admits to Hikaru how he’s always on the back of his mind, thinking about how he’d respond to his moves — this isn’t just competitive interest, but a genuine preoccupation. Episode 12, Akira protests being made captain of the Kaio Go tournament team, as all he wants is to play Hikaru at seat number 3. I could go on and on, but I won’t.

Granted, this didn’t originally begin as a rivalry; rather, Akira’s obsession with Hikaru and his mysterious skill clashed with an indifferent, almost apathetic, Hikaru. Then, something started to shift: his meeting with Toya Meijin and playing a game in episode 3, Hikaru’s gradual understanding of what drove Go players, and his refusal to play Akira in episode 7, “until I’ve caught up to you.”

Then, episode 13 — the middle school Go tournament. Realizing how zealous Akira’s pursuit of Sai was, it’s evident that Hikaru’s plan of making Akira wait wouldn’t work. He’d let the Go master play the match until he took over in the middle of the game, much to Akira’s chagrin. The difference in skill was clear, with Akira speeding up his play to get out of that distressing, frustrating situation altogether sooner.

By the end of the Internet Go arc, Akira resolves never to show himself to Hikaru again, leaving him in shock. In a last-ditch effort, Hikaru is now the one issuing the challenge: “If you keep on chasing your phantom image of me, one day, I’ll surpass you!” Akira coldly responds: “Instead of one day, shall we play right now?” Hikaru didn’t follow through, and Akira leaves — giving him a taste of the medicine Akira took at the tournament. To add insult to injury, the captain of the Kaio Go club, Kishimoto, crushes Hikaru’s aspirations of catching up to Akira ‘one day.’  He not only punctuates how Akira’s Go is better than his, but assures he’ll never catch up unless he does so as if his life depended on it. Thus, Hikaru resolves to leave everything behind: his friends, the middle school Go club, his life until that point, all in the pursuit of Akira. Hikaru has never taken anything seriously in his life before. What could drive such a complete transformation?

The answer, put in internet fandom terms: 'notice me senpai.'

It may sound trite, especially with how overused the trope is, and yet, there’s truth behind it: Japanese society hugely values hierarchies. For every aspect, whether it’s learning a craft, at work, in school, or giving life advice? There’s a senior and a junior.

Before dismissing this reading, consider: Akira is Hikaru's Go senior in every measurable way — he's played longer, achieved more, reached 3-dan versus Hikaru's 1-dan. Note how Hikaru is always the one calling them 'rivals,' while Akira doesn't publicly acknowledge this until a monologue in episode 74. The admiration and respect that define rivalry flow almost entirely in one direction for most of the series. Hikaru is chasing recognition that Akira won’t grant, at least not publicly.

While Akira pursued Hikaru obsessively outside the professional world, inside it, his obsession was more restrained. He kept tabs on Hikaru's progress by proxy — maintaining the senior's watchful eye on the junior's development. It's not until the Sai Disappearance arc that Akira lets the mask slip, showing he respects Hikaru as a competitor — worrying about why Hikaru dropped Go altogether. This is the moment the hierarchy begins to equalize.

Ever since becoming pro, Hikaru spent two and a half years bettering his Go, all to earn Akira's respect. A far cry from the grade school kid who had no interest in the game when all this started. Logic might suggest that any endeavor lasting this long, driving such total transformation, must be romantic in nature. While I agree something profound is driving this commitment, I reject the assumption that intensity equals romance.

Instead, the senpai-kohai framework succinctly explains this dynamic. Why Hikaru won't play Akira until he's 'caught up,' why earning respect matters more than just competing, and why the hierarchy must be acknowledged before equality can exist. This isn't the language of romance — it's the language of Japanese mentorship and social structure.

I'm not arguing against queer readings of HikaGo — the ‘death of the author’ analysis framework states that multiple interpretations can coexist. What troubles me is the framing that this intensity *must* be read as queer, that it's “exactly what this is,” and other readings be damned. When I analyze the series from the perspective of senpai-kohai dynamics and the structural requirements of serializing a board game, I find those explanations more grounded in the text than a romantic reading. A queer reading remains valid for those it resonates with — but it's not the only lens, and claiming otherwise limits our understanding of how boys can have profound, transformative relationships that aren't romantic.

And look, I get it. As an openly gay man, I get the hunger for representation in my community: I want that, too! However, I want us to elevate actual queer people, whether it’s creators or characters, shine a light on those whom we might’ve missed, and speak of how our people were, and continue to be, marginalized. We have a responsibility to teach the newer queer generations about our mistakes so they don’t repeat them. The Sailor Uranus & Neptune fiasco from the Cloverway dub of Sailor Moon comes to mind — where an explicitly romantic relationship was erased and reframed as cousins. It was an important denouncement by queer thinkers who reassessed the series, and even if it was a product of its time, it was wrong then; it remains wrong now.

That said, our thinkpieces shouldn't degrade into wish-casting disguised as 'media analysis' — arguments dressed up in scholarly prose to make them sound more authoritative than they are. Instead of preaching to the converted, it risks confirming misconceptions that non-queer readers might have about how queer people interpret media: that we see ourselves everywhere, that we can't distinguish between different kinds of intimacy, that our analysis is driven by desire rather than textual evidence.

This is one of the many ways our people get tokenized, with some of our own thinkers participating in the process. I don't want my identity reduced to a checkbox, which drives my frustration at how 'representation matters' gets wielded. So we have a gay character in a story, great — what are you doing with it? Is vindication enough in a society that no longer embraces us with the warmth it did before the worldwide rise of the far right? I've argued how queer people need to recognize ourselves as part of a larger whole, that our individual actions reflect on the community, fairly or not. I still feel that way.

To return to where we started: interpersonal relationships are far broader than implicit attraction. One can feel very passionate and very intense about something or someone without it equaling romance. There's no one true way to read a text. If something doesn't make sense to you, form your own opinion. Look up context and evidence that helps you. And if you're the dissenting opinion? As long as it's grounded in the work itself, it doesn't matter if you're not the consensus.

Context matters.

The media log is taking a break for September. While catching up on July and August, I didn't have time to consume anything new worth covering here. As I wrap up this entry, I’ll immediately begin work on October’s.

That's it from me. See you soon!

5 min read

On the cusp of the fifth price hike across Microsoft’s Xbox portfolio in 2025 alone, some remain bewildered by how a five-year-old console is more expensive than the marginally more powerful one released in 2024, some team up to delay the inevitable, and many are canceling their Game Pass subscription — or stacking up while it’s still cheap.

The state of the world and shady Game Pass economics aside, Phil Spencer and Xbox appear to be hanging on for dear life after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella gave a blank check some years ago to bolster Xbox’s value towards the larger Microsoft vision, which increasingly appears set towards advancing technology used with large language models (LLMs) for the foreseeable future.

How did we even get here to begin with?

What I once saw as a good thing, the Activision Blizzard King acquisition left me sour after the post-merger carnage. Already, I was laying the blame for the current state of Xbox at its feet. TheCollapseCo argues differently — the current state of Xbox goes even further back. Back to Don Mattrick.

Mattrick, an EA alum, took over a profitable line of business from his predecessor, Peter Moore. Moore made Xbox profitable in barely five years — a remarkable achievement for a newcomer console brand. Mattrick's first major initiative, the Kinect sensor, failed to move the needle. Kinect's legacy? A cleverly implemented gimmick, borrowing heavily from Nintendo's Wii. Still, the Xbox 360 remained profitable. As early as 2011, its successor, codenamed 'Durango', was in development. How do you capitalize on the success of your predecessor? As we would later learn, they didn't.

As the internet became ever more present in everyday lives, consumers’ habits evolved significantly from when the seventh generation of consoles first launched. Playing Blu-Ray discs from their PS3s or watching Netflix on their 360s was one use case, but the key difference was that those boxes were gaming consoles first. Media features were the cherry on top. Upon its introduction, the Xbox One was positioned as an all-in-one media entertainment center that just happened to be a games console. The above video includes a supercut of the many times the word ‘TV’ was said on stage during the presentation, and I genuinely think they missed some — it was so bad, entire memes were born out of it.

Outside of this lack of focus on games, there were concerning rumors of how used games weren’t going to be a thing on Xbox One, and also being an ‘always on’ console. This last point, specifically, was flippantly dismissed by Mattrick — comments that were met with ire by the player base. Sony was watching, taking the temperature in the room. A month later, during the unveiling of the PlayStation 4, the Xbox One dunks practically wrote themselves. And that used game instructional video Sony put out? Jack Tretton put Xbox out to pasture.

I was a huge Xbox fanboy in those days. I believed this was a momentary blip on their momentum, still standing by my choice to back Xbox — I was that burned out with Sony’s handling of the 2011 PlayStation Network hack. As such, I neglected all the obvious signs: the clunky interface, the Kinect requirement, and the lack of games. Even Call of Duty, with which Microsoft had a timed exclusive agreement with Activision, took its business to Sony. All of that didn’t matter: in my head, Xbox once again was the underdog it was when the original hardware debuted.

Mattrick was out, and Spencer was in. His first directive? Stop the bleeding, and stop it fast. Many of the consumer-friendly initiatives were spearheaded by him: the stripping of Kinect, a robust backward compatibility with older Xbox consoles, whose implementation is widely agreed to be nothing short of a technological marvel, and the widespread adoption of crossplay, among others.

However, Microsoft would never recover from that massive blow. The Xbox One sold less than half of the PS4, coming in at a solid third. By Spencer’s own admission, out of all the console generations to lose, losing this one was devastating. And the reason? This generation saw the widespread adoption of digital libraries. When you build a library on one platform, you tend to stay there; Xbox’s mismanagement under Mattrick ensured a generation of not only PlayStation fans, but lifers.

I’d finally come to my senses at the beginning of this year as I saw the brand I once went to bat for all but abandoning their most ardent fanbase, calling it quits once Forza Horizon 5 debuted on PlayStation. The writing was on the wall: Xbox is becoming a third-party publisher. There’s no reason to back this horse anymore. With the increasing adoption of PC releases, despite owning a PlayStation 5, I wasn't going to back Sony, whom I still have reservations about after the PSN hack. Instead, I’m adopting PC gaming. I’ll finally use my PC for the primary purpose I built it for all those years ago…

Still, the apparent demise of Xbox has been painful to watch as a former fan. When the dust settles, what’ll remain is a shell of its former self, all because Nadella wants a return on his investment in Xbox. If this is bad, Nadella shutting down Xbox — reportedly what he always wanted to do before Spencer convinced him otherwise — is much worse. What Microsoft ends up doing remains to be seen.

And it all started with Don Mattrick.

7 min read

I’m not very good at talking about myself in this way, but I’ll try…

Hello, I’m Tyson Matsuki — or if we know each other in real life, you can call me [REDACTED]. I’m a creative who dabbles in many forms of creative endeavors; nowadays, the ‘blogger’ label applies, though I prefer ‘writer’ instead. My journey, born of a necessity to express myself in ways I’m not able to by striking up conversation, dates back to when I was a kid.

Way back then, I took to drawing as a pastime, with paper and pencil being my tools of the trade. My mom was strict with computer/video game screen time, and every time I overdid it, the ‘game room’ was closed under lock and key. With nothing to do, I took to an old blue see-through clipboard and started drawing. With time, I got somewhat good at it. My parents even paid for manga drawing classes, which were based on Akira Toriyama’s drawing style. I may have drawn the occasional Dragon Ball fan art, but I was mostly inside my head, taking what I’ve seen as inspiration to make something that’s mine.

As a Rurouni Kenshin watcher, I grew up thinking swords were cool. I also had a thing for ninjas: the ones all draped in black, sneaking in darkness, taking out targets silently. The first Tenchu game may have led to this obsession? I don’t even remember if I played it, to be honest. Those, alongside many other sources of inspiration, came together to create what became my first original character with a somewhat established backstory: Tyson Matsuki. Living in a nameless city in a modern setting, he works as an assassin-for-hire in the underworld. He eventually is tapped to take out the main character in a story I was writing. As I love morally ambiguous characters — it’s why I like Riku over Sora, despite y’know, ‘chemicalsora’ — Tyson is an embodiment of this trope. Can I still draw him today? Maybe. Not off memory, though: I’d need to reference his older drawings!

(Click on the image to see a bigger version)

When I was not thinking of original storylines, the rest of my early artwork was recreating screenshots I saw from a variety of first-person shooter games. I was hugely into the genre, with Perfect Dark and the early EA Bond games having a particular impact. In the case of the former specifically, I had this crazy idea of pitching a sequel to Rareware, based on a comic included in the strategy guide! Wrote a scenario, how it’d play in-game, the weapons, and I even tried to make a rendition of how a pause menu would look… in RPG Maker, no less. Of course, this was all before Perfect Dark Zero, and I never went anywhere with it — just a teenager with wild dreams. I’d drift away from art altogether; I tried digital artwork, but I could never take to it despite being decent at Photoshop. Put simply, I didn’t see an art career in my future.

Instead, I went to college for a communications degree. I saw in such a career path the means with which I could learn the skills to be a better speaker, not only to address a mass audience, but also as a confidence booster to do so more in private. Journalism and publicity were the two hot sub-specialties in the department, and many in the group I entered went in either direction, but I chose radio. There was an allure in the mystique of a voice without a face, allowing one to exist completely anonymously, straddling the line between public and private life if desired. While still in college, I discovered podcasting — a new medium that captured that same appeal. Eager to experiment, The F*** Yeah CODcast, a podcast that covered the Call of Duty series, was born. Outside of covering news and updates, it’d score interviews with key people in the COD community before its eventual ending in 2013.

Despite this early podcasting success, my insecurity got the best of me. What should’ve been a four-year degree took me six. The reason? I diverged into business administration, and as soon as the accounting classes began, I went back to my original department. I was getting tired of school, and against the recommendations of some of my professors, I called it quits after I got my bachelor’s. It was time to find a job and earn a living — but it won’t be in radio. I’m just another statistic in the ‘college-educated millennials who don’t work in their field of study’ chart.

A year after the COD podcast ended, I was tapped to help launch an anime podcast, which eventually became Get a Life Podcast Kunai. I, alongside the network founder and a guy I recommended, discussed anime as if we were seeing it for the first time — and it was for the most part! Whenever I was not japing with the others, I fancied myself a critic, bringing factoids to the table for which I often got justifiably told off for: we’re an anime podcast, not a manga/light novel/game one! Some time into its run, we’d get a fourth host, as the founder planned to step back and let us run the show. Instead, I was the one who left, as my transition to office work meant I could no longer give the project the time it required. Nowadays, the podcast has rebranded to Animation Station, with the founder being the only one remaining of the original crew. Though I am no longer part of that project, the fact that something I helped create is still going on a decade later fills me with joy.

I couldn’t stay out of the trenches for long. I gave YouTube a go, with varying levels of success. I must’ve tried every popular format which didn’t involve showing myself on camera, only to find that my passion lay in critical looks on media and elaborate productions which emulate some I like to watch. Impressions, Shadow One-Step, FAMAS… even vlogs on the Crunchyroll Expo conventions I attended! Little did I know those would be my swan songs — I had ideas of what I wanted to do, but I had no time and, perhaps more crucially, no motivation.

This website was originally opened in the days when I toiled away at YouTube as a portfolio. My economic situation mandated deep cuts in my expenses; after years of this site just being there, if I wasn’t going to use it, I’d have to cut my losses. Writing is the aspect of video production I enjoyed the least, but when faced with an uphill battle getting back into video making and podcasting, what else is there for me? I gave writing a go, thinking this new obsession would be a fleeting one once I got to the meat and potatoes. Since then, I’ve sacrificed game time to writing sessions, as I sort the mess that is my mind in prose. I’m content: I get to critique media once more, putting my overthinking nature to good use. I may not be a wordsmith yet, but maybe I’ll stumble my way into becoming one?

For now, I’ll continue this effort and see where it takes me. I hope you'll join me on this journey and find something worth coming back for.

70 min read

Prior Entry | All Media Log Posts | Next Entry

Please be advised these posts aren’t spoiler-free.

Sections

given (series)

given (2019)

given the movie (2020)

given the movie: Hiragi Mix (2024)

given the movie: To The Sea (2024)

Writer’s Note

Apologies for the massive delay on this entry. I’ve dedicated all of my time in late July to “The Internet Died,” and as a result, this entry didn’t see work until August, after that post was complete. I didn't time manage well and didn't take many notes — which are essential for how I write about media. To make matters worse, I discovered that the Given films rearrange events from the manga, so I couldn't rely on that as a reference. I’ve had to rewatch my rewatch of the anime and the films. I hope the wait was worth it, and I’ll try to do better about sticking to a deadline, however informal that may be.

It would seem that my PC is damaged. Well, this sucks…

As I frantically look up computer repair places to get an estimate of how much it would cost to bring it back to life, I want to go over how this happened. The last time I turned it on, around the end of July, everything was working. I was asked to make a copy of a thumb drive — an easy enough task; I bought a similarly sized one and trusted the copying job to Windows. macOS can do the same job, but as I needed something off the tower, I might as well kill two birds with one stone.

Some days later, while working on “The Internet Died,” I boot it up — again, I needed an asset I knew was on the hard drive, and I began noticing an erratic behavior. I turned on the PC, and it appeared as if it was booting up, but it quickly went down. When I was about to turn on the power button to turn it back on, I noticed it did so unprompted, only to shut off again. This on-off behavior went on repeat unless I forced it off. I suspected that the power supply died, but maybe I could do something. I unplugged the power supply overnight, then attempted to boot it up after work the following day. It didn’t work. That’s all the troubleshooting I can do at the time, so I’d have to check it over the weekend.

Weekend comes, and it’s time for more troubleshooting. I open the case, get the GPU and the capture card off, start dusting it off, and do some light cleaning with a vacuum cleaner. Tried turning it on without the GPU, and it stayed on, but no video signal came out of the integrated motherboard GPU. I plugged in the dedicated GPU and switched my cable to it — no dice. I swapped monitors, thinking that might be the cause, and it wasn’t. Next, I installed the capture card, thinking that the computer was being finicky, and I unwittingly found the culprit for the on-off behavior.

The PCI slot the capture card was on got damaged somehow, and was preventing the PC from staying on. Luckily, I had a spare slot, and while it stayed on, I still had the no video issue. What about this CMOS reset? I did switch PCI slots, and the motherboard may need a reset in those instances. Nada, even with the motherboard battery taken out.

At this point, I’m getting worried. Baffled how a single bad PCI slot could kill the entire motherboard. People I know who are good with PC hardware repair suggested via chat, as daft as it sounds, to remove the RAM sticks and put them back. That didn’t work either. I asked one of them if they could drop by my house to give it a look, but given how they thought that my thinking that the hard drive was spinning or how the NUM LK key on the keyboard I was using meant something was me messing with them — not to mention another person who was cracking jokes at my expense — I think I’ll search for a third party instead. I didn’t appreciate how they made me feel dumber when I knew I was asking a dumb question. But these things, they may mean something…?

Maybe it was for the best that I never got into computer repair. The adults in my life thought that, since I know my way around a computer, I should repair them. I wasn’t interested in a career path in which I’d be tech support for my family, so I went for something else. Hardware repair is a different ball game. While I do know my way around software, more than your average user, all I have are critical thinking skills — something today’s society sorely lacks. Give me an instruction manual — y’know, the booklet many throw away after they’re done — and I can find my way around.

As I plan to go full-on PC for gaming in the future, an upgrade was on the cards… but I didn’t expect it to be this soon. I hope I can kick the can further down the road while I save some money to make it happen. I’ll be fine with just my MacBook, but urgh, another unforeseen expense…

Music. Even in a foreign language, it can make one feel things they’ve never felt before. “Listen” — we already have a universal language, and it’s called “music.”

Given is a show from the days in which I somewhat kept up with anime simulcasts. I’ve just started to heavily get into boys’ love stories after Yuri on Ice, and I craved shows that were unrelenting about depicting an aspect of queer love that, quite often, media shies away from: affection. Recall the kiss scene in Yuri on Ice; back then, people argued over whether Victor really kissed Yuri or not. It all felt very silly when it got to the point that frame-by-frame analyses were used to make the point in either direction, depending on who was doing said analysis. I knew what the score was, yet this plausible deniability — not to mention the pervasive homophobia within anime circles — left a sour taste in my mouth.

I was initially skeptical when I saw footage of the two main leads kissing in Given, shown in its full glory with no room to interpret otherwise, but I dove in anyway. I figured how, if nothing else, there’d be something in it for me. I enjoy music shows; after all, I hold the K-On! anime adaptation in very high regard.

Back in 2022, when I was very much into buying manga, Given was one of the series I bought. Viz Media’s BL imprint, Sublime, had just gotten to the Hiragi Mix arc and was covering stuff that neither the TV anime nor the first film covered. Fast forward to the present, and I have volume 9 on my nightstand, ready to be read. I also haven't watched the final Given films. With some back pain making reading uncomfortable lately, I figured I'd rewatch the entire anime series first and work my way through the films.

The brainchild of manga author Natsuki Kizu, Given first started in 2013, was serialized in Chéri+, and it ran for a decade. The series spans nine manga volumes, several audio dramas, a TV anime, a live-action drama, and three anime films. The TV anime, in particular, is notable for being the first BL anime shown on the Noitamina programming block. With the release of Hiragi Mix and To the Sea in 2024, the series is fully adapted — it wasn’t necessary to jump to the manga after finishing. The TV anime covers books 1 to a portion into 3, the first film covers the rest of book 3 through 5, the second film, books 6 and 7, and the final film covers books 8 and 9.

Kizu is somewhat of an enigma. A casual search of her past work — or post-Given work, as it were — yields sparse details, but it’s a different story if you know where to look. Given is her most popular work, no doubt about it, but it isn’t her first commercial one: a one-shot, Yukimura-sensei to Kei-kun, predates it. Before that, she worked in doujin circles as Gusari, publishing works and reportedly making fan art for Hetalia, Kuroko no Basuke, and Haikyuu. As of writing, she’s promoting a project with fellow doujin creator Ameno titled “Paranormal Response Division 4.”

Given I watched the entirety of Given and nothing else during the month, I’ll be padding out this post by tackling each entry separately. I hope you’ll understand.

One day at school, Ritsuka Uenoyama — whom I’ll be calling by one of his nicknames, “Ue”, moving forward — felt so sleepy, he went to his spot at the stairs of the gymnasium, intending to nap the rest of the afternoon away. When he gets there, there’s another student, sleeping in *his* spot. Ue hasn’t told anyone about this place; maybe he found it perchance? The boy hugs what appears to be a Gibson guitar — is he a musician? Ue hasn’t seen him in the indie circle, but recognizes him as a student from the class next door.

Groggily waking up from hearing the door open, he stares at Ue, wondering who he is. As a footnote, character data files reveal he has myopia. His staring may stem from that: he only knows someone is there, but not who it is. The boy scoots over, making room for Ue to either go up the stairs or sit, whichever he wanted to do. Unnerved by the boy’s silence, he sits down on the now-unoccupied spot: “Use your words, man. The silent act is creepy.” How’s that for an icebreaker? It might’ve been better to talk about the weather. Ue immediately noticed the rusted strings on the Gibson and urged him to fix them. The boy came to life, shocked. He gets too close for comfort, asking, “This can be fixed?!”

It can. Ue can do it, but not right now. The boy deflates; Ue, feeling as if he’s being guilt-tripped, becomes ever more irked. He goes back to his classroom, picks up his spare strings & tools, and fixes the Gibson. After a quick test strum, he was eager to go back to his nap. Instead, he gets an eager student, wanting to learn how to play guitar. Ue’s skills are entirely self-taught, and his obsessive personality helps… can that even *be* taught? He isn’t interested in teaching someone else, nor does he have the skills to teach to begin with. Ue suggests the boy teach himself how to play, like he did, or join the light music club. Maybe start a band? The boy won’t take no for an answer — he wants Ue to teach him.

Before talking about plot points involving music, I should note: I’m not a musician. I had a drum kit once, shortly after I exited college, I think. I was pretty broke back then; I could barely sustain myself, and adding instruments to the list of purchases wasn’t tenable. I’d never translate the skills I got playing Rock Band to the real thing. True, they’re not a one-to-one translation in comparison; nonetheless, it’s a foundation to build upon.

To this day, I’m of the thought that I don’t have the hand-eye coordination to play electric guitar, and that’s part of the reason I’m drawn to the rhythm section: drums and bass. While unlikely that I’ll pick up the drums again, I cling to the dream of someday learning how to play bass — I only hope this ember doesn’t go out, and that it’s not too late whenever I get around to it, if ever…

In Ue's backstory, he explains that, as he improved and could play more genres, he became less excited about music. I must question his motive — did he only pick up the guitar because he had nothing else to do as a young child? This is one of the issues I have with him being painted as a “prodigy” just because he’s adaptable. My mind was cast back to how so-called “gifted kids” get showered with praise. While perhaps not the intention, it ultimately warps their worldview, and when faced with hardships, they can’t solve them. But they were told they were geniuses! They didn’t need to learn anything new! They could solve anything! Alas, they can’t, and often this type of person needs therapy. I speak from experience, and it’s hardly unique to me, but I’ll tell that story some other day.

Creativity is a never-ending journey, and those who walk the path are constantly looking for new ways of expression. Having Ue’s breadth of knowledge surely is the envy of many musicians, and he’s not exploiting that potential? Talk about wasted talent… Not only do I believe that Ue is going on about music the wrong way, but I can’t buy that as anything other than a framework for when he and the boy eventually team up. I could stomach this if I knew more about the prior bands Ue played in to gauge how, exactly, these “creative differences” occurred — they must’ve been quite profound for the founder of his current band being okay going along with his every whim, only to keep him.

Mafuyu Sato, the aforementioned “boy” in the introduction, carries the guitar of his dead friend and lover, Yuki Yoshida, everywhere. In the middle of a lesson, Ue discovers Mafuyu’s impressive singing and invites him to join his band, The Seasons. They didn’t have a vocalist, and Mafuyu could be molded into becoming an acceptable rhythm guitar player through Ue’s lessons — the other members, drummer Akihiko Kaji and bassist Haruki Nakayama, didn’t object. Mafuyu resists the idea, but wants to make an effort, perhaps out of gratitude for the lessons. However, it wouldn’t be easy for the budding musician. In his own words: “I’m probably really bad at expressing myself compared to other people.”

Mafuyu’s love for music got complicated after Yuki’s loss. He knew Mafuyu loved music as he noticed how often his lover hummed little melodies to himself. Their love for music was shared: with the help of his childhood friends, Hiragi Kashima and Shizusumi Yagi, they formed a band, syh, an acronym of the first letters of the members’ names. Mafuyu wasn’t interested in going pro, but supported his friends in their efforts. As Yuki spent more of his free time between part-time work and the studio, a rift between them began. Yuki didn’t have time for Mafuyu, which made him feel as if the music was taking Yuki away. Mafuyu longed for intimate alone time with Yuki — moments that couldn't happen when surrounded by friends. At one such gathering, Mafuyu snapped, refusing Yuki’s affection, and fought him over his priorities. Shocked and apologetic, Yuki promised to leave syh if it’d make Mafuyu happy, saying he'd do anything for him; Mafuyu angrily replied: “Then, would you die for me?!” He didn’t keep his emotions in check and didn’t realize how Yuki… meant what he said. Some days later, Mafuyu came over to visit and found Yuki’s corpse hanging from his bedroom ceiling.

We got a taste of how harrowing it is when someone acts on something someone said while upset. All I know of Yuki comes second-hand: given his troubled past, he likely took Mafuyu’s words to heart — without his anchor, he’s nothing. It’s suggested that he didn’t plan to commit suicide that night, but as he drank his sorrow away, his inability to handle alcohol kicked in, surfacing the dark thoughts in his head. I can’t recall if Mafuyu screeched, seeing Yuki’s lifeless body, but his complete shock was enough to give me goosebumps.

The actual circumstances behind the fight, revealed when they were, help the narrative: if you’ve stuck around for that long, you likely have an attachment to Mafuyu or the other characters. I, for one, share in the horror of seeing a loved one die the way Yuki did, though, admittedly, I don’t care for him, or rather, I wasn’t given reasons to do so until the final film. The only way I could get into the mindset of caring for that event was erasing Yuki’s name and face from my memory. This “not given enough reason to care” critique extends to all of Given’s secondary characters, and Yuki in particular bothers me as a large portion of Mafuyu’s character, if not the series’ main driver, revolves around his healing from the trauma of losing him.

Mafuyu can’t find the words to express his deep regret and ache because it was words that ruined everything. Somewhere along the way, Ue fell for Mafuyu. It wasn’t until a week before the presentation that Akihiko, fully aware that Ue’s love for Mafuyu could break the band apart, did a daring gamble with Haruki’s help. I presume Haruki told Akihiko about the conversation he and Mafuyu had one night exiting the studio, so he’s somewhat aware of the circumstances behind his writer’s block. He confronts him: “If you don't come to terms with your past, you won't be able to write those lyrics.” Haruki, giving Ue a lift, rolls the dice as well: “You’re off your game. With the way you’re playing now, Mafuyu’s sound is going to swallow yours.” With Mafuyu and Ue shaken at hearing what they just did, the senpais got the reaction they sought; whether it’ll work is another matter.

The next day, Hiragi came by Mafuyu’s place. Despite the scuffle a few days ago, with Hiragi suggesting Mafuyu should let go of his trauma — as if Hiragi didn’t lose a friend in Yuki also — Mafuyu allows himself to get close to Hiragi again; the first time Mafuyu does so after Yuki’s death. Whether the heart-to-heart they had can be considered a means to amend their relationship, I can’t say. Also, I don’t believe Mafuyu forgives Hiragi, despite the latter wanting his forgiveness — but for what, though? Couples have issues, and they should resolve them on their own. There’s no space for a third person, even if that person is a friend.

The night of the live show, Mafuyu told his bandmates he hadn’t finished the lyrics after all. I think he did, but couldn’t bring himself to sing it. Until he went up on stage, and by the first verse, he sang his story, which took place one winter.  Sang his pain and misery away for anyone who would listen. Sang so that anyone can understand how it feels, even if a little bit.

His bandmates were shocked, but the show must go on. Singing about such a sensitive topic to him was taxing, and by the end of Fuyu no Hanashi, he was utterly exhausted. Ue walked Mafuyu backstage, and when he was about to express his deepest gratitude, Ue kissed him.

A comment on the series’s use of computer-generated animation, CG for short: it’s scattered across the anime, but it’s heavily featured on the live performance. Given how time-consuming animating every cut is, it’s not feasible to do so hand-drawn any longer when tools exist to make the work faster and easier. I’ll tip my hat to Studio Lerche for achieving something I rarely see in CG cuts: fluidity. TV shows run at an average of 24 frames per second; TV anime is no different. And still, the CG cuts appear to run at that same frame rate instead of looking like the computer struggled to achieve, at most, 20 frames. You can tell which cuts are CG if you’re paying attention, but they blend in  — by and large, most use of CG in anime from a certain period stands out because of how uncanny it looks, but Given is not one of those.

I’d be remiss not to make a note on the music. Centimillimental gave an interview to Animate Times in which, among the various topics, he spoke about how he was offered Given — I was surprised to learn this is his first work! Now I’m not a musician, so I can’t do a technical breakdown of the music. I can speak to the themes and whether it’s suitable for what’s being communicated. Starting with Kizuato, one of the few anime openings I don’t skip. It’s written from Mafuyu’s point of view: how he repressed his feelings towards Yuki’s death, and how “whatever he left behind became his everything.” It sets the stage for what’s to come, and after the viewer learns of Yuki’s fate, they’ll see the parallels. Having heard Fuyu no Hanashi, I want a given version of it.

Moving to Fuyu no Hanashi, again, written as a self-insert for Mafuyu’s grieving, is nothing short of powerful. The song represents the much-needed closure he seeks after Yuki’s death, finally being able to communicate how he feels. It’ll sound alien to anyone who doesn’t know Mafuyu, and it’s okay; perhaps this is what he wanted, for people who don’t know him to understand the pain, even if the relation of the lyrics to him isn’t immediate. It’s beautiful and cathartic at the same time — that yell Mafuyu does at the end of the second verse? It still gives me the chills.

By the end of the anime’s run, the band renames itself to “given” and Mafuyu and Ue start dating.

The story in Given is structured around character arcs; oftentimes, the character the arc is about ends up dating their love interest. The TV anime focused on Mafuyu Sato and Ritsuka Uenoyama (Ue). The first movie is about Haruki Nakayama and Akihiko Kaji… plus one passionate, if ambivalent, violinist.

After making his debut on the indie scene, Mafuyu goes into writer’s block. Fuyu no Hanashi was deeply personal, a ‘lightning in a bottle’ kind of moment. With hardly a background in songwriting, he has nothing to draw inspiration from. He asks Akihiko, his bandmate, for help in exposing him to different musical genres. Akihiko’s preparation is classical first, but outside the drums, he knows how to play bass and guitar — surely, a man with that skillset must’ve heard a lot of records.  I’d argue Ue has almost as broad a taste as Akihiko, but perhaps Mafuyu thought he already troubled Ue enough with the guitar lessons.

Akihiko takes Mafuyu to a violin concerto featuring Ugetsu Murata, Akihiko's roommate & on-again, off-again boyfriend, in which he performs Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major. Mafuyu resonated with Ugetsu’s playing, whereas Akihiko looked at his counterpart on the stage with envy: exquisite technique, breath-taking emotional range, sensuality… Ugetsu had it all.

Like Ugetsu, Akihiko is a violin player and has been since he was young. One day in high school, Akihiko saw Ugetsu practicing, bearing witness to just how good he is. Whatever aspirations or confidence Akihiko had were utterly shattered, relegated to always being second best to the violin prodigy. He was both full of awe and hate towards the man who kept besting him. Mafuyu, ever observant, realized Akihiko and he are alike in their inability to let go.

One morning, Mafuyu drops by Akihiko’s, unannounced, to show him what he was working on. He was greeted by Ugetsu. Mafuyu was surprised: Akihiko never mentioned he was roommates with the violinist he just saw yesterday; nonetheless, he accepted the invitation to come in.

Mafuyu sought feedback, and Ugetsu obliged while Akihiko fights with his pillow — after all, Ugetsu’s interested in the budding musician ever since he first saw Mafuyu’s singing. Just from one listen, Ugetsu mercilessly picks apart what was wrong with Mafuyu’s draft and notices how he filled in chords, likely because he wasn’t sure where he wanted to go with it. The prodigious mind is a scary thing… unfortunately, Akihiko had plans with Haruki, so he couldn’t stay for the session. Mafuyu could keep Ugetsu company if he wanted. Meanwhile, Haruki is hung up on the fact that Akihiko has a roommate — wait until he hears that, of all people, it’s his ex…

Akihiko regards Mafuyu and Ue as geniuses. Haruki, thinking Akihiko was putting himself down, praises how he’s a jack-of-all-trades, which is not something that just anyone does in any sort of acceptable measure. As Haruki puts himself down as being the average type — and to return the compliment — Akihiko commends Haruki as the peacemaker of the group.

As I wrote my draft, I went off the manga, and as the anime follows the manga closely, I believed the movies took the same approach. This next part, which gives context on how Akihiko first met Ugetsu, appears to be manga-only. This rearranging and/or omission of events is a constant throughout this film, and yields mixed results. I get the reason why: if I look at this from the perspective of the director or even series composition, it’s all for the benefit of the story arc being covered, keeping it as focused as possible. If only I had noticed earlier, I would’ve saved up so much time…

To illustrate one instance of this going wrong: how, exactly, was Ugetsu’s point of view more important than Akihiko’s? His not wanting to speak of this aspect of his life with Haruki is understandable, but internal monologues exist — in fact, one was used at the violin concerto to set the tone of Akihiko and Ugetsu’s relationship. The one way this makes sense is if Mafuyu is the audience surrogate: he’s the primary character, so secondary characters that are around him are in proximity to his spotlight. I’m okay with that, but… isn’t this film supposed to focus on Akihiko & Haruki? Why use Mafuyu as your narrative crutch? Why show one side, but not the other, just because Mafuyu was there?

Akihiko reminisces about his efforts to be the top violinist in Japan and how Ugetsu consistently beat him to first place. His overwhelming skill was enough for Akihiko to give up the violin, yet he noticed sadness every time Ugetsu swung his bow, exacerbated by how strongly he felt emotions compared to most. Akihiko wanted to ‘fix’ him, but Ugetsu began hating how his sound wasn’t the same when he was around Akihiko.

Ugetsu admits he fell in love with Akihiko. It wasn’t until the violinist debuted as a professional musician that he figured out how they’d both driven themselves into a corner. Not only was his ‘sound’ not the same, but he was acutely aware of how his presence torments his lover. Ugetsu calls off the relationship, and for two years, they constantly fought, only to make up later. Ugetsu both longs for the day Akihiko finally leaves, while also dreads it — he still has feelings for him.

I’ll briefly highlight the OVA, ‘given - on the other hand’, for this next part. Mafuyu and Ue are stuck taking remedial classes at school; they won’t get to their senior year, otherwise. Ue is miffed by Mafuyu spending ever-increasing time with Akihiko, which led to their first fight. I’ll let the clip below speak to that event:

Mafuyu’s growth is evident here: he’s being careful with his words, as he doesn’t want to lose Ue the same way he lost Yuki…

Back to film territory: Akihiko is in a foul mood after being kicked out of Ugetsu’s for the night. He was with a woman, so he wouldn’t attend a get-together that Haruki expected him to attend, fighting with Haruki when asked where he was. Haruki’s friend, Koji Yatake, proposes that Haruki play a supporting gig for none other than Haruki’s ex, noting he may need a break from Akihiko to get back his passion for music. Despite feeling guilty about it, he accepts the gig out of courtesy.

Over at the studio, Mafuyu is brainstorming with Ue when Haruki walks in. They ask for his feedback as they play what they have so far of the song. Haruki feels intimidated: “When did Mafuyu get this good?” he wonders as he listens followed by Ue’s composing. Haruki was already feeling guilty for taking the side gig, but as Ue proposes not doing live shows until they finish the song, he felt guiltier; just as he was having fun playing for the other band, there was a real opportunity to feel similarly with his band. It’s heartbreaking to see Haruki crumbling to pieces. I can relate to the feeling of not being in control of your thoughts and putting yourself down — I still do so, even to this day.

To make matters worse, Akihiko shows up after dark, unannounced, asking if he can crash over at his place after a fight with Ugetsu. Haruki lets Akihiko in and briefs him on what happened during the session. Akihiko senses that Haruki is hiding something and asks in a demanding manner — when Akihiko starts getting rough, Haruki tells him about the side gig, and that it's none of his business. In response, Akihiko casually drops the bomb that he knew about Haruki's crush on him all this time. Akihiko felt Haruki was running away by accepting the side gig.

Some time into the foreplay, Akihiko realizes that what he’s doing with Haruki is not out of love, but out of a desire to get back at Ugetsu. He’s reduced to a crying mess after that realization and stops. “Even if I told you, there’s nothing you can do about it,” Akihiko tells Haruki as he fights through his tears, whereas Haruki cries seeing Akihiko’s pained expression. Haruki agrees to Akihiko staying the night, but Haruki will sleep somewhere else — and wants Akihiko out by morning.

In this past sequence, Ugetsu and Akihiko’s relationship is revealed to be very dysfunctional. Quite frankly, what gets me is not the non-consensual act with Haruki, but Akihiko unveiling himself as the co-dependent one. I’m reminded of a friend-with-benefits that, whenever he wants something — whether it’s ordering something online, giving him a lift, or coming over to hook up — he wants it now, and it often puts me off. The result is that I’m not always willing to comply, which greatly upsets him, and he refuses to speak to me for days. I can tolerate this to a certain extent, but I’ve recently been of the mindset that his hot-and-cold personality is aggravating. As much as the sex may get me up on cloud nine, I don’t need him as much as he needs me.

Through that lens, I think I can understand a little how Ugetsu feels towards Akihiko, and I’m still confused. I don’t deliberately hurt my friend as he does — should I be reading ‘Ugetsu trying to move on from Akihiko’ as him setting boundaries instead? This is where I think Ugetsu’s conflation between love and pity stems from: he may say he loves him, but his actions speak a wholly different story. It feels as if I’m missing a piece of the puzzle that I can’t tie to a lived experience…

Akihiko never left, despite Haruki explicitly asking him to, walking a tightrope that could spell the end of given. Haruki came back the night after with a haircut, still brooding over the incident, and he wasn't happy to see Akihiko still at his place.

As Haruki throws out Akihiko again, he levels with him: he can't go back to Ugetsu's house. Desperately needing a place to stay, he offers to be Haruki's ‘chore boy’ if that's what it takes. Akihiko went from ‘you can't help me’ to ‘please help me.’ Had Haruki heard those words sooner, he wouldn't be this upset; nevertheless, he agrees, deepening his existing inferiority complex.

This conflict is reflected in the bass-drum coordination: when Haruki was upset at Akihiko, the bass went off-sync, grabbing Ue’s attention. Walking home after the session, Haruki breaks down and admits his feelings of inferiority to Akihiko. Baffled, he responds: “A band would never work out with four geniuses.” Suddenly, it all made sense — after being constantly reminded how the role of a supporter is necessary, it didn’t click until this disastrous session. Haruki begins warming up to Akihiko — eventually, the bass and drums are in sync, which Mafuyu notices.

One night, as they watch the Obon fireworks show, Akihiko opens up to Haruki. He spoke about the situation with his roommate, never once saying his roommate was Ugetsu. Everything we already know, Haruki is only finding out. Akihiko seemed ready to put that relationship behind him, realizing how much chasing Ugetsu hurts. Confiding in Haruki meant Akihiko lowered his defenses — what Haruki wanted to begin with.

The Obon festival scene is much longer: there was a whole scene of Mafuyu meeting up with Ue that was omitted. Also, a whole scene of Mafuyu staying over at Ue’s when their jam session ran late. For this last one, it was better for Mafuyu to stay the night since Ue’s place was closer to school than his.

Earlier, I mentioned how the rearrangement/omission of events yields mixed results, alongside an example of it going wrong: these two scenes are examples of omissions that work in the film’s favor. I’m reluctant to refer to these as ‘cuts,’ as they made the OVA.

A plot point that would come much later was rearranged into an earlier sequence in the film, as the scene where it happens was omitted. That late session? Ue and Mafuyu walking home don’t talk about how the latter is on the verge of a lyric-writing breakthrough, but about staying over at Ue’s place. There were additional cuts made, but done so to fit a runtime; none are notable enough to highlight.

As Mafuyu is on the verge of finishing the lyrics, he felt a piece of the puzzle was missing. He sought aid from the same person who gave him his motif: Ugetsu. Watching him practice and talking with him after, Mafuyu found what he was seeking. Fast forward to the day of the competition, he, Ue, and Haruki went to see day one of the Countdown Fest Amateur Contest (CAC), which they’d entered as given. Akihiko had someplace he needed to be — it’s time to close his chapter with Ugetsu.

After the show, Haruki headed back to his place, pondering Mafuyu’s skepticism about him not having feelings for Akihiko. Sure, Haruki couldn’t just pretend he got over him, but in his eyes, Akihiko wasn’t interested. After being chewed out by Ugetsu, Akihiko waited by Haruki’s apartment, even though he had a key to the place. It would seem Akihiko began developing feelings for Haruki as he asked — or rather, pleaded — him not to go when Haruki needed to buy a lighter.

Day two of the competition, and given is set to take the stage. Mafuyu’s second song, Yoru wa akeru, felt tailor-made for Akihiko and Ugetsu: the only way the enigmatic singer could tell them that greener pastures lay ahead if they moved on was through music. Akihiko felt chills listening to it, his hands moving on autopilot. Ugetsu immediately caught how the song was about them — after all, he told Mafuyu he could use their predicament as inspiration. Ever the sharp individual, Ugetsu pegs Haruki as Akihiko’s new love interest, though how he reaches that conclusion is unknown.

After the show, Akihiko ran after Ugetsu to tie up loose ends. Contrary to what he suggested during their last encounter, Akihiko would still play violin. Even if he has fun playing drums, the music remains. That doesn’t mean his resolve waned — he was going to leave Ugetsu, and apologized for all the hurt over the years. Akihiko’s hand let go of Ugetsu’s, and reality sank in for him. As he reached towards a departing Akihiko with tearful eyes, looking just about ready to break, a flashback of Mafuyu came to his mind: “It’ll be okay. Everything will be all right.”

On Ugetsu Murata, one thing I found curious from his character data file, as portrayed in the manga, is how a soft rock song inspired him to get into music. How do we get to classical from there? He’d reminisce about listening to Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These Years,” calling it a beautiful moment, and how he’d be okay to die after being exposed to it. He’d chase that feeling ever since — “I hope that, at least, the music remains,” huh.

His description as a ‘prodigy’ irks me, not because the title doesn’t fit, but because it speaks to something insidious about society as a whole. It’s the ‘gifted kid’ thing all over again: I applied it to Ue in the TV anime and now to Ugetsu in the first movie. I have no reason to think Ugetsu hasn’t put in the work to be the violin master he is, despite numbered sequences of him practicing. But hey, he’s a ‘gifted kid,’ who got out of bed, picked up the violin, and won prizes all over, right?

He’s a man of contradictions: his fights with Akihiko only to welcome him back under his roof is the one many will catch, but there are subtle ones as well. When Mafuyu visited Ugetsu the second time, he believed he was looking for Akihiko, which prompted a glare that felt like a thousand daggers. When Mafuyu clarified how it was to see him practice, his demeanor rapidly changed: “(You’re looking for) me?”

Another, on the cut segment on how Akihiko fell for Ugetsu: the violinist was practicing, his emotional display so raw that Akihiko embraced him, both out of jealousy and pity. Ugetsu was overwhelmed at the sudden display of affection, hesitating to return the hug before finally doing so.

On the first example, “I’m not worthy of attention.” On the second, “I’m not worthy of affection.” Ugetsu definitely carries some degree of trauma, resulting in these feelings of inferiority amidst ones in which he’s extremely sure of himself. Once again, I reject his labelling as ‘toxic’ by very much the same argument I’ve made in the past — Ugetsu is anything but a flat character.

Akihiko moved out of Haruki’s place, started taking music more seriously, and even returned to school regularly. To prove he wasn’t all talk, he entered a violin competition, not out of spite for Ugetsu — who was among the judges — but for himself. Haruki was deeply moved: was this raw passion sleeping deep within Akihiko? Feeling overwhelmed, Haruki steps out, only for Akihiko to catch him by the riverbed.

All of these changes... Haruki caught up on the fact that Ugetsu was the one Akihiko fell for, so it made sense that maybe Akihiko was still chasing Ugetsu. Haruki had it all wrong, though; all of this was to become worthy of Haruki’s love.

A quick note: there’s a short, vocal-only version of Yoru wa akeru in the OVA. It’s a shame that this version isn't available outside of it. I would love for it to be released, or at the very least, an acoustic version of the song to be made available.

The given couples have formed, but what about the childhood friends? This is the story of Hiragi Kashima and Shizusumi Yagi.

Hiragi Mix & To The Sea are all one big film, originally released in parts in their home country. While they function as a single narrative, Western distribution marketed them as separate entries — Given films 2 and 3 — rather than as parts of one larger work. While both movies cover the same arc, the eponymous movie covers chapters one through twelve, whereas the final movie covers chapters thirteen through twenty.

Hiragi, a student at a different high school, shows up at Mafuyu's school, walking through the hallways like he's a man on a mission; he’s followed right behind by Shizusumi (Shizu). They’re looking for Uenoyama (Ue), and the matter’s serious enough for the duo to be there in person instead of, say, calling Mafuyu and asking him to make the connection. Fast forward to the afternoon, and they’re at the syh studio. Ue argues with Hiragi over a missed note, all while an uninterested Shizu toys around on the phone. Somehow, Hiragi starts bragging about how long his friendship with Mafuyu is, and this is relevant over a missed note, how…? It seems as if Hiragi dislikes Ue only because he’s dating his friend.

Hiragi hates how Ue acts like he’s God’s gift to the world.

Ue hates how Hiragi thinks only about himself.

Like repels like.

“Why did you agree to play with Hiragi’s band?” Mafuyu asks. Ue was impressed by Hiragi ever since he saw him play at the Countdown Fest Amateur Contest (CAC). syh beat every band, including given, to CAC’s top prize: a record deal. Unfortunately, their guitarist quit, and Hiragi wanted Ue until a suitable replacement was brought on board. Ue struggles to understand how Hiragi, the same guy who mocked him when they first met, wants him for syh, but when your playing skills net you a compliment from the lead of the winning band, does it matter? Not only that, Hiragi sought out Ue specifically to ‘try something’ with him.

After filming the MV for Straight, Ue runs across Haruki, who was on the guest list. Ue admits being jealous of Hiragi; even if Ue has fun playing for them, he wants his rise to fame to be with given. Haruki casually mentions how he got an offer from a producer he met at CAC, and Ue’s reaction picks Hiragi’s attention. He encourages them to seize the opportunity — when asked if he felt conflicted when a similar offer was presented to them, Hiragi answered that he didn’t.

One reading of this past interaction is as a foreshadowing of the contrast between Hiragi and Mafuyu. Ue, even as he felt his stomach turning, was ecstatic about the opportunity. When approached about the offer, Mafuyu wasn’t into it, choosing instead to “think about it later.”

Hiragi’s characterization gives me whiplash. When we first met him, he seemed shocked when he ran across Mafuyu in the street, who had dropped off the face of the Earth after his lover’s death. As Hiragi tries to make amends with Mafuyu, he first dismisses his grief, only to later monologue about wanting forgiveness. While he craves absolution from anyone, it's Mafuyu's forgiveness he wants most — something he never actually tells him. And now, he’s acting like a total brat?

I shouldn’t be shocked: the brief Hiragi/Mafuyu interactions on the TV anime hint at this behavior, but I chalked those up to how comfortable they felt around each other. Now, as Hiragi argues with Ue over petty stuff, it’s suggested he feels a duty to protect Mafuyu from… what, exactly? I lose track trying to understand their dynamic, and even more so trying to nail down what drives him. The story offers an explanation, but I’ll come back to this.

Hiragi’s passion for music isn’t entirely altruistic. Part of why he revived syh is to keep Shizu, the guy he likes, around. He’s gone along with whatever Hiragi wants ever since they were kids, despite looking uninterested. More importantly, when grief-overwhelmed Mafuyu cut contact with his old friends, Hiragi acutely felt this. He needed a shoulder to cry on, and Shizu was there to comfort him.

When Ue mentioned Mafuyu’s response to going pro to the syh boys, all gathered at a fast food place, Hiragi laughed at Ue’s expense — he really cannot help himself. The duo then explains how Mafuyu’s always been the type to think things over and not talk with anyone, as he’s afraid of making a mistake. Getting schooled by the childhood friends.

As they take the afternoon off from practice, which Ue wasn’t informed of, Hiragi lays his intentions bare, sharing a demo of an unfinished song the late Yuki Yoshida was working on. The new front wants to finish this, as he feels they wouldn’t be able to play Yuki’s songs once they got an official guitarist. But what does Ue have to do with this? Perhaps the duo trusts Ue because their childhood friend Mafuyu does. Being entrusted with something this personal, I shouldn’t have any reason to doubt their intentions, and yet I do. It’s one thing to appreciate Ue’s playing skills, but you’re asking Mafuyu’s current lover to play his ex’s songs…

Questioning why Hiragi didn’t finish this song, and equating Yuki’s singing skills with Hiragi’s — for which Ue got chewed out — he listens to the demo on the ride home with low expectations; he was blown away. In that moment, he understood why Hiragi mentioned he didn’t feel capable of doing that song justice.

Mafuyu needed someone to talk through his anxiety about going pro. He confides in Shizu, asking to meet up late at night. Mafuyu admits having never thought of going pro, whereas Shizu tagged along when Hiragi declared so. “Because you love Hiragi?” Mafuyu confronts him, only for Shizu to drop the pleasantries: “You’re scared, aren’t you?” In that moment, as Shizu explains his devotion to Hiragi, he shows resentment towards the former couple. Having to watch their relationship from a distance, and not having that kind of relationship with Hiragi, Shizu’s bitter, scornful words aimed straight at the heart of the issue. Before leaving, he offers these words: “If you can’t commit to making your life with the band, or to Ue, then for your own good: drop out now.”

By this point, the story has already established how Hiragi’s resolve differs from Mafuyu’s. But in case there was any doubt, Shizu too is the total opposite of Mafuyu. His determination is only rivaled by the strength of Mafuyu's ambivalence. Given Hiragi's headstrong approach to continue the band, I must wonder if it stems from either his admiration for Yuki, his love for Shizu, or simply Shizu's personality rubbing off on him. Shizu could even be uncharitably read as a ‘yes man,’ but later events show he’s anything but.

I struggle with reading characters whose intentions are so direct that I wonder if there’s something I’m missing. As such, I find Shizu an even bigger enigma than Mafuyu. Going over his profile — and to get my thoughts in order: he’s a foster kid. Presumably, he was passed around until he landed with the family who lived in the same neighborhood as Yuki, Mafuyu, and Hiragi. Shizu appears to live on his own, which would take a perfect storm of events for that to happen, from what I’ve read of the Japanese foster care system. The omission of detail may be deliberate, then — the author’s intent to not complicate matters.

He describes his world as ‘filthy,’ making him cynical and emotionally numb, seeing in Hiragi a light amidst the darkness. There’s no doubt Shizu cares deeply for Hiragi, but did he feel this way ever since they first met? That random act of kindness in pre-school was all it took? On the other hand, his interest in Hiragi may simply be carnal: “I want to defile him,” he monologues on his way home, prompted by Mafuyu questioning what Hiragi means to him. I genuinely don’t know what to think. I don’t want to accept that Shizu is purely a what-you-see-is-what-you-get character.

Inspiration struck for Ue as he pulled an all-nighter writing a guitar tab for the demo. Eager to show Hiragi, he couldn’t wait until studio time, and went to his school instead. Hiragi was taken aback, thinking of Yuki as he heard it — it’s not Ue’s sound, and that’s on purpose. That night, Ue and his sister, Yayoi Uenoyama, speak about what he’s doing over dinner. Explaining his uneasiness, he ties it to something his sister understands: painting. Finishing someone else’s incomplete song is like finishing an incomplete painting — you could paint over it, but it loses all of the original artist’s meaning. Yayoi equates it to art restoration: “You have to understand this Yuki person better than anyone else.”

That impression? “Self-confident, hedonistic, cool-headed, and yet there’s a sense of loneliness.” Ue continues composing, determined to see the song through, even if given has to take a backseat for now.

As Ue hears his sister describe what he’s doing as hellish, he realizes how Hiragi *cannot* finish this song as the love he feels for Mafuyu isn’t the same as Yuki’s. Little by little, I’m convinced the song choice is deliberate: out of everything Yuki wrote, Hiragi shares one he knew was Yuki’s love letter. Only someone who loves Mafuyu to the same degree can properly express those feelings.

Ue continues to be wowed by syh: Hiragi got the bass down to a demo he first heard two days ago, plus Shizu’s wrist control makes his drumming a great complement. Their popularity has merit, not just commercially, but artistically. Hiragi sets a deadline for the completion of Yuki’s song: their album release show. He also mentions an MV recording for their next single and wants Ue in it.

Mafuyu feels as if, in his words, “everyone is leaving me behind.” This feeling triggered the fight between him and Yuki all that time ago, and history seems to be repeating as Ue prioritizes his work with Hiragi. Everything is happening all at once, and Mafuyu needs someone to talk through the anxiety — evidently, Shizu didn’t help. Mafuyu heads over to Akihiko’s place.

Akihiko is resolute in his desire to make a living off music, whereas Mafuyu treats music as a hobby. What holds him back is the feeling that, if he goes pro, he could lose something again — Mafuyu lost Yuki to music, and doesn’t want to lose Ue also. Akihiko points out that syh has an upcoming gig, and that Mafuyu should go and see what it’s all about — he refuses.

Hiragi has an idea as to why Mafuyu feels the way he does. He may have been guilty of getting Yuki so hooked on music that he neglected Mafuyu. Hearing that, Ue realized how he was assuming Mafuyu would just come to their show, and he never asked how he felt about it. He’s so hooked up to music, just like Yuki was.

After dinner, Hiragi breaks down, coming to the same realization Ue does. Having Mafuyu hate him again over music is something he doesn’t want, and Shizu has had enough of lending his shoulder. Admitting to his feeling alienated, much like Mafuyu, Shizu accuses Hiragi of not being upfront about his intent to finish Yuki’s song and being in love with him. Hiragi had to correct the record; emotions ran high, and an impromptu confession was made.

Shizu wasn’t convinced, noting how Hiragi doesn’t know what he wants to happen next. He came in for a kiss, but Hiragi doesn’t return it — Shizu even suggests how love ‘normally’ involves sex. With a menacing look, he asks again: “What do you want to do? Your choice.” Still shocked about what just happened, Hiragi couldn’t respond, and Shizu left.

Going back to Hiragi’s characterization, consider this: brown-haired Hiragi partially dyed his hair blonde, whereas Yuki appears to be a natural blonde. And the three earrings? True, they’re not in the same place, but Yuki also had three earrings. As vain as it sounds, I’m not convinced by Hiragi saying he didn’t want anything romantic with Yuki — at best, he wanted his attention. This is how ‘Yuki’s special to me’ becomes ‘I want to be like Yuki.’

Depends on how you see it, he’s successful to a degree: Hiragi’s easygoing, mingles with everyone, and becomes quite adept at playing guitar. He'd get Yuki's musical attention through the band, but never the personal devotion that remained reserved for Mafuyu. In the end, he got what he wanted, at the cost of Mafuyu frequently giving him the cold shoulder — and already they argued over petty things!

The beginning of Hiragi Mix 9 reads to me as someone resigned they’ll never be the special one. Hiragi’s craving for attention means he’ll fall for anyone who gives it to him — first desperately seeking it from Yuki, then turning to Shizu, who made him feel like a god by following his every whim. As unfair as that reading is, watching Hiragi’s character develop throughout the TV anime and this film, it’s the only read I come up with.

At what point does admiration for someone turn into copying? Or even romantic feelings? Where do we draw the line when dealing with someone as emotional as Hiragi? It’s not that I have a problem with emotional characters — my read of Ugetsu shows that — but Hiragi’s level of turmoil exceeds even Mafuyu’s, and I grow frustrated by it. I’m convinced that, out of all of the Given cast, he’s the most underdeveloped; not a good look when this film focuses on you! Even worse, this comes straight from the source.

Akihiko and Haruki’s foreplay is interrupted when Ue drops by. He gave them tickets to syh’s show, and reminded Akihiko how given got an offer to go pro when he got jealous. Still, Mafuyu has to be on board — and Ue still treats him with kid’s gloves, as he’s unsure of what to do if luring Mafuyu with music isn’t working.

Hiragi skips school — he’d cried himself to exhaustion the night before. During his long recovery sleep, he dreamt of past moments with Shizu. Ue shares a newly tweaked demo on the band chat, which Hiragi takes his time getting to. When he does, he finally realizes what Yuki wanted to write: a completely smitten depiction of his ordinary, yet special, love for Mafuyu.

Hiragi knows this feeling.

Hiragi heads over to Shizu’s, despite it being the middle of the night. As he has a key to the place, he lets himself in, goes to Shizu’s bedroom, and sits atop him. “Do you understand what your action implies?” Shizu retorts, noticeably irked, but Hiragi is fully aware of what he’s doing. Circling back to a pre-school memory, the way Shizu made Hiragi feel needed, he’d become addicted to that feeling — even before Shizu began following him, Hiragi would drag him along. It’d evolve into romantic feelings: he wanted Shizu’s intense eyes to always be on him.

“Tell me you want me. I’ll give myself to you.” Hiragi says the words Shizu longed to hear, and he’s in disbelief: “You’re offering a sip of water to somebody dying of thirst in the desert…” Reassured that he can have his way, there isn’t even foreplay involved. And even so, Shizu still exhibits restraint: “Want me to stop?” Hiragi flips out: “Stop asking me over and over, you idiot!” Shizu grins widely. Even as he’s scared of the rough sex that’s about to happen, Hiragi notes how it’s rare to see Shizu smile. The next morning, Shizu reciprocates Hiragi’s feelings.

Ue noted how the band’s sound changed. He’s seen this before when Haruki and Akihiko started dating. Maybe it was the same for them? A blushing Hiragi denies there’s something between them, and sends off Ue to buy food — Shizu tags along. As Ue complains about Hiragi, Shizu listens uninterestedly. Ue becomes annoyed at Shizu’s lack of presence, calling him a ‘yes man’ and nothing more. He comes clean about their new relationship, and shrugs off how the two of them dating affects their music.

Shizu goes one step further: he declares how his commitment to music is serious, more so than Ue’s — referring to how he hasn’t convinced Mafuyu — and that he’s willing to sacrifice himself for Hiragi’s music. “That ‘suffering’ you guys do isn’t my jam. And that’s my strength.” Ue totally misread Shizu: he isn’t playing because Hiragi asked him to, but because he wants to.

An observation on the songs of this film: previously, Fuyu no Hanashi and Yoru wa akeru served the larger narrative; syh’s songs don’t. Maybe that’s the point, validating Ue’s initial read of ‘syh plays what’s popular,’ and yet, it’s still worth highlighting as part of the larger critique. I’m aware that this can put readers who follow the seiyu fandom on edge. Therefore, I want to clarify that what follows is not intended to criticize Hiragi’s voice actor, Fumiya Imai. He’s an actor paid to do a job — nothing else.

Starting with Straight, the song they play for the first MV. The first 45 seconds establish the type of music syh play. It's not hard to find the full version, as the intersection of fiction and reality meant singles were released through Sony's music division — leveraging the corporate connection between Sony Music and production committee member Aniplex. While anime singles aren't uncommon, the timing here is particularly apt: syh's first single after going pro gets released as an actual single, mirroring their fictional trajectory. If nothing else, reading it this way instead of chucking it to standard merchandising makes it interesting.

Now, onto the bad stuff: a gripe I have with a majority of songs featured in anime is how the featured half is the strongest part. Interested, I look for the full thing, and I come back disappointed. Unfortunately, Straight continues this trend. Outside of a bass and guitar solo that happens after the chorus, I get the impression Centimillimental could’ve written this in a week — and maybe I’m giving him too much time. Adding to that, the lyrics are sparse: a single verse and a chorus, repeated twice. Weaving this into the fiction of Given, Hiragi could’ve written this in a night after realizing how they don’t have anything for the first MV filming after winning CAC.

If there’s a deeper reading of the lyrics, tying it to themes within the series, I’m not seeing it. Even if I want to give it the benefit of the doubt, I can’t infer a meaning. Straight as a song is an acquired taste — and in its defense, I grew to somewhat like it after listening to it about fifty times.

Finally, Parade, a song written specifically for the film. Narratively, it’s inconsequential — there wasn’t an effort to weave its crafting into the story, with the depicted studio sessions exclusively focusing on composing and polishing Yuki’s song. I won’t count Hiragi Mix 14, covered on the final film, where there’s a brief sequence of Ue seeing a syh ad  — it could’ve been the first MV they filmed as far as I’m concerned!

If the novelty of Straight was that it could be read as not being standard merchandising, Parade doesn’t have this cover. If you’ll permit me a thought exercise in justifying it, the one aspect that makes sense to me revolves around given’s releases. While syh’s two singles stand in stark contrast to given’s six, the band got two songs in the film itself; this is something not done since the TV anime, which credits given for Fuyu no Hanashi and Maru tsuke, the ED. Perhaps the film staff planned for syh making a splash in the same way given did all those years ago? It’s not like Centimillimental wasn’t working: his projects kept him busy, and he continued collaborating with the production committee, writing songs even when there wasn’t any new project to push. I may be going off the deep end, but given what we have, that’s my rationale.

Parade as an actual song, though? It’s okay. Lyrically, it appears to be written from Hiragi’s point of view, much like Kizuato is from Mafuyu’s, though Parade is more metaphorical in its approach — it’d make sense if we account for the level of songwriting experience Hiragi has. The bridge has a chord progression that sounds like literal parade music, but I felt it created a jarring tonal shift. My vision of how such an instrumentation would go is My Chemical Romance’s Welcome to the Black Parade — it’s not a bridge, but instead an intro. And, if you want to use that motif in a bridge, it should come after establishing it in the intro. At the very least, I’d know to expect it.

Mafuyu has never been to the sea. Yuki wants his first time there to be with him, so he brings him along. They’re seen walking along the shore, and Mafuyu gets bored out of his mind. He wants to leave, but Yuki wants to enjoy the scenery and asks for more time. Mafuyu insists, saying how he’ll remember this shared moment; Yuki assures him he’ll forget everything that happened in this moment.

Saeko Yoshida — Yuki’s mom — is in Mafuyu’s room. Yuki ordered a boxful of cup noodles, which arrived the day after his death. Saeko took it as a sign that, despite what happened, he was thinking about tomorrow. She describes Yuki’s psychological state as “the kind of guy who’d die in the most typical game of chicken,” and Mafuyu as being “his anchor.” Before leaving, she wants to leave Yuki’s guitar, his ‘memento,’ in Mafuyu’s care; when he refuses, she corrects herself, saying how she can’t bear the burden of holding onto something dear to her son.

Mafuyu and Yuki are in the swings of a playground. As he hums melodically, Yuki points out that Mafuyu’s stomach has a ‘hole.’ He’s bleeding through his cardigan — strangely, it doesn’t hurt. “The hole in your heart, while it may get smaller, it’ll never fully close. That’s why I was inside that hole and—” Yuki’s speech is interrupted as Mafuyu wakes up from his dream.

“How long have I not been singing? How did I even sing?” Mafuyu’s internal turmoil sets the scene for the finale…

Yuki’s story is told through the people who cared for him the most. He was neither evil nor a saint, yet everyone spoke highly of the departed. On the surface, this creates the problem of unreliable narration: why should we trust what’s being said about someone when they have their own story to tell? The omission of detail is deliberate, as the author explores the various ways people cope with grief. We see this with Mafuyu — his aloofness used as a coping mechanism, his withdrawal from his circle of close friends, and what appears to me as lethargic behavior, despite bursts of motivation.

Saeko offers a ‘realistic’ take on Yuki, yet it cannot be taken at face value — she’s the one most prone to obfuscation of the facts to cope with her son’s loss. On the other side of the spectrum is the detachedness of Hiragi. For someone who says he admired Yuki, conversations that involved him were almost matter-of-fact, almost as if Hiragi didn’t care about Yuki’s passing. Hiragi's apparent detachment might make his perspective seem more objective than the emotionally invested accounts of others; I’d warn against viewing his take as the most accurate, as detachment is another coping mechanism, perhaps the most insidious of all if left unchecked. This may seem harsh given that Hiragi kept the syh name out of respect, but his detachment should still be considered when looking through the lens of this trope.

Yuki is both gentle & in touch with his emotions, but also reckless & detached — it depends on who you ask. They can both be true at the same time, and even so, the unknown lingers. At risk of sounding like a broken record: if Mafuyu and Shizusumi are enigmas when looked through their particular lenses, Yuki’s the final boss, even if it was to make a point about grief and coping. All of this made me reflect on the loved ones who passed away and how they are remembered — there are both Hiragis and Mafuyus — and how I don’t fear death as much as I fear how people would remember me after I’m gone.

Have I made a positive impact on the world, or at the very least those around me? Will my memory be as ephemeral as the days at the funeral house? Would I even be remembered in an increasingly grim reality? These thoughts keep me up at night… but seldom prompt me to action. The concept of ‘relationships’ utterly exhausts me, as they become ever more high-maintenance. People mean well, but I’m almost always giving up my time with no real choice in the matter. But were I to become assertive, they get put off — in this give-and-take, I often feel as if I’m trying to have my cake and eat it, wishing it could all be easier.

Maybe I'm just selfish. At times, I don’t even know who I am…

After an eight-hour session at the studio, Uenoyama (Ue) noticed some ominous texts from Mafuyu: “I’m lonely. I want to see you.”  Worried that something had happened, Ue rushes over to Mafuyu’s place. He’s still bad at following up with people, and Ue tells him off — again — about replying on time. It’s not like he can stay mad at Mafuyu: he only wanted time with his boyfriend. Ue, feeling bad about how playing for syh has taken all his free time, suggests going to the studio to practice. “Not right now,” Mafuyu responds elusively. As Ue tries to gauge where Mafuyu is coming from with his hesitation, the alarm sounds — Ue has to leave in ten if he’s to catch the last train. He offers Mafuyu a ticket to the show he’s been preparing for, but Mafuyu steps back, rejecting it. As much as Ue wants to know why, there’s no time: he has to leave now.

Shit.

Ue leaves Mafuyu alone… again.

Shit…

Back home, Ue locks himself up in his room, and doubt seeps in. Is given going to survive Mafuyu rejecting music? Should he not have agreed to play for syh? Will the past two months have been for naught? If only he could be as devoted as Shizusumi (Shizu) is to Hiragi — Ue needs only but to emulate him… or so he thought. He reluctantly agrees with Shizu: “I’ll never be like him.” The more Ue ponders the situation, the angrier he becomes; he then realizes that Mafuyu is preoccupied with something. Akihiko’s suggestion to lure Mafuyu in might have some merit…

Shogo Itaya, Ue’s classmate from the soccer club, runs into Mafuyu one morning while walking to school. He brought up the career survey: with the submission deadline nearing, he was curious if Mafuyu had filled it out. “What about you, Itaya?” Mafuyu asks evasively. Itaya’s path appears set, as he got an offer to go pro in soccer. Mafuyu, still at a crossroads, can only respond in awe at how everyone knows what they’re doing after graduation, though Itaya points out that not everyone knows…

Just a note on minor characters throughout the story: I believe characters like Ryu Ueki, Waka Kurihara, Itaya, and Ayano Kasai don’t have a real role, even if the last two have a small moment that briefly highlights them. When a writer creates a name and profile for a character, it’s unfortunate how rarely these details are actually used, and sometimes not at all.

What do we know about them? Ueki, Itaya, Kasai, and Kurihara are Ue’s classmates. We have two jocks, a girl with an unrequited crush, and a gossiper. Other than that, there’s not much else. They were somehow promoted from background characters to minor ones, but only by barely meeting the criteria. I get the feeling Kizu created them simply to give her main character friends and make the world feel more populated. Given the shallow development of these supporting characters, all of the main characters should've been handled like Akihiko. This may sound wild, but hear me out: outside the interactions with his teammates, and later, his romance with Haruki, the only other person Akihiko spoke to was Ugetsu. He’d be a terrible main character on paper, and somehow he pulled it off in the first film. I’d rather have that than underdeveloped characters.

A crumpled ticket is inside Mafuyu’s shoe box at school, the same one Ue tried to give him the night before. Mafuyu reflexively closed the box shut after realizing what the item was. Ryo Ueki comes down the stairs, accompanied by Ue. Ueki asks Itaya to let the teacher know they’ll be late for the school assembly. Ue stares at Mafuyu with dagger-like eyes — he lowers his head.

The only thing Ue can do is to leave Mafuyu be. When he’s unsure about something, talking is pointless. Ue is determined to show Mafuyu what life on stage is like; if he needs time to think, this should be a good enough answer. His work for syh doesn’t end with the debut show, but continues for some time, presumably. The inferiority complex, the guilt… none of that matters — the only thing that matters is the music, and the path Ue set for himself. Still, the question remains: will Mafuyu attend…?

Working with pros means better studio access: when Ue needs the studio earlier than scheduled, Hiragi can arrange it without additional fees. Ue had an early set practice and got additional writing done for Yuki’s song. When the syh boys get to the studio — alongside the obligatory ‘Hiragi teases Ue’ moment — Ue suggests altering one of the guitar parts in the song to make Hiragi stand out more. Really, if it were up to Ue, songs would continuously get minor tweaks. He’s a perfectionist at heart, but I suppose that’s just all prodigies. The set is finished, and what had been called ‘Yuki’s song’ needs a name — Ue takes the lead.

Haruki meets with the promoter who offered his band an opportunity to go pro, to keep the trail warm, as it were. He levels with him: it’s an opportunity that’s being given serious consideration, and one of the members is still on the fence. As this is something Haruki wants everyone to be on board with, he’d like to wait. Haruki never mentions Mafuyu by name, nor did the promoter ask who was the one hesitating. The man agreed that if everyone wasn’t on board, there was no point. He calls himself a fan of the band — while there may be a degree of truth, it may be just platitudes, as he gauges how serious Haruki was. Later, both Yatake and Akihiko agree with giving Mafuyu space, even if the latter is jealous of how Ue takes to the stage.

Back to Mafuyu — on one of the many trips back home, he ponders what he wants to do. On his future, on the upcoming syh show. He’s happy Ue invited him, but doesn’t want to go.

“I want to go.”

“I don’t want to go.”

The phone rings. It’s Hiragi, who’s down at the parking lot: “Let’s hang out!” Hiragi thanks Mafuyu for lending Ue to him, and apologizes for taking up so much of his time. Still coy about what he wants to do — and why Ue was necessary to do ‘that’ in particular — Hiragi passes it off as him being selfish, and echoes Ue in that he wishes for Mafuyu to attend. To that end, he gives him a special ‘invitation’ ticket to the show; in contrast, Ue’s ticket is a general admission one. Both give access to the venue, but an ‘invitation’ one presumably gives backstage access? This detail becomes relevant later.

By this point, Mafuyu’s regression to insecurity gnaws at me. The latter part of the Hiragi Mix arc — which I think should’ve been called something different, but that’s a whole other conversation — is written as a solution looking for a problem. At best, it’s written with an incorrect focus; while it’s normal for teenagers to feel anxiety about the future, taking it to the degree of ‘main conflict,’ and establishing an aspect of Mafuyu’s personality late in the story, I think it’s ill-advised. In its place, what if the conflict was over Ue spending so much time on Hiragi’s band? What if this led to a falling out between Mafuyu and Hiragi / Shizu? What if this led to friction between Mafuyu and Ue? Maybe conflict just isn’t for Mafuyu, especially after what happened to Yuki, but that ‘head-dive first’ personality Mafuyu is described as having several times throughout the story — like with the spontaneity of Fuyu no Hanashi’s lyrics — is not on display here, which puts the whole thing into question. It should be displayed in more aspects other than music.

Ayano Kasai, a girl in Ue’s class, appears worried over Mafuyu, though they’ve never spoken before. Nevertheless, she attempts to make conversation. She’s aware that Ue and Mafuyu are dating, and long since accepted the fact that Ue will never return her feelings; now she cheers from the sidelines. Ueki walks by and directly asks whether Mafuyu made up with Ue — Kasai tried to be polite, avoiding saying it in that manner, and was shocked at the brazenness. Mafuyu deflects: “Did you two decide on your career paths?” Kasai’s answer is going to college with no real plan. Ueki hasn’t figured it out either, and assures Mafuyu that people like Ue and Itaya are not the norm.

Kasai’s advice for Mafuyu? Keep moving forward. Don’t overthink. It’ll turn out better than he thinks. As Mafuyu takes the ticket Ue put in his shoe locker, something shifts: for the first time, his heart overrules his head. Still hesitant, but a small step towards the future he wants.

The day of the concert, Mafuyu worked up the courage to get to Shibuya Station at least, but his mind yet again took over. He spots a familiar face, Ugetsu Murata, and they catch up over lunch. Ugetsu’s been living in New York ever since he received an offer from an orchestra over the Pacific and is only back in Japan to gather his belongings. He plans to live there for at least two years — what will happen after that is unknown. By this point, Mafuyu has met every type of person: those who are confident in their path, those still trying to figure things out, and those in between.

Mafuyu confides in Ugetsu about his paralysis while others surge ahead, caught between yearning and terror, with today’s show representing a point of no return. "That… changes things." Ugetsu takes the lead towards the live venue, despite Mafuyu's protests. When he manages to stop Ugetsu, he pointedly asks: “What exactly are you afraid of?” Mafuyu reiterates his dilemma — how it’s a choice between either music or Ue, with the show being the catalyst. “There’s no going back either way. Whether you choose or not, everything is gonna change beyond this point.” Ugetsu notes how, throughout all of Mafuyu’s turmoil, he hasn’t mentioned how Ue feels, not even once; what does he think about Mafuyu’s dilemma? He meekly responds: “Yeah, but that’s what I’m afraid of…”

Once at the live venue, Ugetsu suggests going to the front. Before Mafuyu even has a chance to object, he gets swept by the crowd —  “it’ll be okay.” The same words Mafuyu told Ugetsu when he couldn’t move forward… he returns them to Mafuyu. As Hiragi rallies the crowd, Mafuyu remains lost in thought: “I’m scared. But Hiragi and Uenoyama want me to hear this song. Stand up straight. I need to properly listen.” Hiragi then introduces the song that he, Ue — and Yuki — want Mafuyu to listen to.

“Umi e.”

Memories of Yuki start flooding in. Tears overwhelm Mafuyu. “I’ve found him… he was gone, and I thought I’d never see him again. I found Yuki… he remains unchanged in this little song.” Reflecting on Ue’s actions, Mafuyu continues: “He said it so bluntly, and gave me that crumpled-up ticket… while keeping this in his heart. This whole time… he was trying to give me this gift.”

The rock ballad spouts themes of love, parting, and remembrance. It’s only apt that the song is played at a slower speed — Ue made the right call holding back on the guitar play. Though I find it hard to suspend disbelief on how a new band was able to get such an arrangement of pianos and violins for the song, I have to hand it to Centimillimental — the arrangement is spectacular. I haven’t felt chills listening to a song from the series since Fuyu no Hanashi, and it made me tear up just as Mafuyu did listening to it. It truly comes across as the love letter it purports to be, with the teaming up of two men whom Mafuyu loves the most — and they love him too — to deliver something special. This is music at its most beautiful. Gosh, I’m tearing up writing this…

The show continues after Umi e, with syh playing Straight right after. Mafuyu comes to a realization: choosing music over love or vice versa is a false dichotomy. True, the past isn’t guaranteed, but neither is the future; all he can do is live in the moment. Right now, he wants to be on that stage next to Ue so badly that he can taste it. These feelings of frustration will carry him forward.

After the show, Ue reflects on everything that happened leading up to Umi e. “Even if he was incomplete, I got to return Yuki to Mafuyu. I still don’t know much about Yuki — I just had a burning passion for that song.” Ue helped deliver closure to both syh & Mafuyu, not to mention proving he has what it takes to make it in the world of professional musicians. Mafuyu busts into the green room, making a beeline towards Ue: “I wanna sing! I want to play music with you! Forever! I promise you won’t regret it!” Ue was lost, wondering what this was all about, until it clicked: Mafuyu *wants* to go pro, with Ue by his side.

Two months have passed since the show. given went pro, Ue tells his family about his wish to pursue music seriously while continuing his post-secondary education, and Mafuyu puts even more of himself into the music. Ue is offered back-up guitarist for syh again, which he accepts. Hiragi issues a challenge to a distraught Mafuyu: “If you don’t like it, you’d better make music good enough to steal him back from me.” Ever the gentle, sensitive soul, Mafuyu doesn’t have the competitive nature Hiragi has.

Mafuyu gifts Kasai his band’s single — a new arrangement of Fuyu no Hanashi with Ue on backing vocals — as thanks for helping him. She insists on paying for it, making this his first-ever sale. Shortly after, given performs that same song in the same venue syh played months ago:

Given’s short stories, Strawberry Swings, were adapted out of order. Divided into four chapters, the first one was covered between the TV anime and the final film, followed by chapter two, in which Saeko Yoshida gives Yuki’s guitar to Mafuyu. The swing set dream setting is Strawberry 4, and the one coming just before Mafuyu’s graduation is a modified version of Strawberry 3.

I won’t question why it was adapted out of order without solid proof that it wasn’t published in Cheri+, but the retooled Strawberry 3 comes across as an afterthought. Its importance is notable, as this is where Mafuyu expresses his gratitude to Ms. Yoshida for giving him Yuki’s guitar — through it, Mafuyu found a way to express himself in a way that comes naturally. Yet the director and the series compositor apparently couldn’t work out where to fit this sequence, adding it arbitrarily just before the graduation scene.

After the graduation ceremony’s over, Ue and Mafuyu go to a seaside town on a date. Before the day ends, they walk by the shore — just like how Mafuyu did with Yuki years ago. With no trash cans in sight and having eaten too many skewers, they needed to be thrown away. Ue loses to Mafuyu in rock-paper-scissors and is tasked with finding one. While waiting, Mafuyu receives a call from Ugetsu.

After a brief catch-up, Mafuyu tells Ugetsu about something he discovered from his journey since they last spoke. “I hope that, at least, the music remains” — these were Ugetsu’s words back when he was in the middle of his tumultuous relationship with Akihiko. Mafuyu didn’t understand what he meant by that back then, but after ‘finding’ Yuki, he now does. Everyone he loves and cares for is present in the music, where they’re at their most vulnerable — just as he is when he sings. This realization is what helps Mafuyu move forward.

At the end of the movie, Mafuyu proposes that he and Ue should have sex when they return, eliciting a reaction not dissimilar to when Mafuyu first confessed. I don’t believe I’ve talked about Uenoyama throughout all of this, so it’s only proper to dedicate some words to his characterization, especially so when some readers comment about how Kizu ‘hates him.’

I have my reservations with some of her choices, some of which I’ve touched upon here. Yet that one thought I don’t share, and I think it’d take a look at how Uenoyama evolves throughout the story to prove that sentiment wrong. Let’s go back to the beginning: he goes from being a cynic — not just about music, but life itself — to someone who aspires to become somebody by the end. The earlier part is easy to forget due to time: the anime aired in 2019, and counting the Cheri+ releases, the gap is even greater. This highlights some readers' inability to see the broader context. Uenoyama himself states how he’s been a mess ever since he first met Mafuyu, and it’s at the very least believable how this journey, to him, can be read as someone finding himself.

It also stems from a myopic view of the many manifestations love takes. If Uenoyama didn’t care for Mafuyu, why would he agree to finish Umi e, a song whose nature he understood, especially considering who wrote it? He could’ve walked out ever since Hiragi made the proposition, but he didn’t. Going further back, we see throughout the series that Uenoyama consistently puts aside his own needs for people he cares about, and Mafuyu is one such individual. The guitar classes, helping compose Yoru wa akeru, every time Mafuyu had a traumatic reaction to something which reminded him of Yuki — Uenoyama was there through it all. It takes a special kind of resilience to put your needs aside for that special someone.

A cynical reading might suggest Uenoyama pities Mafuyu, but if those instances are not manifestations of love, then I don’t know what love is.

That’s it from me. See you next month soon-ish!

34 min read

Chapters

1. It All Started With a Phone Tone

2. Hello World

3. Face…mash?

4. Chirping Bird

5. War Has Changed

6. A Confession

7. Consequences

8. The (Alt) Right Rises

9. For Sale

10. Dead Bird

11. Masterful Gambit, Sir

12. What Now?

Last year, I was on the verge of a mental breakdown.

I’ve felt very irritable towards anything and anyone. While in that state of mind, I’m prone to lashing out, and some friends who are dear to me got the short end of the stick, unfairly so. After one too many instances, I realized I needed to step away, lest I dig myself even deeper into this hole I’m in. And I did, renouncing Discord for some time while I got my act together.

I have a childhood memory of there being serious talks of putting me on Ritalin, an ADHD medication. My mom objected, and perhaps my dad did as well. Thirty years after the fact, after I asked to be put on antidepressants and had been taking them for some time, I told my psychiatrist about this memory, wanting to confirm whether the professional’s theory from back in the day had any merit, whether I met the criteria to have an ADHD diagnosis. I felt my mind wander, unfocused — or hyper-focused, if it is something that interests me. It can be a blessing or a curse, but I was more on the latter end, not only in my day-to-day, but at work as well.

He agreed. I got the official diagnosis and was placed on medication to treat it, perhaps something I should’ve been on long ago.

Some time into the treatment, I felt a clarity of mind I’ve never had before, certainly not by forcing myself into a specific state. It was at this point that I reflected on all of this technology supposedly designed to “connect” us. It began to feel like being locked up in a prison, a thought I didn’t enjoy whatsoever. As it relates to Discord, I didn’t like it having such a strong grip on my attention. The sentiment extends to social media in general, but as I’d discover, microblogging sites such as Bluesky are harder for me to give up. Friends who wanted to keep tabs on me could reach me through their direct messaging function until I felt ready to “come back.”  If it wasn’t for the medicine and all that serious pondering, I would’ve never realized how being this accessible, how anyone can snatch my attention away from what I must or want to do, isn’t good for me.

And it isn’t good for you either, dear reader.

I’ve been pondering making a post on the current state of social media ever since. While there was already something nagging at me, I didn’t have the words to describe what I was feeling. The state of online communities has been bleak for some years: we’re more polarized, conversations are more toxic, and everyone’s on edge. We let tech moguls take what’s wonderful about the internet and homogenize it, commoditize it & monopolize it, all while keeping us “engaged” by making us upset — the Fox News business model.

Join me down memory lane as I reminisce about my history on the internet. Hopefully, by the end of it, I have made my point.

Coqui.net was a dial-up service provided by Telefonica de Puerto Rico (PRTC). These ads ran on local television in the late 90s, before the government of Governor Rossello Sr. sold the public utility. Today, it runs under Claro Puerto Rico.

As someone who grew up sheltered, all I yearned for were communities that shared the same interests as me. Back then, much like today, I was into video games and anime. There wasn’t internet access at the many houses I lived in throughout my childhood. I don’t know if Mom thought the $15/month dial-up subscription was expensive, or if she didn’t see the point. I wouldn’t let that stop me; whenever I borrowed a computer with internet access or “borrowed” dial-up credentials to use with mine, I was glued for hours, much to the detriment of Mom’s power utility bill. My real-life friend circle wouldn’t have people with shared interests until around 2005, so these communities became my refuge. Looking back, Mom’s attempts to control my screen time, back when the internet was less advanced, were done with my benefit in mind. Ironically, I now lament how much social media controls us all. Not even she was spared: she’s glued to Facebook whenever she has idle time…

To conclude this short back-to-the-present thought, have I tempered my social media usage? I’d say no. Most of the platforms I got out of were because of principle, not out of a genuine effort to leave this technological prison behind. Though it’s not all a worthless effort — I learned to aggressively manage my notifications. If those are the things that cause me to get distracted, then those must go, permitting me to tend to things at my own pace, in my own terms.

Humans are social creatures ever since we were nomads — we needed each other for friendship, companionship, and, above all, survival. How is this relevant to the digital age? Well, millennia have passed since, and we still need each other, even with this greater push towards independence. Don’t worry, I don’t intend to get into sociology in detail to make my point.

Online communities date as far back as Usenet, maybe earlier if we consider any precursors. It was way past its prime by the time I first got online, and all I know about it is second-hand. But this story of my presence on social media begins with Myspace, the first site I made an account on. That is, if we’re not considering chat rooms and message boards to be “social media” as it’s commonly understood today. I’d like to claim that I knew of Friendster, but I’ll admit I’m not entirely sure.

A thing many teenagers face is peer pressure, and I was not above it. I made an account on Myspace because my friends were there; you want to belong, and you do what the others do. The platform itself was fun: the level of customization it permitted was unlike anything at that scale — we’re talking about a site that, at its most popular, saw 115 million monthly visitors globally. I got my hands dirty with basic HTML, though my skills wouldn’t get to the point where I’d write custom CSS for my profile’s theme. Many profiles had very loud themes and Blingee GIFs all over, but I preferred dark, minimalist ones. Instead of relying on ready-made stuff, I could create graphics that appealed to my sensitivities using what I’ve learned from my Photoshop dabbling. Ah, that feather logo is starting to feel nostalgic…

While the design aspect of Myspace deeply interested me, the social aspect less so. Again, I grew up sheltered, and the social dynamics largely eluded me. To many, I look indifferent to anything or anyone — I still do, to an extent. There was real anxiety of ruining a relationship in real life over a spot in your top friends list, even over rankings. Sounds ridiculous in hindsight, but ruined relationships over social media didn’t decrease; they went upwards — hell, it happened to me.

Details of the falling out are hazy, but I recall this person posting on either their blog or their bulletins about our falling out and engaging in character assassination: how I was a horrible person, and no one from their circle should speak to me. It was amusing, to say the least. It was there that I first witnessed someone being “terminally online,” a term often used in jest, yet it unironically applies to them. We never made up; if they wanted me out of their life, I wouldn’t let the door hit me on my way out.

I went further into my cocoon. I’ve maybe interacted with ten people outside my circle at most, including notable people. However, I tried to be cautious with this latter group, as it could quickly lead to a parasocial relationship. A good thing about the days when the internet wasn’t in your pocket, or everywhere for that matter, is how social media sites stayed on the PC. Once you shut it down, that was it — goodbye, see you tomorrow, or whenever.

The fastest way for a social media platform to lose its appeal is when parents and older family members start joining. It was true then, but it’s more… nuanced today. When Myspace went through this phase, Facebook began gaining popularity among computer-savvy millennials, myself included. Signups were limited to people with an educational e-mail, which made the young platform appealing as it was locked to the rest of the world — but that wouldn’t last long. The largest cohort of millennials was of college age by the late aughts, and a large portion of them aren’t strangers to social media. It was a demographic that was hungry for something new; the meteoric rise of Facebook meant many left their Myspace profiles behind in favor of the social network’s offering.

A feature that would become key not just for Facebook, but for platforms that came after, was putting Myspace’s bulletins central stage, in what came to be known as the News Feed. It killed user-customizable profiles in favor of design uniformity, something I still lament to this day. And yet, it works for what came next: the social network’s rise coincides with the increased interest in consumer smartphones after the iPhone release. Zuckerberg wanted his site to be mobile-friendly, and his bet paid off. Myspace couldn’t catch up — they were the turtle in this race, and the hare is two miles ahead. They saw some success with artists looking to put their music online, and eventually moved in that direction. Yet amidst all the confusion caused by the rapid pace of technology, it’d try different things, but none that would save it from irrelevancy. What Myspace did to Friendster, Facebook was doing to them. The site still exists today, but it’s not the same site I used during its heyday — a shell of its former self.

In 2008, during one of my computer science classes, the professor gave a lecture on Twitter. Part of the syllabus was dedicated to getting students familiar with these new digital platforms; as such, he assigned us to open accounts there. It was a whole different ball game from Facebook: it was mobile-friendly ever since its inception — in addition to the website, users could post, or “tweet,” by texting to an address unique to their account on the platform. The downside was that you’re limited to 140 characters. The specific count is arbitrary, but consider how text messages in those days were limited to 160 characters before the message got split. Presumably, the devs accounted for some wiggle room to not break up the message — or the system.

Blogs were all the rage, with platforms like WordPress and Wix being favorites with people unfamiliar with web development. It’s here where Twitter saw one use case: sharing links to larger write-ups. You can even call early Twitter an RSS feed with a social component — it effectively replaced it for this type of use.

But I didn’t see the point. I didn’t have a blog; there was no use case for me past classwork. I had some conversations, followed some active accounts, and even caught the eye of some notable people, but I was nowhere near active on the platform. In 2015, I deleted that account in favor of another I opened some years earlier, and through which I got hooked on Twitter. It’s funny how the things I go to bat for, I often had an unfavorable view of at first. I’d call it a trend, but I’ll push back on that characterization, as my media intake isn’t based solely on spite.

After being quite acid of the concept of blogging, I’d eventually open one on Tumblr. It’s a curious case, how it made blogging accessible by stripping blogs down to their most essential features, making it less intimidating. It also helps that, unlike WordPress, its interpretation of what a blog is was looser, more akin to how LiveJournal sees journaling. Perhaps inspired by Twitter’s “retweet” feature, Tumblr had “reblogs” — same concept, but with blog posts. There were accounts whose sole output was reblogs, and all the different online fandoms at the time quickly took to the platform. Throughout participation in the community, I took an interest in Call of Duty-themed blogs and even joined one of them as staff.

Looking back, one of the factors that led to my increased usage of Twitter was the sizable COD community there. I was among fellow players, YouTubers, and, of course, developers and Activision staff. It wasn’t all fun and games: I needed material for the blog, so I followed as many notable people as I could. One such follow was CharlieINTEL, a blog founded by Peter, Victor Vallejo, and Keshav Bhat. Primarily a COD news aggregator, it’d eventually expand its media reach to cover multiple games. Fellow Twitter addict Keshav ran the platform’s socials most of the time and ensured anyone familiar with COD knew about CI. It remained a three-man operation with the occasional collaborator until the Dexerto purchase in 2018 — Peter and Victor stepped down, while Keshav moved on to the new owner. I’m amazed how outlets I used to follow for COD news over a decade ago are still at it, still going strong.

I admit I’m not a saint; I enjoy a little bit of trolling. My early Twitter years were full of those, especially interacting with COD detractors. I think the reason behind my demeanor was that the communities I spent time in were full of edgy vibes.

Under the handle “Kanaye,” I used to frequent the G4 Forums’ off-topic board, or OT as we (lovingly) called it. It was a special place with an equally special group of people — you could tell there was something there when even the moderators who were supposed to keep us in check joined in on the naughty fun. There was an unspoken agreement between all: we were all adults, and we could handle a little heat, as long as it didn’t get nasty. Everyone got made fun of, and we were all equal in that regard. For most observers, it was an intimidating place, and if you had thin skin, we’d eat you alive. Survive, and you’d become one of us. Our bond, a trial by fire, worked like that.

A memory I have of those days: I was reluctant to disclose where I lived, and a fellow forumite who went as “D_Dan” took notice. Out of nowhere, I was assigned a random place where I lived: Cambodia. The joke caught on, becoming a jab at the messed-up things third-world countries did to get online, and I was the embodiment of it. I never took offense to it; instead, it helped me come out of my shell. I even played along, saying once how “I have to get up a coconut tree to get wifi.” It was offensive humor — edgy humor — but it was our humor.

It was a transition period: some time after one of the mods’ unfortunate passing, I stopped visiting OT. I passed from being a forumite to becoming another yapping person on social media.

Even today, I like some bite in the online communities I’m in. And yes, that statement is made being aware that some jokes made back then would deeply offend me today. The common one aimed at LGBTQ+ people was that queer people are made fun of solely because they’re queer. We’ve made significant progress since, but perhaps at too great an expense. Online communities today feel too sanitized, and you’re often walking on eggshells. Personally, hearing a Discord server described as “the best place on the internet” immediately raises red flags.

An old adage states that, when something is posted online, it’s there forever — though I’m no longer sure about that. I was particularly lively during E3 presentations, often coming to Microsoft’s defense… not only did it age like milk, but little did I know those posts would be used against me. The online discourse at the time got angrier, and people even looked for dirt in old posts, worringly so. There’s a, in my opinion, mistaken belief that people can’t grow beyond their unsavory past, and how widespread the sentiment is frustrates me. When some started replying and quoting my old posts to “dunk” on me, I knew I had to do something. The first mass tweet wipe happened around this time, and I only remember it as I lost all of the original Persona 5 live commentary I did under the cringiest hashtag I’ve come up with.

I’ve said and done things I’m not proud of — we all have, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise to protect someone’s fragile ego. Moving past that speaks to one’s mental fortitude and maturity; it’s a kind of strength. I learned how I needed to watch what I said the hard way, although there’ll be instances in which I didn’t follow my own advice. Still, old posts shouldn’t be indicative of how someone I’ve never spoken to should treat me.

I believe there’s a correlation between the poisoning of online spaces and the rise of the alt-right over the past decade. These elements, accumulated over the years, were exacerbated by the first Trump presidency. It was the era of “owning the libs,” “drinking liberal tears,” and similarly bad-faithed statements, which were all the rage. I did my best to stay out of it  — look, I came here to tweet about games and anime. But I couldn’t; I was an unwilling bystander to the change about to come.

The Republican Party in the United States, which by and large represents the conservative movement, underwent an evolution during the past decade, and that’s not even considering Trump. The seeds of reactionary politics were always there, though the GOP of the time didn’t know how to best plant them, even with men like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly writing the playbook. The election of Barack Obama was enough to upset some members within the GOP to start what became known as the Tea Party movement. They’ll say their purpose was ensuring fiscal conservatism, a sympathetic argument to those who saw the signature legislation of the Obama administration, the Affordable Care Act, as a huge waste of money and a government overreach. However, I’d argue one of their major successes was pushing the GOP farther to the right. And those seeds I spoke about? Those started getting harvested, and the public was scarily receptive to it. The age of the culture war was about to begin.

Fast forward some years, and politicians began openly embracing conspiracy theories. And so were their followers. Birtherism, Gamergate, Pizzagate. It’s in human nature to share findings with others. Facebook was very much a mass medium at this point. Those more prone to share theories that are demonstrably false when given about five seconds of thought were, by and large, the older generations, who didn’t take to social media as millennials did and now, the early cohort of generation alpha who are coming of age.

How someone can easily be fooled, I saw this firsthand — my father wanted to borrow my computer skills and my debit card to contribute to some televangelism effort. I refused, even with him reimbursing me. I wasn’t going to entrust an entity I don’t trust with my financial information. I also wasn’t going to help him throw his own money away, either. I’ve been online for around 15 years, and I’ve seen stuff. That was equivalent to me receiving a communication from a suspicious “Nigerian Prince” who wanted to “put me in his will.”

But humankind is frustratingly stubborn. Already poisoned by mainstream conspiracies and right-wing talking points, conservative followers adopted a myopic worldview of how everything in life is a “you versus me.” The alt-right and its battalion of charlatans, through tenacity, effort, and lots of patience, have made it so that their point of view is the point of view of many in society. What’s worse, I get the appeal: life sucks, and nothing’s going well — who’s at fault for that? Instead of thinking about how the rich and powerful have them in the position they’re at right now, men like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon placed the target on, say, immigrants. The US, no longer a melting pot, but a heritage by and for white people.

I’m not naïve enough to think well-meaning conservatives who went down the drain can come back. The average American media diet consists of drip-fed rage via Fox News’s primetime slot; the darkness in people’s hearts bubbled up into a putrescent mire. And sadly, it’s a trend I don’t see changing anytime soon; a black president was an anomaly for a deeply, deeply racist US. No, you’re not better than the equally racist Founders. There is no “we’re better than this” —  otherwise, how does over half the population get convinced to embrace hugely unpopular views?

Of particular concern to me, as I was coming to terms with my sexuality, was the attack on LGBTQ+ rights. Still seething over the Obergefell ruling, the alt-right was delivered a massive blow when they couldn’t demonize gay people the way they did before. And believe me, they tried, but it never caught on — even as they appealed to emotion and to this antiquated idea of what matrimony and family are. We were labelled pedophiles, we were labelled degenerates, and even the classic slippery slope “If the gays can marry, what’s next?” It all fell flat. We cisgender people were largely safe, but our trans brothers, sisters, and agender people weren’t.

They went after them with the same zeal as before. It was the era of “bathroom bills” and the narrative being carefully constructed to demonize us once again. Frighteningly, the public was buying it this time. For us, that meant increasing our activism, regardless of how tired we felt under the constant assault. When the ruling class wants you dead, figuratively and literally, there’s no such thing as being apolitical under those circumstances.

Fox News’ ever-changing grievances saw my timeline often as people I followed — and later, those I didn’t  —  wanted to get their quick dunks in. Both the right and the left are calling each other out on so-called hypocrisy: remember “so much for the tolerant left?” It quickly degraded to gotcha arguments, which were utterly exhausting to read, let alone engage in. But the most concerning development during this time was the emboldening of the alt-right outside the social network, with perhaps the first sign being Charlottesville in 2017.

I couldn’t take this anymore.

I withdrew from whatever the daily discourse was, finding refuge in fan art and original illustrations. Even today, it remains such, albeit on a different platform. It makes me happy to see people sharing their craft for others to enjoy — something this current push towards generative artificial intelligence threatens, if left unchecked. Not that the people in power are particularly concerned with further devaluation of the creative field, nor do the masses appear to care as well.

There was a time when the internet was confined to a PC — now it’s everywhere, and integral to people’s lives and work, either by choice or forced into it. Even I forget this, and I lived through these contrasting eras!

The people on social media who didn’t live and breathe the online culture war felt defeated. Online spaces were decaying quickly, and so was society, yet people are just posting through it, hardly giving a thought. Many would say Trump is just a symptom of a larger societal ill; while correct, it comes across as nihilistic. Pointing it out doesn’t solve anything: how do we prevent the next Trump from emerging? Even with him voted out, the damage was already done — our “civilized” internet was taken over by reactionaries, with no solution in sight. There was no easy fix, even as we sleep more soundly under a Biden administration. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, here comes Elon Musk.

A man with more money than sense; less Tony Stark, more Norman Osborn. Runs five companies as its chief executive, making him the darling of the business world — and for a time, his leadership of Tesla was seen with good eyes by everyone — but that didn’t make him happy, or at least that’s my read. He always struck me as someone who tried too hard to be liked; if money could buy him a friend — a genuine friend — he’d gladly pay the price. I almost feel sorry for him, but the majority of the negative sentiment towards him, he earned it.

Musk’s addiction to Twitter got to a point where he seriously considered buying it, dating back to 2017. It got nowhere then, but let’s fast forward to 2022: in April, he made an unsolicited offer for $43 billion, or $54.20 per share, to take Twitter private. Perhaps he wasn’t expecting the board to consider his offer, but they did — it’s not Joe Nobody putting in an offer, it’s Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet. Being one of his companies carried an allure to it. However, the most likely reason was that the board believed the offer represented an implicit threat of a hostile takeover.  Musk was already a stock owner, and he had the means to become the majority shareholder if the board refused, easily. The board had to ensure the company’s value is protected.

Twitter’s counteroffer included a “poison pill” clause, which made Musk’s non-binding offer binding. It allowed shareholders to purchase additional stock, barred Musk — a man with opinions about Twitter — from publicly disparaging the company, and, if the deal didn’t close for whatever reason, Musk would be liable for a billion-dollar breakup fee.

The sale wasn’t only about switching owners, but also about optics. It was very much in Musk’s interests to make the board look bad, with undertones of him trying to weasel out of the deal. One of the conditions he put forth was to “get rid of the bots,” with no clear metric to aim for. It wasn’t as bad as today, but there was a sizable amount of bots then, most of them promising “nudes in bio.” With the community complaining about the issue, Musk painted himself as a man of the people, the one to hold Twitter to account.

The peanut gallery loved all of this, but public opinion and business don’t mix. The board caught on to Musk’s play, reminding him of how anything less than the initial offer would be turned down, triggering the breakup fee. Musk was in no position to dictate terms — he had no choice but to capitulate.

“LMAO Elon bought Twitter when it cost nothing to use!”

Laugh while you all can.

Musk fired thousands of people and dismantled divisions, even those that ensured the platform’s compliance with legal obligations in both the US and elsewhere. The blue checkmark, a means to identify legitimate accounts of public figures and outlets, was given to anyone paying for Twitter Blue, effectively devaluing it. And it’d no longer be called Twitter, but “X.” Musk’s long-held ambition of making an “everything” app similar to China’s WeChat lives on, and it begins with owning the (digital) town square.

Meanwhile, on X’s timeline, the lashing out continues. When the rebrand happened, I saw people justify themselves deadnaming the platform by equating it to his deadnaming of his daughter.

Deadnaming refers to the action of calling a transgender or nonbinary person by their birth name, rather than the one they chose themselves. Musk is the estranged father of a trans daughter, whom he refuses to address by her chosen name and pronouns. It’s an action largely believed to be a bad-faith move at best and transphobic at worst. In Musk’s case, his saying she was “killed by the woke mind virus,” I’m pretty confident it’s the latter.

But back to the justification: was that supposed to be a dunk to be proud of? What are these users looking to achieve? I get calling the platform “Twitter” out of habit, as that was its name for fifteen years. But this leap of logic needlessly escalates matters and devalues terms that carry a heavy weight. I get the impression that, for some, this is the hill they want to die on, all while people in power are harming trans people. I find it all so… infantile, using the same gotcha arguments of 2017 Twitter, giving both it and the platform the validity it once had.

Just as the right has its reactionaries, the left developed them during Trump's first term — and they’re just as bad. We’re already trying to fight back against the other side, who has a huge lead, and they’re the favorite. Getting onto the mud pit and fighting the pig in its turf does little for the movement, and not only do they make a fool out of themselves, but the movement as well. I need more people to understand how their actions are part of a larger thing.

It frustrates me how incapable we are at coming together; everyone pushes for their vision of their ideal world, undeterred, under the same belief that plagues the right — you versus me. That is, unless something truly horrific happens, like the murder of George Floyd. Say what you want about the right, they can rally their ranks: the January 6 insurrection is a clear example. Lately, I’ve seen some examples that make me think we’ve learned our lesson, and I’m thinking specifically of the pro-Palestinian campus protests, but I remain skeptical of my own.

It was clear to me that X would die a slow, painful death. I still believe that, and I’m not referring to the constant downtimes.

It’s election season once again. As a general rule, election season is tiresome, yet there was urgency this time around after Trump’s 2016 win. Somehow, the 2024 season was even more tiresome than 2020, when we were in the middle of the COVID-19 global pandemic and doing everything possible to avoid Trump getting reelected. All that talk of Joe Biden being a transitional president for the newer blood of the Democratic Party, and he decided to run again. Trump, much like in 2016, steamrolled everyone to become the Republican nominee.

But the vibes were different: in 2016, people gravitated towards him because they felt he spoke the truth, plus there were legitimately funny moments during the debates. In 2024, the establishment feared the man who molded the Republican Party in his image. Trumpism never left; it was just taking a break. No one wanted the Biden/Trump rematch, yet we got it anyway. That is, until age caught up with Biden — he was forced to step down, his VP Kamala Harris picking up where he left off.

Meanwhile, on X, Musk was desperate. His subscription was not making enough money to break even, and the platform’s ad practices led to an exodus of advertisers after a report by Media Matters put the spotlight on ads displayed next to hateful content. He sued the outlet for defamation and threatened to sue advertisers who left X. But I thought Musk was all for free speech? Companies are only invoking their free speech rights by not having their products associated with the kind of post that was widespread on X. It was an empty threat, but some companies restarted their campaigns after their concerns were addressed, and Linda Yaccarino, a woman with a background in advertising and now former CEO of X, was key in this, avoiding further escalation by its owner.

In a bizarre public brainstorming session, Musk sought input from his followers on what X could do to raise more money. One suggestion that gained attention was to restrict access to the platform and offer it for a fee. Sure, buddy: you’re bleeding users, and the ones that are left aren’t paying. To add insult to injury, for the first time in what seems like forever, X had competition: cohost, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads — entrepreneurs saw an opportunity amidst the chaos, and the users who left had places to go to.

I observed how certain niches took to certain platforms: Mastodon became home to the technology inclined, Threads was where all the high-profile celebrities went to — mostly because of how Meta saw Threads as an extension of Instagram — and Bluesky became the home for those who miss the early Twitter years. It was a war for mindshare, and there was no clear winner. Social media became fragmented, and it’s all thanks to Elon Musk.

Long touted as a liberal darling, Musk threw his support behind Republicans, a move that might have come across as a betrayal to people who weren’t paying attention. Why now? Maybe the state of California didn’t bend over to his demands, maybe too many leftists were mean to him online — whichever the reason was, he went off the deep end. It was easy enough to ignore where he put his money before this announcement; now he’s a threat. He began fundraising and spreading the good word on how a second Trump administration would be good for the people. It was eyebrow-raising, but given how I felt about Musk, I doubted he’d achieve much. What could a deeply unserious man achieve at this scale?

Then, Trump won the election.

Everything we’ve been warned about for the last two years, how Musk bought Twitter to control, or at the very least steer, the conversation in a way that was favorable for him and his kin, started to sink in. Once again, the US voter, refusing to think outside their borders, failed the world by choosing a convicted criminal instead of the vastly more qualified black woman. As Musk did his victory dance, I considered that my last straw — I no longer felt comfortable using his platform. In my eyes, X officially became an alt-right platform; there were even rumors of a merger with Truth Social, Trump’s Twitter ripoff.

This isn’t the Twitter I once knew and loved. This is something else entirely, built atop Twitter’s bones. I had to leave. And if the amount of deactivations post-election is any indication, I’m not alone in that sentiment.

It wasn’t enough for me to deactivate my account; I didn’t want any trace of my presence there whatsoever. Previously, I paid for a mass post deletion service called Tweetdelete — recall earlier in this post when I spoke about people scrubbing through my posts looking for dirt — that worked well for me, and I’d rely on it again for this effort. I stuck with what I knew, but readers are reminded that free alternatives are available. The process took weeks, as I asked for archive after archive to ensure everything was deleted. This extra effort, although unnecessary for most people, was worthwhile when the goal is “chemicalsora *never* posted here.” It took about a month and several bulk deletions before a new archive file showed hardly any posts left to delete, despite the post counter indicating a higher number. Tweetdelete advises this behavior is a reporting situation with X, but was within the margin of error for a barely zero-post account.

More — Settings and Privacy — Your Account — Deactivate your account.

My thirteen years on the platform: gone. True, it was my choice to do this, but I still felt regret and…  resentment. I leave behind happy memories and the friends I’ve made, as Musk’s “free speech” crusade resulted in truly vile people, once forsaken, roaming free once again and spewing their opinions, unchallenged. X has a Nazi bar problem, and the owner is okay with that.

At present, I’ve found my new online home in Bluesky. I’m glad I’m among like-minded people for the most part. I’m glad many illustrators have come to call it “home” just as I did. By the time I joined, Bluesky’s robust moderation tools were being deployed, which felt like perfect timing as Musk’s X moved towards watering down the blocking function. Traumatized by our experience on X, all of the elders agreed: we’d curate our feeds zealously, even if it meant blocking people we are friends with, and we’d recreate the vibes of a platform we enjoy being on.

As I write this, it’s been about six months since, and it still bothers me how some still treat X as 2017 Twitter. The amount of mental gymnastics people do to avoid feeling guilty about keeping their accounts is mindboggling, and I’ll never understand why. Is it denial? Is it inertia? Or is it apathy? Three years into Musk’s takeover, I refuse to accept that X is the sole place to connect with people and topics, especially when we have more means of communication than ever.

Twitter is dead…and buried. Every second spent on X is an endorsement of Musk’s bleak vision for social media. Some may disagree with that statement, attempting to instigate change from within. Others might dismiss it by claiming that using X does not imply their endorsement of those views. This is where the mental gymnastics I mentioned come into play — I don’t know if they realize they are unconsciously trying to justify themselves or are fully aware of what they’re doing. X is a lost cause, and as long as Musk owns it, there’ll be no redemption for it whatsoever. People are welcome to come up with whatever argument in favor of the usage of the platform: a pig with lipstick is still a pig.

Musk is no longer a passive commentator; he’s the owner of the platform. Given his public behavior before the sale — recall the Thai cave rescue incident from 2018 — we were wrong in championing him. To use a wrestling term, he turned heel in the eyes of many, and I’d say he was one from way before. In the end, it doesn’t matter if you believe the man is utterly reprehensible if you continue doom-scrolling through his platform. Is catching up with your friends and the people who write about what you care about worth more than your morals? I’m starting to think “I don’t care” equals “yes.”

It’s not all doom and gloom, though; there are signs that people are looking to reclaim what was taken. Ever since algorithms started to dictate what the user would see, not what they wanted to see, more and more people took to direct communication:  messages on Instagram, group chats on X, private servers on Discord, you get the idea. It’s this generation’s “call my friend, speak with them for over two hours,” something I did a lot while younger. After all, what better way to find out what your friends are up to than asking them?

The feeling of community is also coming back. I remember being taken aback by illustrators I follow not only boosting their peers but also offering words of encouragement. That reminder — that they’re fans of other people — was necessary after being trapped in X’s numbers game. All views and no replies, and you’re ultimately making content for the algorithm instead of the people. And there has been some success in that front, in which artists choose genuine engagement over likes and reposts.

On the other hand, I’ve seen artist friends lament how, whatever positive feedback their work may garner within private circles, it never makes its way back to the original creator. Somewhere along the way, we forgot about the people who do this, treating art as “content.” I think we’ve been disincentivized from interacting with each other for many reasons, most of them driven by the platforms being hostile to their users, and it’s genuinely difficult to unlearn this behavior…

I don’t know where we’ll go from here. There’s nothing I can draw a parallel from — the internet as we know it today is thirty years old. With the rapid pace of technology overwhelming humankind, will we become more insular? Or more connected? Is the underlying technology the sole reason, or are there other factors at play? Will the original purpose of the internet live on in an era of hyper-commercialization? Or will netizens demonstrate resilience among adversity?

I’m just along for the ride…we all are.

3 min read

For the longest time, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty was one of my least liked entries in the Solid series. I even put it dead last at one point. Then, as I got older, I began noticing one of humanity’s darkest sides. It feels as if society, instead of moving forward, refuses to do so as we become dead set in our ways — even going backwards in some instances.

As I think of the current landscape, I think back to MGS2. “Kojima warned us all those years ago.” It’s no exaggeration to say that the game and its themes aged like fine wine.

But back in 2001, it was a wholly different story.

There was confusion at first. Instead of another adventure as Solid Snake, he’s wrested from the player’s control mid-game, placing you in the shoes of a freshman named Raiden. However, Snake never went away: he was equally at arm’s length, acting as an observer and later mentor for the rookie, and also unavailable for the player to control for the rest of the game.

The effect is twofold: not only is the player confused, but Raiden echoes said confusion in earnest as both parties stumble their way, trying to make sense of what’s happening. Emotions ran high — expecting players were furious at the bait-and-switch, and there was no thought given to the message being communicated.

This weaponization of postmodernism and meta-trickery is unlike anything ever seen in video games, and it worked precisely because of how limited the access to information was at the time. We can all agree that what Kojima and his team did then would be next to impossible to pull off today. But what did they try to communicate within this beautiful mess?

As part of a larger re-examination by the community, YouTube essayist ProfessorViral presents a character analysis of Raiden per his depiction in MGS2. This is not all it is, though; as they explore the inconsistencies of his character, they come up with a theory: how Raiden’s denial of his situation, always looking for the things that bring him comfort and avoiding accountability, his whole character is a walking thesis on convenient truths.

Raiden’s flaws aren’t writing gaffes — they are very much deliberate and necessary to make the point. It’s as if the game is telling the player, “You’re frustrated with Raiden because you see yourself in him.” When the Patriots reveal their end game, how the whole mission was a big lie, Raiden has an existential crisis. Is everything he lived up to that point a lie as well?

This resonates even more as the essayist themselves has an existential crisis while discussing the topic. A display that’s equal parts gut-wrenching and powerful because of it. It deeply moved me, and I commend their bravery for being so vulnerable in public.

While future entries in the series would show Raiden taking control of his destiny and, in Metal Gear Rising specifically, outright kill his prior characterization in favor of more flashy, cool setpieces as the de facto Gray Fox successor, we always have his depiction in MGS2 as testament to how he’s a layered, complex and brilliantly written character, even if it’s not obvious at first. It certainly wasn’t to me for the longest time, and now I regret my words and deeds.

25 min read

Prior Entry | All Media Log Posts | Next Entry

Please be advised these posts aren’t spoiler-free.

“I’m tired.”

Recently, I’ve been hit by a wave of lethargy unlike anything I’ve felt in a while. The draft for this log sat untouched for nearly a week, and putting off a time-sensitive post doesn’t help matters. What made things worse was how I went about taking notes for one of the entries covered here – it wore me out. There wasn’t a proper wiki entry I could find, and because I wanted my thoughts to be informed by what was actually happening in the story, I decided to read and take notes simultaneously. That’s not usually a problem for me. But when it started to feel like a chore, with no end in sight, I wanted to stop.

During one of my cardio workouts, I watched a video by Dr. Alok Kanojia of HealthyGamerGG on the feeling of tiredness. It felt like he was speaking directly to me – not just about falling behind on my writing, but about other things I’m not comfortable sharing here. A key takeaway from the video was a question Dr. Kanojia posed to the audience: “How would you feel if you did the thing that makes you feel tired? How would you feel at the end of it?”

Framed that way, the question puts things into perspective. It sounds obvious, maybe, but when you struggle with mental health, the obvious can be hard to remember or feel like it’s not worth the energy. I started thinking: all those hours spent in a word processor, all the times I chose this over playing games – what do I get out of it?

I remembered why I started blogging in the first place. Originally, it was to dive deeper into the things I used to make videos about, like the one on the FAMAS. But I don’t make videos anymore, or have a podcast, and the idea got shelved. Years passed without anything that challenged me creatively. I missed reviewing – but I missed researching even more. Shifting to this format felt natural. And hey, it also justifies the money I pay to Squarespace every year. I’d forgotten how rewarding it is to see a finished post, despite all the frustration along the way, and to be able to say, “I made this.” I can express myself here in ways that I can’t on social media.

Tyson Matsuki isn’t just some person on the internet, but someone with thoughts and feelings who tries his best to put them into words.

Whenever I forget why I do this, let these words be the answer. I chose this. I’ve grown to enjoy writing and reading – something that would’ve been unheard of a few years ago. And that feeling of achievement? It’s real.

Let there be no doubt: words are powerful.

Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007

With IO Interactive unveiling 007: First Light, their take on a Bond game, and the franchise’s first major return to video games in years, I’ve been in a Bond mood ever since I wrote about it shortly after the news dropped. I wasn’t ready for a full rewatch of the films, but I did revisit the documentary released for the franchise’s fiftieth anniversary.

One might assume the target audience for such a retrospective would be die-hard Bond fans, but by the end, I got the sense it was aimed more at the casually familiar: the kind who know Bond, but wouldn’t call themselves followers. As a result, much of the material covered won’t surprise anyone already in the fandom. Still, collecting key moments and production history in one video has its value. I don’t think I saw it back when it premiered in 2012, nor have I watched most of the behind-the-scenes content included on the films’ home video releases.

As with any good story, we begin at the beginning. James Bond starts with Ian Fleming – who he was, what he did during and after World War II, and, most crucially, how Bond came to be. The film devotes a good portion of its opening to these questions, interviewing people who knew him. Their commentary is intercut with archival interviews, giving Fleming a voice I hadn’t heard until now. Despite considering myself a fan, I’ve never gone out of my way to look into everything Bond. I’d even argue my way into the franchise, while unorthodox, isn’t all that rare for people from my generation.

Once Fleming set out to write the spy thriller to end all spy thrillers, he already envisioned Bond as a movie character. He tried to pitch the series to studios and was met with almost universal indifference. Rejection after rejection left him discouraged enough to sell the rights to Casino Royale for a TV adaptation – for peanuts. That 1954 version is now mostly known for being a punchline. Convinced he’d never see Bond on the big screen, Fleming’s legacy seemed destined to be “just” an entertaining author – until two men decided to pick up where he couldn’t: Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman.

Both loved what Fleming had written, and both wanted to bring Bond to theaters. Broccoli was already a notable producer and director, while Saltzman had a background in theater and film production. When Broccoli tried to meet with Fleming about acquiring the rights, personal commitments kept him from attending, so he sent his business partner instead. Not only did the meeting go poorly, but the partner’s dismissive behavior left such a bad impression that Fleming refused to deal with Broccoli afterward. That may have been what ended the partnership. This opened the door for Saltzman, who successfully secured the rights. But producing the films was another story; studios weren’t interested, and he couldn’t raise the capital. Still eager, Broccoli was introduced to Saltzman by a mutual acquaintance. They shared the same vision, and so Eon Productions was born. (Eon, fittingly, stands for “Everything or Nothing.”)

Broccoli couldn’t convince Columbia Pictures – his home studio – to back them, so Eon shopped the rights around. United Artists was one of the studios approached. Despite balking at the production cost, UA ultimately gave the green light. David Picker, a producer at UA and widely credited with getting Bond onto screens, later expressed disbelief that Columbia had passed. Hindsight is 20/20, of course – the million-dollar price tag per movie ended up being a drop in the bucket compared to what Bond would bring in over the years.

Who would play Bond? Cary Grant? James Mason? Eon surprised both UA and Fleming with an unknown, a diamond in the rough: Sean Connery. Fleming didn’t want him. UA didn’t want him. But Saltzman and Broccoli knew Connery was right for the role they envisioned – an anti-hero the audience could still root for. Convincing both the studio and the author took serious effort.

The Connery segments in the documentary are notable for one reason: Connery himself is absent. All the other Bond actors appear, yet the pioneer is seen only through archival clips and interviews. The film later acknowledges how toxic the fallout between Connery and Eon was, and I think they had no choice but to address it, as glossing over that rift would’ve opened them up to charges of revisionism. Even if Barbara Broccoli says Connery and her father made amends decades later, this is still an officially sanctioned version of events. One can never be too uncritical – history is written by the victors, after all.

By the time Thunderball enters the picture, the documentary breaks from its chronological flow to spotlight the film’s complicated development. It introduces a name many viewers won’t know: Kevin McClory, a key figure from Fleming’s early attempts to get Bond on the screen. McClory pitched an underwater Bond adventure and wanted to co-write it with Fleming. Sound familiar? At one fateful meeting, alcohol flowed, ideas were exchanged, and no one kept track of who said what. Fleming later published Thunderball based on that core idea without crediting McClory. Understandably, McClory sued for plagiarism. The courts ruled that future reprints had to credit him, and – more importantly – granted him the film rights. He declared his intent to make the film himself, which created a legal and financial headache for Eon just as the series was gaining momentum. In the end, they brought him in as a producer – a move that feels less like collaboration and more like damage control. Nobody gets a producing credit that easily unless there’s no other choice.

Then came You Only Live Twice, and Connery’s highly public fallout with Eon. Would the franchise survive without him? In an interview, Broccoli insisted that James Bond was bigger than the actor who played him. Just as Eon was narrowing down replacements, they were approached by an Australian man named George Lazenby, who declared he was the man for the job. There was just one issue: he wasn’t an actor. He was a Connery fanboy, to put it a bit reductively. Still, it took serious nerve to do what he did. His story is framed almost like a fable about fleeting fame: how he wanted to be Bond, how he bluffed his way into the role, and how, once he had it, he let it slip through his fingers.

UA, meanwhile, still wanted Connery. They even went around Eon to negotiate with him directly. The rift that had formed during You Only Live Twice lingered, but the documentary doesn’t dwell on what’s already been said. Only the relevant gaps – the ones that explain Connery’s brief return for Diamonds Are Forever – get addressed.

Saltzman had a chip on his shoulder. It wasn’t enough that Bond had made him a very rich man – he wanted to be seen as superior to Broccoli. He began investing in businesses he didn’t understand, and after a string of bad decisions, he racked up massive debt. His increasingly divergent ideas and frequent absences were felt during the early years of Roger Moore’s tenure as Bond. This is further reflected in the performance of those films: both critically and commercially. There was too much variance to chalk it up solely to audiences adjusting to a new Bond.

Broccoli began to feel that Saltzman was no longer giving the franchise the attention it needed – and that he could no longer work with him.

By 1975, Eon was shaken, not stirred. Saltzman saw an opportunity to climb out of debt by selling his half of the Bond franchise. And given the creative differences, it was also his way out – but he refused to sell his shares to Broccoli. After a lengthy litigation, UA stepped in and bought Saltzman out, leaving Broccoli free to chart the course ahead. But could he keep Bond going solo? The Spy Who Loved Me became the proving ground. After the poor box office showing of The Man with the Golden Gun, the franchise couldn’t afford another flop. Thankfully, it wasn’t. The film was a hit – Moore’s Goldfinger, so to speak. Once it became clear that imitating Connery wasn’t in his DNA, Moore made the role his own.

For a while, it was smooth sailing for Broccoli and the Bond franchise – until Kevin McClory returned. With the film rights to Thunderball once again in his hands, McClory was ready to make good on his old promise: to launch a rival Bond film. Danjaq, Eon’s parent company, could only delay things for so long. By the time Octopussy was in production, Eon decided to settle the matter where it mattered most: the box office.

McClory lured Connery back to play Bond – his Bond – one last time. Eon had every reason to worry. It was, quite literally, a battle of the Bonds. Kill or be killed. He got his fight and lost it. Octopussy handily outperformed Never Say Never Again. After a defeat like that, surely this would be the last we’d hear of Kevin McClory…

Broccoli first knew Pierce Brosnan as the husband of Cassandra Harris, an actress who had a role in For Your Eyes Only. Years later, Brosnan’s rise to fame in the TV series Remington Steele made him a household name. When the show was canceled in 1986, Broccoli saw his chance to cast Brosnan as Moore’s successor. Once news broke that Brosnan might become the next Bond, Remington Steele was revived, riding on the wave of renewed interest in its leading man. Unfortunately for Brosnan, his contract included a clause requiring a two-month waiting period after cancellation before he was officially released. The show’s revival landed within that window, and he had no choice but to return.

Eon had to look elsewhere. They turned to Timothy Dalton, a Shakespearean-trained actor, to step into the role.

Dalton disliked the direction the films took under Moore, calling them “pastiche,” and pushed for a portrayal closer to Fleming’s Bond – a “hero who murdered in cold blood.” His take was notably darker, especially in Licence to Kill, and while the producers were satisfied with his performance, the audience wasn’t as receptive. The tonal shift was a jarring contrast to Moore’s lighter, playboy persona.

The distribution lawsuits between MGM, UA, and Eon are glossed over in the documentary, but their impact was significant. They kept Bond off screens for years and ultimately prevented Dalton from returning for a third film. The documentary doesn’t delve into the details of his departure, but it seems Dalton himself was ready to walk away. Meanwhile, Broccoli was so overwhelmed by the legal battles that he seriously considered selling the rights altogether. Thankfully, it never came to that. Once the dust settled, the aging producer returned to what he loved: making movies.

After years of being left at the altar, it was finally Brosnan’s time.

With the Cold War over, critics questioned Bond’s relevance – but GoldenEye silenced them. It not only confirmed that Brosnan was a superb choice, but also that Bond could thrive in a post-Cold War world.

Following Brosnan’s debut, Broccoli fully stepped down, passing the torch to his children: Barbara and Michael G. Wilson, his stepson. He passed away about a year after the handoff.

There’s always been an unspoken rule: Bond has to feel relevant to the times.

Brosnan’s fourth film, Die Another Day, veered into the kind of fantastical territory that wouldn’t have felt out of place in a Moore-era outing. Maybe it was okay to get silly again. But midway through production, the September 11 terrorist attacks happened. It was too late to change course, and rough waters lay ahead for Wilson and Barbara Broccoli after the film’s release. With Brosnan stepping away from the role once the film was completed, Eon now had two tasks: reorient the series and cast a new Bond.

Then, like clockwork, Kevin McClory returned. Despite being soundly defeated at the box office two decades earlier, he hadn’t given up on his dream of launching a rival Bond series. One had to wonder: what drove him? After forty years, he was still stirring trouble for Eon. Allegedly, McClory believed Bond was his creation – a claim most would find absurd. This time, he was preparing to partner with Columbia Pictures. They held the rights to Casino Royale thanks to the 1954 TV adaptation, and McClory still held the rights to Thunderball. Eon couldn’t let that alliance happen.

Fearing another protracted legal battle, Eon attempted to settle out of court. McClory refused, against the advice of those closest to him. The result? The long-standing question of who truly owned the film rights to Bond was finally and decisively answered in Eon’s favor. McClory was stripped of Thunderball, and Columbia handed over Casino Royale. After years of drifting, Eon suddenly had the solution handed to them on a silver platter. Albert Broccoli had always wanted to adapt Casino Royale properly, but couldn’t. Now, Barbara Broccoli could fulfill that wish.

All eyes turned to who would be the next Bond.

Daniel Craig’s casting echoed Connery’s in several ways – an unconventional pick, a rougher presence – but with one crucial difference: public backlash. After decades of being told what Bond should look and act like, audiences overwhelmingly felt Craig wasn’t it. One of his critics was Sam Mendes, who remarked that taking the role would be a mistake for Craig’s career. But Barbara Broccoli pressed forward, convinced he was the guy.

As Craig’s tenure hadn’t ended by then, the documentary understandably avoids a deep dive into his era. It briefly covers his debut in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace – the first direct sequel in the franchise.

The documentary closes by reflecting on Bond’s enduring relevance. Through cultural changes, legal battles, and generational turnover, the series not only survived but also flourished. In doing so, it repaid its debt to Ian Fleming, delivering on his vision of the spy thriller to end all spy thrillers.

Instead of repeating the commentary I’ve made throughout, I want to wrap things up by talking about how Bond entered my life.

In the late '90s, my dad gave me a Nintendo 64 for Christmas. One of the games that came with it was Rareware’s GoldenEye 007. At the time, I didn’t know who James Bond was – I’m guessing my dad picked the game up because a salesperson recommended it. A less likely, but amusing theory: I was just about to turn thirteen, old enough to play Teen-rated games. I spent countless hours with GoldenEye, whether alone or in couch multiplayer with friends. God, I miss couch multiplayer so much…

I didn’t watch the movie the game was based on right away. Instead, my first Bond film was The World Is Not Enough, which I saw when it came out on home video. One memory from that time stuck with me, though it’s not exactly one that I’m proud of. It involves the World Is Not Enough video game, made by Eurocom. I remember sneaking into my uncle’s room, digging through his drawers, and taking a $100 bill from a roll he had stashed away. How did I explain having that kind of money to my dad? I told him I “found it while walking around.” A blatant lie – but with no proof that I stole it, he let it slide and took me to the mall to buy the game.

I’m convinced my uncle said something to my dad, and that he put two and two together. I don’t remember getting grounded, so either my dad settled it quietly or my uncle didn’t care that one bill went missing. I don’t think I ever confessed. I’ve thought about coming clean, but it’s been over twenty years. Surely, he let it go – and I suppose I should, too.

After The World Is Not Enough, I started seeking out Brosnan’s other films. I watched GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies, then went back further to Dr. No and Goldfinger, which my dad owned on DVD. I think I still have those copies somewhere. I saw Die Another Day in theaters after begging my mom to take me. She did – and I was thrilled. She wasn’t. Action movies weren’t her thing then, and they still aren’t.

Over time, I caught the occasional Bond film on cable – TNT ran marathons pretty regularly. I saw most of Moore’s run, bits and pieces of Connery’s, and Licence to Kill from Dalton, though it was heavily censored for TV. Whatever gaps remained, I’d fill in over the years.

Maybe I shouldn’t downplay how much of a Bond fan I am. While I’m no expert, I did travel over four thousand miles to attend a Bond-themed event – a trip I never would’ve taken without a good friend encouraging me, promising he’d go too if I made it over.

Maybe someday I’ll tell that story…

Cuffed!

When I first came across this webtoon, I had just dropped Jinx. I’d liked Mingwa’s earlier work, BJ Alex, so I thought this one would be a safe bet. I was wrong.

My issue boiled down to how the sex between the protagonists often degraded into assault, and how graphically and frequently those scenes were depicted. Coming from old-school boys’ love, I’ve built up some tolerance for non-consensual elements. But in Jinx, despite the deuteragonist being very easy on the eyes, the fact that the protagonist never once seems to want sex with him – that it’s always transactional, and that he has to be available at all times – repulsed me. What made my reaction even funnier, in hindsight, is that Jinx isn’t even an omegaverse story, where that kind of dynamic is expected, almost.

So, when I went looking for my next explicit BL, one title caught my eye: The Two Voices of Homosexuality. That name – on a platform full of BL webtoons – felt almost too on the nose. But the banner’s art style was appealing, and I’ll admit it: after reading the summary, I was morbidly curious. I wanted to know how that backdrop could possibly work in a BL.

The Two Voices of Homosexuality, localized as Cuffed! in the West, takes place in an alternate version of South Korea where homosexuality has been criminalized with full public support. The state doesn’t just ignore or ridicule queerness – it openly targets and prosecutes it. People can be arrested for “practicing homosexuality” if credibly reported, and the legal system backs it.

We’re introduced to Kim Youngsoo, a university student who’s just had what looks like a one-night stand with Kang Eunsung, a childhood friend he hasn’t spoken to in four years. A week earlier, Youngsoo had finally moved out of his parents’ home to escape their homophobia and start living as himself. He mentioned the new apartment to his college senior, Kim Jiho – a fellow gay man who quietly harbors feelings for him – and invited him over. Jiho initially misunderstood the invitation, but once Youngsoo started inviting other classmates too, he realized it wasn’t a hookup.

That night, while relaxing at home, Youngsoo hears someone unlocking his front door. Not picking it – unlocking it. He panics. No one else should have a key. When the door opens, a hooded figure steps in. After the lights come on, it's revealed to be Eunsung. Both had signed leases thinking they’d live alone, only to discover the landlord had double-rented the unit for a quick buck. A lawyer rules both contracts valid. They’re stuck living together.

Youngsoo remembers Eunsung as a prankster and a bully, and their sudden reunion brings back discomfort more than nostalgia. Still, Eunsung manages to get Youngsoo to pity him enough to accept the cohabitation, likely through manipulation. Youngsoo doesn’t know much about his new roommate’s job, but the bruises on his body and a narrow escape from the police during a grocery run suggest it’s something dangerous.

Later, Youngsoo and Jiho meet at a gay bar to talk. But the club gets word of a police raid, and patrons scramble. Among them are Jiho and Youngsoo, only to be stopped in an alley by one of the officers. It’s Eunsung. He’s part of the newly formed anti-gay unit. He lets them go, but while removing the cuffs, he casually asks where they’d been. Youngsoo lies, now fully aware of the risk.

So, how does this pair go from uneasy cohabitants to sleeping together? During a school reunion, the two have drinks – Eunsung is a lightweight, drunk after two beers. They stop by a convenience store for snacks, and something about the way Youngsoo eats ice cream caught Eunsung’s eye. Back at the apartment, they start making out at the door and wind up in bed, with Eunsung taking the lead.

The next morning, Youngsoo couldn’t process what had happened. Sleeping with a childhood friend – this childhood friend, no less – feels like a cruel twist of fate. He tells himself it must be another one of Eunsung’s games. But when Eunsung notices the hickies across Youngsoo’s body and smirks, it raises a new question: was this really just a joke, or something Eunsung wanted all along?

It’s a challenge to try and dissect Cuffed! in hopes of finding something beyond the smut to talk about. I run the risk of downplaying what makes the series click – which clashes with a belief I hold about art. With a few obvious exceptions, I think works made solely to titillate deserve just as much space to exist as those that don’t. In an increasingly puritanical world – or at least, in the United States – what art needs is more things that make people uncomfortable.

I know it’s a double-edged sword. The last thing we fudanshi need is for someone’s well-intentioned work to be used against all of us. That said, I’ll try to navigate these murky waters as best I can.

I like Cuffed! for the smut. I don’t see it as much different from watching porn to get off. But is it worth reading for the lore?

Going off the comment sections I’ve read, a lot of people dropped the webtoon before it got to the meat and bones – and honestly, I don’t blame them. A BL set in a world where homosexuality is criminalized is bound to be upsetting for some, and that reaction is completely valid. What kept me going was morbid curiosity. I wanted to see how the story would actually use that backdrop. The writer could’ve done something genuinely compelling by leaning into the darkness of people’s prejudice, as messed up as that sounds. But it’s mostly a missed opportunity. The story quickly shifts focus to the love triangle between Youngsoo, Eunsung, and Jiho, which becomes the overarching drama.

At best, the threat of prosecution lingers in the background, used as motivation for some plot beats, but those moments are few and far between. You could’ve swapped out the entire "anti-gay law" concept for practically anything else, and it wouldn’t change much. That doesn’t bode well for what’s supposed to be a foundational piece of your world-building.

And if the storytelling didn’t already render it irrelevant, the tone sure does. When the story isn’t dealing with sex or serious moments, Cuffed! reads almost like a gag comic. Eunsung’s slyness, paired with Youngsoo’s frequent overreactions, drives most of the comedy. When Eunsung’s not around, Park Doyoon – Jiho’s best friend and manager of the gay bars – fills that slot.

Even the writer’s own genre description tells you everything: a “human documentary romantic suspense comedy mystery drama.” Assuming that wasn’t a gag in itself, it makes no sense. Sure, the series has elements of those genres, but drama and comedy just don’t mix; they never have. It’s all over the place.

To further kick this already dead horse – Eunsung, a cop in an anti-gay unit, having sexual escapades with Youngsoo. Most people would catch this contradiction immediately, and like me, find it hard to suspend disbelief.

If there weren’t enough examples already, take chapter seven’s king’s game. Shin Seungjae, Eunsung’s ever-competitive partner on the force, dares him to kiss the person next to him, fully aware it’s illegal. That person? Youngsoo. Eunsung doesn’t kiss him – at least not then. Instead, he asks Youngsoo to switch seats… and kisses Seungjae instead. His plan: foiled again.

One of my frustrations with modern BL fandom is how rigidly people cling to seme and uke archetypes – and how quickly they expect emotional gratification. It’s just one way to build a character, and frankly, one of the least interesting. So, let’s talk about Eunsung.

I’ve seen him written off as a “toxic top,” but that label flattens him. Yes, some of his behavior is absolutely eyebrow-raising: he torments Youngsoo in petty, sometimes cruel ways; he blackmails him into “seducing” him to protect Doyoon’s bar; and his lust borders on compulsive, insisting on sex even when Youngsoo isn’t interested.

At a glance, he reads like that aggravating friend many of us have known – the one who pushes boundaries because it’s easier than being emotionally honest. But readers who didn’t stick around missed what the comic slowly reveals: this is a coping mechanism. Eunsung knows he’s selfish and jealous, but that tendency was magnified by grief – specifically, by the suicide of his brother, Euyha, who was bullied for being gay. Youngsoo was the only one who pulled him out of the spiral of self-loathing – a spiral many queer people know intimately.

We live in a world that teaches the masses to hate what’s different – and teaches queer people to hate themselves. Some of us are still carrying that shame years after coming out. That’s how I explain how Eunsung, a closeted gay man, ends up in an anti-gay police unit.

None of this excuses Eunsung’s actions. The blackmailing, especially, is indefensible. But when framed as the desperate, insecure flailing of someone terrified to lose the one person he likes from his past, his story lands with more emotional weight. It’s not tidy. It’s not easy. But it is human.

And the fact that the comic took its time, building this puzzle piece by piece until the full picture emerged, speaks to the writer’s ability to craft complexity. Eunsung’s tragedy isn’t just that he hurt others. It’s that he believed hurting them was the only way to keep from being hurt again.

So, to return to where this began: demanding purity in our characters – or in ourselves – is a losing game. We’re messy, contradictory beings. We lash out. We stumble. But we can learn. We can grow. And if we’re lucky, we get another day to do better than the one before.

That’s it from me. See you next month!

2 min read

It feels like forever since an anime analysis video held my attention the way this one did. I still follow a handful of creators in the space, but it’s fair to say I don’t keep up with their work as closely as I used to.

As with a recent post, this entry comes from the depths of my long-neglected Watch Later playlist – a graveyard of good intentions. At this rate, maybe I should start calling these “Watch Later Worth Sharing” – unless I think of something slightly less cringeworthy. This time, the spotlight’s on My Dress-Up Darling.

A quick primer: the story follows Wakana Gojo, an aspiring traditional doll artisan, and his unlikely connection with Marin Kitagawa, the class’s gyaru – part of a subculture known for being fashionable, outgoing, and unapologetically trendy. One day, she finds Gojo in the school’s sewing room and sees firsthand just how skilled he is. That leads her to reveal her passion: cosplay. He agrees to help with her costume and soon becomes her go-to for every cosplay project to come. Through her, Gojo ends up meeting more people and slowly breaks out of his reclusive shell. The manga ran from 2018 to early 2025, but like many others, I first encountered it through the 2022 anime.

While the story eventually develops into a romance, what stuck with me was its meta-commentary: that anyone can be an otaku. The show positions this message through Kitagawa, but I’ve long treated Gojo as the quieter presence, almost like a narrative lens through which we observe her.

Maybe that’s a mistake.

The video in question comes from Canadian YouTuber Joe of Pause and Select. It’s a thoughtful essay on performativity and otaku culture, using My Dress-Up Darling as its springboard. Kitagawa’s central to the analysis, but it’s the moments focusing on Gojo that hit hardest for me. Even if the more academic framing goes over your head at first, it all clicks once applied to the show.

If you’re even a little curious about anime analysis like this, I highly recommend giving it a watch.

5 min read

Atlus isn’t good at keeping secrets, are they?

Following the success of Persona 3 Reload two years ago, a remake of Persona 4 felt inevitable. It was never a question of if, but when. Like past reveals, the remake followed the expected pattern: domain, nameservers, announcement – no surprises there. Still, I wonder if the announcement was pushed forward after Yuri Lowenthal, Erin Fitzgerald, and Amanda Winn-Lee – the voices of Yosuke, Chie, and Yukiko – confirmed they hadn’t been asked to reprise their roles. I have my issues with the community’s reaction on this front, but I’ll get to that at a later time.

The trailer for the remake begins with the Samegawa Flood Plain. Then the fox shrine. Then the iconic tower made of TVs, each showing a different location from the game. Credit where it’s due: they captured Inaba’s pre-murder tranquility well. Soon after, the TVs glow red – familiar imagery – before cutting to Yu Narukami sprinting from the shrine toward the northern shopping district. You’d be excused for missing the seamless transition; in the original and in Persona 4 Golden, those two areas were treated as separate maps due to hardware limitations.

Then comes the name reveal: Persona 4 Revival. A 42-second clip that shows… nothing.

I was hoping for something more.

To illustrate just how rushed this feels, consider this: if reports are accurate, Revival had about a year of full development under its belt before being announced. Reload, by contrast, had been in the works for four years. That’s not nearly enough time to put together a showing that reflects the quality of the project – or even gestures at its intended vision.

The whole thing gives me Kingdom Hearts III flashbacks – revealed in 2013 to massive fanfare, despite barely having entered development. That game sat on ice until what eventually became Final Fantasy XV wrapped up, and yet somehow, Square Enix showed more in that early teaser than Atlus managed to here.

There had to be something more presentable they could’ve shown, right? Technically, sure – Yu already has a 3D model from Dancing All Night. Reusing assets isn’t laziness, it’s efficiency. If anything, it would’ve made perfect sense to rely on it, at least until his Revival model is ready. That alone could explain how quickly this teaser came together.

But even then, what was shown barely clears the bar for an internal proof of concept – the kind made to communicate basic ideas, not something polished enough for public eyes. I’d accept this level of roughness from a fan tinkering in Unreal Engine, but not from Atlus. Disclaimers or not, it doesn’t matter – the presentation simply wasn’t ready.

And if Reddit is any indication, I’m not the only one who thinks so.

As I try to make sense of what Sega’s management was thinking by putting this out, I can’t help but feel frustrated. What part of this was considered presentable? Who signed off on it? Was this a Microsoft decision tied to the event, or does the blame fall squarely on Sega?

It probably wasn’t meant to come off this way, but the end result feels petty – a teaser, stripped to its bones, saying little more than “it exists. Happy?” A calculated play for nostalgia, banking on recognition to make a quick buck. Ironically, it also kneecaps Persona 4 Golden, a product Sega is still actively selling. That game only just became playable on modern hardware – two years ago on consoles, five on Steam – and now potential buyers are left wondering whether it’s even worth picking up.

To me, this teaser feels like a disservice: to the developers at P-Studio working hard behind the scenes, to Persona 4’s legacy, and to the fans who’ve waited years for this remake to become real. I genuinely feel for director Kazuhisa Wada: now tasked with overseeing a game still in its early stages, managing press, and handling damage control all at once. Sure, it’s his job, but this rollout doesn’t look like it was in his hands.

What saddens me is that I want to be excited for this game.

Persona 4 got me into the series after years of seeing its promo art in magazines. My gateway was the anime, which I covered on a podcast over a decade ago. For a time, I owned both Sentai’s DVD and Blu-ray releases. I bought the original PS2 game and finished it. I played the fighting games. I played Dancing All Night – a game I adore so much that my first major video project was about it. All of those games are still on my shelf, and I can play them, assuming I’ve got the hardware to match.

As for Golden, I own four copies: Vita, Steam, Xbox digital, and the Limited Run Games edition. And I’ve finished the game a total of zero times – not for lack of interest, but because I already know that world so well.

When Reload was announced, my reaction was more of a shrug: “Oh cool, I’ll finally finish Persona 3,” since my backwards-compatible PS3 had died mid-playthrough thanks to the Yellow Light of Death. I still bought Reload on day one, but I think it’s fair to say my feelings toward it were indifferent.

Persona 4 is different.

Even if you don’t agree with everything I’ve said, I hope you can at least take this away: these harsh words come from a place of love. I want Revival to succeed – and next time it’s shown, I hope it gives me a reason to believe.

13 min read

“Choose your next witticism carefully, Mr. Matsuki – it may be your last.”

ok i tried, my bad

On the 18th of November 2020, developer IO Interactive posted to social media that they’d be revealing a new project. It wasn’t related to Hitman – the third game in the World of Assassination trilogy had already been announced during the PS5 reveal event and was on track to meet its January release date. So, what was it about?

While the majority of IO’s output has been Hitman games, they’ve dabbled in other IPs: Freedom Fighters, the Kane & Lynch duology, and – out of character as it may sound – Mini Ninjas. No one knew what to expect, and we certainly didn’t have “Bond in video games revival” on our bingo cards…

Bond’s last proper appearance in video games was 2012’s 007 Legends, developed by Eurocom and published by Activision. (I’m not counting the godawful World of Espionage smartphone game.) Released to coincide with the franchise’s fiftieth anniversary – Dr. No premiered on October 5th, 1962 – it had an interesting concept: a mash-up of some of the best set pieces in Bond history. But the execution was poor.

A common criticism levied at Activision-era Bond games was that they played like a poor man’s Call of Duty. Surely, some executive thought the military-shooter formula would thrive with a licensed property. It didn’t – to no one’s surprise. I’d go so far as to say Activision was a poor steward of the Bond license, and it’s a shame how things played out.

I, for one, liked Blood Stone’s story and their take on GoldenEye. Anyone who played games in the late ’90s knows Rareware’s GoldenEye 007 – its multiplayer has been often imitated, never duplicated – and Activision’s version wasn’t half bad. Sadly, both games marked an end for their developers: Blood Stone would be Bizarre Creations’ final project, and for Eurocom, GoldenEye would be their last well-received outing before things took a nosedive.

Eon had their “Star Wars Holiday Special” moment – reportedly revoking Activision’s rights to the IP – and didn’t trust the Bond license to anyone after that.

Bond lay dormant, but not for lack of interest. In 2014, Telltale Games co-founder Kevin Bruner expressed a desire to make a Bond game – if given the chance and an unlimited budget. By then, the point-and-click developer had struck gold with licensed titles like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. A hypothetical James Bond: A Telltale Games Series wouldn’t have focused on action, but espionage – and I could see that working. If anyone could pull it off, it was them.

But a perfect storm of perpetual crunch, outdated tools, and baffling executive decisions took its toll on the overambitious studio, leading to its closure in 2018.

More recently, a trailer by British developer Traveller’s Tales surfaced, pitching Lego James Bond to the license holders at The Lego Group in 2016. It went nowhere – the company thought Bond didn’t fit their brand image and passed on the idea. What’s interesting is that this pitch, unlike many industry leaks that swirl unconfirmed, was verified by a former director who worked there at the time.

Still, none of these attempts had Eon’s blessing.

So how did IO manage to win over the Broccolis?

According to the IO heads in an interview with Edge Magazine, Eon wasn’t even looking for a new game. They weren’t happy with the results of the earlier, action-heavy entries. The license holder wanted more sophistication from Bond’s next outing, and IO’s creative north star, honed over the years with Hitman, is to make violence a choice, not the default. Except, of course, when murder is the mission. They wanted the same thing.

I won’t speculate on how you pitch your vision to someone who may not be fully familiar with your work, but the result is clear: we’re getting a new Bond game, after more than a decade of silence.

Project 007 was born. From Denmark and Sweden… with love.

The project was described as having “a wholly original Bond story and will see players earn their 00 status in the very first James Bond origin story.” This was groundbreaking: Fleming’s novels never told this story, Eon’s Casino Royale flirted with the idea but never expanded on it, and none of the earlier games featuring original plots were billed as an origin. IO was truly navigating uncharted waters – but they seemed up to the challenge. If you’re making a game based on such a high-profile IP, it’d bloody better be a noteworthy one. Earn your number and all that.

Aside from the license reveal, the teaser showed very little. Yet the community reaction was positive. Bond had been missing for over a decade, and to some, it was like a beloved relative you haven’t seen in years – you don’t realize how much you miss them until they return. The prevailing sentiment was that if IO’s take on 007 followed the blueprint of their Hitman series, it had real potential.

And the timing? Perfect.

The flood of bombastic military shooters and the decline of stealth-focused games had left many fans burned out, craving something more tactical. Meanwhile, Eon wanted a different kind of Bond for years – one that leaned harder into the “secret agent” side of the character. IO seemed perfectly positioned to satisfy both the audience and the license holder.

The teaser also served as a recruitment tool, with the studio stating how new recruits would work on Project 007. I’d imagine qualified developers couldn’t pass up the chance to work on this revival. And who knows – maybe they drew in people who worked on older Bond titles, similar to how the Modern Warfare (2019) reimagining included Call of Duty alumni among its staff, some of whom had even worked on the original Modern Warfare.

Then… silence. For years, the game went unmentioned.

…until last April.

The original teaser resurfaced on the Switch 2-themed Nintendo Direct, confirming one of the platforms it’ll launch on. In June, a post in IO’s social media confirmed Project 007’s official name: 007 First Light, with a proper reveal later in the week. The unveiling happened during Sony’s State of Play, shortly before Keighley’s Summer Game Fest was scheduled to start, confirming a release window of 2026. A trailer uploaded to IO’s YouTube channel soon after confirmed the full list of platforms: Switch 2, Xbox Series, PS5, Steam, and Epic Games Store.

With the background established, let’s dive into this trailer, shall we?

First, some disclaimers: I’m unfamiliar with the novels, though I’ve read Bond’s biography as presented by fan wikis – which, in my experience, tend to have more detail than the main Wikipedia pages, if one exists at all. Any commentary on his characterization assumes that IO is building their Bond to align with the one from the novels, though that may ultimately not be the route they take. Finally, while I can’t be as thorough as I’d like, there are things I want to point out based on what we were shown.

It gets mentioned a lot: how Bond’s parents died in a climbing accident, leaving him an orphan. IO starts the trailer by showing the climbing event. And it’s here that we hit our first discrepancy: Bond is with his parents when it happens. That’s not how it goes in the novels – there, he’s said to be staying with his aunt while they’re abroad. If we’re dealing with an alternate take where young Bond was present, as morbid as it may sound, I’d like to see the player take control of him during that moment. It would carry far more weight than just hearing M or Bond narrate it later. I picture it playing out similarly to how Uncharted handles its walk-and-talk sequences between set pieces.

Another detail stands out: “he (then) started a grand tour of every major boarding school in Britain.” I know about the incident at Eton, but the implication that he bounced from school to school doesn’t match the character’s usual backstory. Perhaps this man named “Greenway” is exaggerating to establish Bond’s demeanor. Still, I can’t argue with what comes next: “always at odds with authority – same thing in the Navy.” That much is true. Fleming described Bond as “a blunt instrument of the government in power,” but he wasn’t always agreeable. He bent the rules when it suited him, and that ruffled more than a few feathers.

Since I mentioned Uncharted, I’ll admit: I laughed when Bond appeared. My first thought was, “Nathan Drake, is that you? What are you doing here?” The scar on his face is a nice touch – someone clearly paid attention to the novels. As for the ongoing speculation about whose likeness was used, I don’t particularly care. What does interest me is the voice. While IO hasn’t confirmed it, many believe it’s Irish actor Patrick Gibson of Dexter fame. I can’t comment on his performance, since I’m not a TV person, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.

I got a little sentimental when I saw the Quartermaster – not for the character, but because it reminded me how much I miss Ben Whishaw. The character shown seems to be modeled slightly after John Cleese; really, if IO wanted to nod toward the film Qs, Desmond Llewelyn would’ve been the stronger pull. That said, I’m excited about the possibility of gadgets making a comeback in gameplay, especially since the concept felt sidelined during both the Craig and Activision eras. And that Triumph motorcycle before we cut to a training regimen scene? I was immediately getting Everything or Nothing vibes. I want a motorcycle mission in IO’s game!

We get actual gameplay footage! Most of the cuts appear to be set in a mansion – likely the only fully polished environment ready when the trailer was assembled – but it gives us a taste of what to expect. Bond sneaks around, throws something at a guard (I couldn’t tell if it was a dart or a distraction device), and stealthily neutralizes another. He disarms one guard, throws an empty gun at another to stagger them, kicks someone over a balcony to their death, and – once his cover seems to be blown – opens fire outside a warehouse. The sequence wraps up with a one-liner that genuinely made me laugh: when a housekeeper walks into the aftermath of Bond’s rampage, he shrugs it off with, “Jet lag. Gets me every time.”

It was exciting to see an Aston Martin in a high-octane chase sequence! I don’t know if the Hitman games have ever dabbled in this kind of action before, so I can’t say how it’ll play in First Light. Instead, I want to focus on the vehicle itself. Bond’s behind the wheel of a DBS V8 — Aston Martin’s first-generation V8-powered car. This model ran from 1969 to 1972, before being succeeded (and rebranded) as the AM V8, which stayed in production until 1989.

I also looked into the license plate, and I spent way too much time on it just to answer one question for myself: was it period-correct? Turns out, it seems like it! Taking the car’s general timeframe (1969–1972) as our base, the plate – GVFR 637 J – would’ve been issued under the suffix system: “GV” designates Ipswich, and “J” stands for 1970, which lines up with the car model. We could even go ahead and say this is a 1970 DBS V8. The “R” doesn’t correspond to anything in the system, likely an intentional choice to avoid clashing with a real registration – probably for folks like me who obsessively look into this stuff.

As for the sequence itself, the setting got me wondering: could this chase actually be in the Ipswich countryside? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t – but based on the plate and the sudden way the scene kicks off, the thought crossed my mind, and I couldn’t help entertaining it.

What follows is a series of quick-fire scenes from the game – none of which warrant individual breakdowns on my part, save for the music choice. Playing underneath is a rearrangement of John Barry’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service theme, originally featured in the film of the same name. It’s a perfect fit for the montage, capturing that unmistakable “Bondian” feel, for lack of a better word.

I also spotted what seemed like nods to various Bond films sprinkled throughout the rest of the trailer. Among the ones I could make out: Tomorrow Never Dies, Casino Royale, The Living Daylights, and even Die Another Day. It truly feels like IO is writing a love letter to the series – and as someone who’s been a Bond fan for years, I couldn’t ask for a better comeback.

Overall, I think this is a strong showing for what IO’s been quietly cooking these past four years. They understood the assignment — they wouldn’t have pitched this to Eon, much less convinced them to give Bond in video games another try, if they hadn’t. It hits all the right notes, delivers fan service in exactly the ways a Bond game should, and still finds room to hint at how they plan to innovate within the universe. I’m thrilled beyond what words can express.

A closing thought: when Activision lost the rights to the Bond IP, I felt relief. Despite the occasional standout, the publisher’s overall mismanagement felt like a slap in the face. I hoped EA would take another crack at it, but they weren’t interested anymore – fair enough. What I didn’t want, and what ultimately happened, was for Bond to fade quietly into the background. Like many, I was uneasy with the rise of smartphone gaming and how every major IP seemed to be migrating there. Even Bond dipped his toes in those waters – unsuccessfully. The landscape could’ve been very different had the IP managed to gain real traction on mobile, and that thought still gives me the shivers.

It touches on something fundamental about why I play games. If you’d asked me back then, I would’ve said gameplay mattered more than story. Now? I think they’re equally important. Maybe they always were. I think of games that moved me deeply with their narratives, even when the gameplay left something to be desired – and suddenly, the division between the two isn’t so black and white anymore.

I feel deep, deep gratitude to IO for letting this jaded soul feel excitement again. I wish them nothing but the best on the road to gold, and I’ll be there whenever the game is ready.

Godspeed, Commander.

22 min read

Prior Entry | All Media Log Posts | Next Entry

Please be advised these posts aren’t spoiler-free.

Prompted by a conversation with a relative, here’s a music-themed prologue. I could probably write a whole post just on my music taste, but for now, I’m focusing on one track I recently discovered – and got obsessed with.

While looking for electronic sets to power my workouts, I stumbled upon a Paul van Dyk mix on DanceTV’s Chasing Sunsets. I recognized a few tracks I’d heard before, but one around the 14-minute mark really grabbed me. I didn’t think to look it up right away – but later, I did. Turned out, it was his XOXO remix of Energy 52’s “Café Del Mar.” That sent me down the rabbit hole.

I checked out the original “Café Del Mar” as well, but I didn’t like it. I couldn’t quite relate to the nostalgia people feel for it – but that’s probably down to my taste not being rooted in early 90s trance. My journey into dance music started with Daft Punk in the mid aughts, after all...

There’s a video for Paul’s version – appropriately trippy, as perhaps a PV for a trance-y track should be. It’s a continuous tracking shot through surreal, digitally rendered landscapes: natural rock formations, forests of giant mushrooms, and even outer space. I briefly wondered if it was made in After Effects, until I remembered Ae isn’t a 3D renderer. The backgrounds are by Gaël Corboz, a Swiss digital illustrator. I checked out his portfolio, but nothing stood out beyond what was in the video, until I saw he’d put some of his work up as NFTs. I don’t know what he sees in that space, and NFTs are pretty much irrelevant at this point, but hey – there’s always a market for something, I guess.

Sasaki and Miyano

Are fudanshi supposed to live in the shadows? I’m pretty open about my affinity for BLs, smut, and BL smuts…

Sasaki and Miyano – SasaMiya for short – technically came to me as a friend’s recommendation. I’d already been interested, but for reasons I don’t quite remember, I hadn’t taken the plunge until they said I’d probably like it. They found it a bit slow to get going, but thought it picked up as it went. I don’t quite agree – if anything, it’s almost too compact, too fast-paced. The story justifies that by framing things around Shūmei Sasaki, a graduating senpai who’s fallen for his kouhai and doesn’t want their time together to run out. Still, I think it could’ve used a few slower arcs that take a break from the main plot and focus on fleshing out the side cast.

The first volume was in the final package I got from RightStuf before the Crunchyroll Store merger – and I didn’t remember this at all. I thought that last order was just the Bakuman. manga box set, but there was other stuff in there – receipts included, just in case I wanted written proof of how bad my memory is. This was around mid-2023, and by then, both the anime and the movie had already aired. It flew under the radar, and I blame the timing. SasaMiya was licensed by Funimation for their Winter 2022 season – their last before the big content migration to Crunchyroll. I can’t imagine BL fans – the one demo who’d absolutely know this series was getting an anime – signing up in droves when the service had an expiration date, both figuratively and literally. It wasn’t until the Graduation movie came out that the anime finally got the attention it would’ve had if events had played out differently. That lines up with what I remember, too; I saw trailers for the movie as part of Crunchyroll’s marketing push.

SasaMiya first started life as a pilot in 2015, created by series author Shou Harusono, and was picked up the following year for publication on Gene Pixiv – a joint venture between Media Factory and Pixiv. The series is widely credited with helping normalize respectful male-male relationships in BL, which the genre had too little of at the time. It wasn’t the first to try – the L’Étranger series, starting in 2013, comes to mind. I only discovered that one after seeing the movie five years ago, and it’s since become a favorite. This kind of recognition could’ve gone to earlier series, but the more I read about where others fell short, the more I return to where SasaMiya found its footing. I don’t know the full story behind Monthly Comic Gene, but what’s clear is that it was aimed at an underserved demographic. Add in the Pixiv partnership – which made the print magazine more accessible and highlighted select artists of the online art community to a wider audience – and SasaMiya’s success starts to feel almost inevitable.

The story follows high schooler Yoshikazu Miyano: a diligent student, a caring friend, and someone with a strong sense of justice, if his decision to join the disciplinary committee is anything to go by. He has a complex about his “girly” face – he’s androgynous, and was teased for it a lot in middle school, even by his crush. Because of that, he tends to keep to himself. Outside of this, he’s a self-proclaimed fudanshi – a man who’s a fan of BL – and most of his free time goes into reading manga and listening to drama CDs in the genre. But this isn’t just a character quirk. One way to read Miyano’s frequent deadpan commentary on BL tropes is as a vehicle for the author to critique them. It’s ironic, then, that SasaMiya still operates firmly within the BL genre – though the author would push back on that, saying it stands for “boy’s life.” Apparently, it was a play on words suggested by their editor… I wonder about that.

One day, while heading to his school’s south building, Miyano overheard bullies picking on Tasuku Kuresawa. Just as he was about to step in, Sasaki – another student – walked by and stopped him, stepping in himself instead. In that moment, Sasaki looked completely taken aback – not by the fight, but by Miyano. It was like love at first sight; Miyano’s androgynous features left an impression that never quite faded. The scuffle broke up, though not before Sasaki took a few hits. Three months later, the two form a typical senpai-kouhai bond – but it’s clear Sasaki hopes for something more. Curious to learn about Miyano’s interests, he asks if he reads manga and what he’d recommend. Miyano only had a BL title on him, which he lent out with some reluctance. The next day, when Sasaki shares his thoughts, Miyano lights up – his friends know he’s into BL, but he’s never talked about it with someone quite like this. He finally found someone he could share his passion with, openly and earnestly. From senpai-kouhai to BL book club, their friendship gradually deepens into something more. Sasaki may not have confessed right away, but ever since that first meeting, it was obvious to him that he wanted to be by Miyano’s side.

The TV anime covers volumes one through six of the manga, whereas the Graduation movie covers volume seven.

In the original manga, some chapter segments use the four-koma strip format. This doesn’t come out of nowhere – the original pilot was formatted that way too. While the format can be used for serious storytelling, it’s mostly reserved for gag comics, and early SasaMiya leans more toward that usage. These segments often set up Miyano as the punchline, accompanied by a third-party narrator who tends to deflate the humor, with Miyano’s own thoughts making only occasional appearances. In interviews, Harusono has confirmed that SasaMiya was initially conceived as a four-koma, but as serialization began, their editor suggested a hybrid approach: a mix of four-koma and standard panel layouts, preserving the original’s spirit while allowing the main story to grow. I think this was a misstep. It works in isolated moments, but as a whole, the mix gives the series an early identity crisis. That said, the further the series progresses, the more Harusono seems to embrace this quirk and uses it to shape reader expectations. Personally, I’d rather a story commit to one format or the other – even if SasaMiya is mostly easy to follow thanks to the way its strips are laid out in a logical, natural sequence. For instance, if a strip shows Taiga Hirano asking Miyano for help with disciplinary committee busywork and voicing concerns about Sasaki, the next one picks up with Sasaki walking into the classroom mid-conversation.

This cohesion immensely benefits the adaptation – both the TV series and the movie. Unlike the K-On! anime, which also began as a four-koma manga, SasaMiya didn’t need to retroactively fill in narrative gaps crucial to character development. I imagine the series composer breathed a sigh of relief. As for the adaptations themselves, I appreciated how some of Miyano’s BL monologues were trimmed when they didn’t serve the overall narrative – he tends to overdo it sometimes. One such cut: after Sasaki throws up from the alcohol-infused chocolates Miyano gave him, he remarks that Hirano can actually hold his liquor. That casual aside sends Miyano into a BL lore dump speculating about a relationship dynamic between Hirano and his dorm roommate, Akira Kagiura, a first-year. (That side story – Hirano and Kagiura – goes on to explore whether they become a couple, but that’s outside the scope of this entry.) That’s not to say anime Miyano isn’t still a dyed-in-the-wool fudanshi, but he’s less gratingly so. As a result, the anime strikes a more serious tone earlier than the manga did – and I found that to be a welcome change.

There were three months between the bullies’ incident and Sasaki getting all chummy with Miyano. I can’t ignore such a plot hole, especially one hiding in plain sight. Aside from a few vague nods to key events during that time, it’s largely treated as if it didn’t happen. Neither the anime nor what I’ve read of the manga – up to volume seven, funnily enough – seems to address it. I think it’s fair to ask: how did Sasaki get as close as he did? Did he really just research Miyano through Hirano? Was he sorting out his feelings, maybe too afraid to talk to him directly? Why wasn’t this potential turmoil deemed worthy of a few chapters?

It’s jarring. The first time we see Sasaki, he’s the cool senpai swooping in to stop a fight, and the next thing we know, he’s calling Miyano “cute.” I’d let it slide if the relationship stayed in the senpai-kouhai lane, but the way it plays out needs more scaffolding. That sudden shift in tone feels off for him – volume seven (and by extension, the movie) portrays Sasaki as deeply apathetic before meeting Miyano, which makes the whole “love at first sight and nothing else” bit hard to swallow. I just can’t wrap my head around it. It nags at me how any possible explanation that might shed light on Sasaki’s motivations gets swept under the rug the moment Miyano reciprocates – don’t ask questions, just cheer for them. It’s too convenient. The movie hints at Sasaki’s lingering insecurities when Miyano isn’t around, so maybe future volumes will revisit this gap… or maybe ones I just haven’t gotten to yet? Gosh, I hope so.

I admit, the lack of commitment from either Sasaki or Miyano to explicitly identify as gay bothered me. To add insult to injury, the characters brave enough to say it outright are tertiary: Masato Hanazawa’s older and younger siblings, Masaomi and Masaki, respectively. So, we’re not even worth a secondary role in a work where the titular duo are in a queer relationship. What made me second-guess that reaction, though, was Miyano running into his middle school crush, a girl named Nao Makimura. I’m reminded of my younger self: I had crushes on girls, even if deep down I knew I liked men. Maybe it was a coping mechanism – a way to fit in? Round peg, square hole, I guess. Still, growing up a gay kid in the late 90s was tough. I live in a deeply Catholic country, where attitudes today are more subdued – but back then, society had no qualms about humiliating anyone who dared be open about it. I fit neatly into the “gay” label, and yet I keep falling into the trap of thinking my experience is everyone else’s. That’s an obvious mistake by most standards, but emotional reactions rarely follow logic. What doesn’t help: I don’t know people in real life who define themselves as something other than lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. I may know some online, sure – but for me, it’s one thing to read it off a monitor, and another to see with my own eyes how they live and express it. That, I find far more informative.

Queerness is far broader than just gay or lesbian, with a plethora of descriptors encompassed by the plus in LGBTQ+, and it’s something I should be better at, as my subconscious still defaults to narrower terms – even when I know better. The fact that I want meaningful representation and different orientations depicted in media isn’t mutually exclusive. In fact, by not focusing on labels – whether by design or indifference – Japan’s media industry might be doing more for queer representation than I’ve given it credit for. It’s unbound by the taboos that weigh down American media, which often tokenizes queer characters as little more than boxes to check. Sasaki and Miyano’s relationship – particularly Miyano’s soul-searching – reinforced what countless romance anime before this failed (or maybe almost succeeded) in teaching me: love is messy, love hurts, but love is beautiful. That makes the journey worth it.

Still, as I wondered aloud previously, I looked into it and have a theory about where Sasaki and Miyano might fall within the queer spectrum – something I’d like to share as food for thought. Based on what we know, I believe Sasaki is pansexual and Miyano is demisexual.

The Apothecary Diaries, Volume 12

The anime adaptation of The Apothecary Diaries – Kusuriya from here on out – *finally* reached the infamous “frog scene” in episode 12 of the second season, which aired in late March. It was first brought to my attention thanks to Isaiah Colbert’s write-up for Aftermath, and memes only hammered it home once the dub aired a few weeks later. After one too many frog references, I started wondering where exactly that scene falls in the manga. I didn’t have to look far – though I did – because the answer was right in front of me. The cover of volume 12 has a frog perched on Maomao’s hand. I hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but once I started hearing about the scene’s infamous status in the fandom, the connection finally clicked.

How I didn’t give in to the temptation to look it up, I don’t know. But I can say with confidence that I knew next to nothing beyond its reputation. For the benefit of anime-only viewers: volume 12 of the Kusuriya manga adaptation roughly covers episodes 10 through 12 of the anime.

The volume opens with a chapter about scary stories. As payback for embarrassing Yinghua, Maomao is dragged along to an abandoned building in the northern part of the Rear Palace. Deep inside, a group of ladies-in-waiting, each holding a lit candle, are gathered around a brazier. The host kicks off the ritual: “Tonight, we shall be telling thirteen tales that will chill you to the bone.” After each story, they’re supposed to snuff out their candle and toss it into the brazier. But there’s just one problem – thirteen tales? Counting Maomao, Yinghua, and the host, there are only twelve people. Maybe someone’s telling two stories? Or maybe the thirteenth person hasn’t arrived yet? Maomao doesn’t think much of it and keeps the tidbit to herself.

By now, it’s clear how scaredy-cat Yinghua didn’t want to go alone – Maomao didn’t even get to finish her story before Yinghua bonked her in a panic. As the night went on, Maomao started feeling light-headed. When it came time for the twelfth person to speak, she could barely focus – until they said something that sent a chill down her spine: “You will be next.”

Her fight-or-flight response kicked in. She bolted to a nearby window and flung it open, letting the toxic fumes from the brazier escape. Had she not acted when she did, she – and everyone else – might’ve succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning. Whether the host intended this outcome is up for debate… but they might’ve been a ghost themselves. Later, back at the Jade Pavilion, Hongniang casually mentions that the woman who used to oversee that building died the previous year, lending just enough weight to the ghost theory to make you wonder.

Next up, the start of what I’m calling the “Hunting Arc.”

Jinshi requests to borrow Maomao from Consort Gyokuyou for a few days, offering Suiren as a replacement food taster in exchange. He’s been invited to a hunt by Shishou of the Shi clan, held in the northern Shihoku Province, and wants Maomao to tag along. Also coming along for the ride: Jinshi’s assistant, Gaoshun – *not* acting in an assistant capacity this time, since he was also invited – and the man temporarily taking his place, Basen, Gaoshun’s son. For the duration of their stay in Shihoku, Jinshi requests to be called “Kosen.”

Nothing especially noteworthy happens until shortly before the infamous “frog scene.” Jins – erm, Kosen – steps away from the banquet feeling light-headed, likely due to heat exhaustion from the hood he’s wearing. Concerned, Maomao goes after him; he couldn’t have gone far. In the nearby forest, she finds him leaning against a tree. She urges him to take the mask off, but he doesn’t want to risk being seen by anyone outside his entourage. The two walk to a riverbank near the top of a waterfall so he can cool off.

Then: gunfire. The shots miss, but tension spikes. Kosen pulls Maomao close and leaps with her into the falls.

Back at the banquet, his entourage grows concerned – he’s been gone for over an hour. Basen dispatches men to search for him, and before long, a torn, blood-stained piece of Kosen’s robe is brought back. The group snaps into high alert, and a frantic search begins.

Jinshi and Maomao take refuge in a cave behind the waterfall. Maomao nearly drowns from Jinshi’s stunt – he has to perform CPR to revive her. She comes to, coughing up water and immediately berating him for it.

It’s chilly in the cave, and their clothes are soaked. Maomao suggests they wring them out to avoid catching a cold. They share some butterbur sprouts from the pack she’d brought and begin walking deeper into the cave. Jinshi mentions there’s a hole in the ceiling toward the back – it looks climbable with a boost. Maomao isn’t strong enough to lift him, so he crouches down to hoist her up.

Standing on his shoulders, she reaches for the damp rock overhead, trying to find a grip, when a frog lands squarely on her head. She flails to shake it off, slips, and sends them both crashing to the ground. Maomao took a moment to recompose herself. The fall didn’t hurt as much as she expected – she’d landed on top of Jinshi. Her left hand was touching something; she figured it was the frog again, but…

“Could you move your hand? You’re putting me in a bit of a pickle,” Jinshi muttered with a slight grunt.

Her hand was in his crotch. He’s not supposed to *have one*. He’s a “eunuch.” Suddenly, a lot of things made sense – his figure, for one, far from the typical languishing body of a eunuch. But Maomao didn’t want to think about it. Ignorance is bliss.

Before she could stand, Jinshi grabbed her. “There’s something I need to tell you. It’s why I asked you to come along on this trip.” That line set off alarm bells. Whatever he was about to say, it was the kind of thing people got killed over. So, she played dumb: “I think I squished a frog.” Jinshi, understandably, lost it. He didn’t know about the actual frog that landed on her head, so to him, she’d just compared his manhood to an amphibian. He questioned her with the intensity of someone who’d just had their very identity thrown into doubt. She didn’t help matters by continuing the bit – frogs are slimy, after all.

He snapped.

He shoved her down and crawled on top of her, eyes burning with a predator’s glare. Yanking up her right leg, he growled, “Do you want to make sure?” If Maomao wanted to keep pretending he was a eunuch, she couldn’t anymore. She even considered kicking him in the groin to get him off her. Jinshi realized, too late, that he’d gone too far – but he didn’t move either. Just froze.

A dog barked. Lihaku’s dog. Maomao whistled, and it pounced on Jinshi, giving her a chance to slip out from under him. Lihaku soon followed and got them out of the cave. Outside, Kosen (mask back on) was still mad. When Maomao asked if he was okay, he lashed out, still upset about the comparison. She figured: “Such a lordly man with confidence in his looks must possess an equally fine frog.” Of course he’s outraged – he thinks she made up that whole story just to avoid facing the truth.

She does have a theory about who was shooting at them… but that’s where this volume ends.

Kusuriya is a mix of many genres, and among them is political drama. After taking a back seat for several volumes, we’re back in it, as Jinshi’s unspoken reason for visiting Shihoku seems to be diplomacy – or is it? Maybe the high stakes surrounding Jinshi make it easier to digest, but based on what’s presented in this volume, I struggle to care. In fact, most of what I cut from the Hunting Arc write-up *was* the political drama. Without full context, I find it difficult to piece things together or determine what’s relevant – and that might have something to do with my tendency to avoid currently airing anime.

I understand the Shi clan rebels against the Imperial Palace, and that conflict becomes more prominent later, but I shouldn’t need to dig through external details to make sense of it now. Instead, I find myself wishing the story would return to Maomao solving mysteries, as low-stakes as those can sometimes feel.

Whether or not I personally enjoy the genre, it’s possible Kusuriya handles political drama well. I can’t judge that – I’d need some grounding in ancient Chinese history to really say. I’m sure there’s value in that perspective, and it might even help make the story’s world feel more tangible. But as it stands, I’ve yet to encounter anything – either in the story or by chance online – that’s made me want to dive deeper.

Lastly, how I felt about the “frog scene.” I’m not going to mince words: I found the whole thing icky. No, I’m not making a pun – I was genuinely disturbed. By this event alone, my impression of Jinshi did a complete 180.

First, how the scene was handled. Before sitting down to write what might be my most scathing criticism of the series, I took a step back – maybe it played out differently in the light novel? Or even in the anime? In the interest of fairness, I looked both up.

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The result? I actually think the anime’s softening of the event is worse, perhaps out of a misguided sense of respect for MaoJin shippers – but more likely to avoid clashing with Nippon TV’s management. In the written work – an excerpt from both the light novel and manga panels is above – Jinshi is described as snapping and pushing her. And while I can see the importance of this moment in advancing their relationship, lying her down is not pushing her. It’s ridiculous to believe someone who snaps would do anything gently.

Maomao could’ve been seriously hurt by Jinshi giving in to his rage. The cave floor isn’t smooth, and moss isn’t a cushion. More importantly, this isn’t the first time Maomao has messed with him – so why now? The fact is, there was no need for this at all. Jinshi is a charming man, and Maomao even admits as much when she first meets him, even if she isn’t interested. Their interactions up to this point had been various shades of charming, but always polite – even when he behaved like a petulant child in private. I think back to when Maomao served him at Verdigris before he bought her – how he stole a kiss when her lips inadvertently touched his finger. That’s the Jinshi I knew – charm dialed up to 11. I don’t know this Jinshi.

This borders on sexual assault, and I don’t say that lightly. The fandom’s insistence that he “cares for her,” using all their previous interactions as proof that this was a one-off, really upsets me. It’s as if they’ll excuse anything to keep their ship afloat.

Ultimately, I’m just glad the dog came when it did.

That’s it from me. See you next month!

2 min read

The seventh generation of video game consoles (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii era) wasn’t kind to the Japanese games industry.

For longtime fans of Japanese games, the decline was hard to miss – especially as American studios rose to dominance. It was the era of brown palettes, cinematic shooters, and bombastic spectacle. And the way the industry talked about Japanese titles often carried racist undertones – unacceptable then, and no better in hindsight. From Phil Fish’s so-called ‘tough love’ to G4’s X-Play ridiculing Japanese games, this period reflected some of the industry’s ugliest biases.

That mindset hasn’t entirely gone away, either. The devs behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 openly credited Final Fantasy as their key inspiration – but of course, the loudest takeaway was that this is what a “real” JRPG looks like now. The quiet part said out loud, as if we hadn’t been through this before.

The core issue – why Japanese games fell out of favor – lingered. And the many attempts to chase Western tastes? Largely forgettable.

In 2018, Archipel – a YouTube channel run by French expats – sat down with Japanese developers to reflect on what it meant to stay true to their craft during a time of uncertainty. The result is an emotional, deeply human look at creators trying to find meaning when the path forward wasn’t clear.

I found it hugely informative, and maybe you will too.

8 min read

On the 15th of April, anyone with a passing interest in VTubing – Virtual YouTubers – witnessed a bombshell.

Rumors had warned us. We didn’t want to believe them: the face of English VTubing, graduating? No… it couldn’t be… But then an “Important Announcement” stream was scheduled, with a white-background thumbnail we’d seen too many times before. Ominous, silent, inevitable. No one had died, and yet, why did it feel like someone had? Before she even went live, we knew.

Gawr Gura’s graduation announcement stream, April 15, 2025

Gawr Gura, a member of Hololive English’s first generation, -Myth-, announced her graduation effective May 1st. Her stated reason was “disagreements with management and company direction.” She is the first member of -Myth- to formally call her departure a “graduation,” joining the ranks of alumni not only from her branch, but from others across Hololive as well.

-Myth- debuted in September 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside Mori Calliope, Takanashi Kiara, Ninomae Ina’nis, and Amelia Watson. Like their Japanese counterparts, the members of -Myth- were introduced with distinct stories and gimmicks: Gura, for her part, is a shark girl from Atlantis who grew bored of life underwater and ventured to the surface in search of fun.

Gura’s departure follows a string of graduations within Hololive in 2025, including Ceres Fauna and Nanashi Mumei from English’s second generation (-Council-), as well as Murasaki Shion from Japan’s second generation. In terms of impact, her graduation is as seismic as Kiryu Coco’s was four years ago.

Before Hololive English was even a concept, Western fans discovered VTubers through clips – fan-translated snippets of Japanese streams that circulated on YouTube and Twitter. I remember seeing a lot of Inugami Korone from Hololive Gamers, along with Usada Pekora and Houshou Marine from Hololive Japan’s third generation. I’m sure I also came across Coco clips, though I can’t say for certain whether that was before or after -Myth- debuted.

While clippers played a huge role in growing the fandom back then, Kiryu Coco is widely credited as the “bridge” to the West. She actively incorporated international audiences into her content, switching between Japanese and fluent English with ease. It was a fitting role for someone who understood both cultures and dominated the art of unscripted banter. Not even Kizuna Ai – the godmother of VTubing – managed such a feat. Cover Corp was in a unique position to act on the global interest that was building.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns and curfews went into effect across the globe, and everything had to move online – there wasn’t a choice.

Auditions for what would become -Myth- began on April 23rd, as announced on Hololive’s X account, and ran until May 24th. Five months later, on September 8th, the group was formally unveiled. Their debuts followed four days later, quietly setting the stage for what would become a shift in VTubing’s reach – Gura was the fourth to take the stage.

Late to her own debut stream – later revealed to be due to technical problems – the stress of the moment nearly overwhelmed the new performer. A peculiar mic test inadvertently became iconic, sparked by nothing more than a single letter sound. Her nervousness was palpable throughout, yet endearing, like a little sister you wanted to protect. Continuing tradition, each performer closed with a song – after all, singing was part of the job. Gura chose Tatsuro Yamashita’s “Ride on Time,” a city pop classic. Like many others, I was surprised – not just by how good of a singer she was, but by how naturally she spoke Japanese. I seem to recall her mentioning she’d taken some Japanese before joining Hololive, but only became fluent years into the role, fluent enough to sing entirely in Japanese by the time of her first original song, “Reflect.”

With the world in such a bleak state, it was easy to see why people gravitated toward comfort. Not that awful “Imagine” cover by Gal Gadot and friends, but things like sourdough baking, reconnecting with friends (and time itself) in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, or watching feel-good shows like Ted Lasso. Gura hit that comfort nerve for many reasons – she was wholesome, she was genuinely talented, she was fluent in meme-speak, and she was quick-witted. Word spread fast about the “funny shark streamer,” and just over a month after her debut, she hit a million subscribers. The next month, one and a half. By January, two million. Her rise was meteoric – and Cover had little to do with it. She was a natural performer who connected with the community in a way that few others in VTubing ever had. She felt like one of us.

I drifted from the fandom in 2021, as lockdown curfews lifted and I threw myself into the “new normal” – as messed up a concept as that is. I clung to everything I had once taken for granted. I still kept up with the scene through clippers – the same ones who’d helped the fandom grow before Hololive English, now less needed for translations but still vital for highlights and memories. I no longer had time for full streams, but I stayed connected through moments. I thought I might return with IRyS’s debut, but it didn’t last. Life had moved on.

I kept tabs on Gura’s health struggles – and the almost cruel irony that whenever she did stream, it was to push product. The pressure of being VTubing’s most-subscribed English talent. The pressure of staying visible as Cover shifted toward going public. It sometimes felt like the fandom forgot there was a real person behind Gura’s smile. I believe she did her best to hold on, but perhaps Amelia Watson’s quiet “affiliation but really graduation” changed her outlook. I don’t know if she was close with Fauna, but she clearly bonded with Mumei. And when Mumei left too… that might’ve been the heartbreak that made her question whether this was still worth it.

I hope one day, Gura’s performer can speak freely about what happened – what led her to leave Hololive. Not out of bitterness toward Cover, but so that a sometimes ungrateful audience can finally see what she carried behind the curtain.

I’d like to take a moment to address the reason Gura is departing. Calli’s comment that it’s become a “catch-all term,” like “personal reasons” in the corporate world, doesn’t sit right with me. Gura isn’t the first to cite “disagreements with management and company direction” – Mumei and Fauna did too. That they’re saying this publicly, on company-owned channels, reads to me as a respectful way of calling out their employer. And the fact that Hololive English’s most popular talent is echoing this? That should raise some eyebrows.

I’m aware of Yagoo’s (Motoaki Tanigo, Cover’s CEO) long-held dream of building a virtual idol group – Hololive exists because of it. But ever since Cover went public in 2023, the company has pushed to be seen not as an entertainment group, but as a tech company. Its stock is evaluated accordingly, and shareholders expect the kind of returns they’d see from other tech firms. Not that Cover was hurting for cash, but global expansion and keeping those operations running comes with a cost. And now, that cost seems to be passed down to the talents.

For those in the entertainment division, it likely means rising expectations. Some just want to stream and have fun, not prepare for concerts or push products. That may come with the job, sure – but if the parts you don’t enjoy start eclipsing the ones you do, you’re going to start asking yourself some hard questions.

I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth. But I’d imagine thoughts like these may have crossed their minds before making the call to stay or walk away. Whether it’s health conditions made worse by the job, creative frustration, or simply feeling the company no longer reflects your values – whatever it is, this should set off alarm bells.

Cover isn’t in danger of becoming the next Nijisanji… at least, not yet. But fans should stay alert, and approach both the company and its defenders with a healthy dose of skepticism.

So what’s next for her, beyond a long, well-earned rest? Will she find her way back under a new name, or maybe one we’ve heard before? Could she team up again with old friends, or explore something entirely different, away from the spotlight?

We don’t know what’s ahead. For now, thank you for being our little shark. Return to Atlantis with the satisfaction of a job well done – and maybe even a way to make French fries in the sunken city.

Keep swimming. Always.

25 min read

Prior Entry | All Media Log Posts | Next Entry

Please be advised these posts aren’t spoiler-free.

Did you know? The masked swordsman who acts as the boss of Orange Ocean in Kirby’s Adventure wasn’t originally called Meta Knight – not even in the Japanese materials. Allegedly, during development, he was referred to as メタアーマー, or “Meta Armor.” That name didn’t make it into the final game; instead, he was retroactively named Meta Knight after HAL settled on that identity for him.

Also left on the cutting-room floor were two more Meta Armor variants: スラッシュメタアーマー (Slash Meta Armor) and メタモルメタアーマー (Metamorphose Meta Armor). If I interpreted the source correctly, these weren’t separate “Meta Knights,” but transformations of the same masked swordsman. I suspect one of them might’ve made an appearance during the Halberd escape sequence in Revenge of Meta Knight from Kirby Super Star, though I don’t have solid evidence – just a gut feeling.

Passing this factoid along in the prologue, since I couldn’t find a place to fit it into the Adventure or Nightmare entries. Without further ado, here’s the April log!

Kirby’s Adventure

Okay… I finally get to talk about the game that shaped me. Deep breaths…

It’s been ages since I last played Kirby’s Adventure. I know for sure when I first did – about thirty years ago – but I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve returned to it since. I wish I could pin down the last replay, but those early years blur together. These days, I log what I play over on Backloggd, so it’s easier to keep track now. If I’d gone deep on Adventure back when I wrote that post about the games that stuck with me, it could’ve taken up half the entry. That’s how much I have to say about it – and I just hope I can say it well enough to reflect how much this game means to me.

So, what’s this game about? Unlike Dream Land, which leaves the story buried in the instruction manual, Adventure opens with an in-game explanation – right after introducing a new mechanic that would go on to define the series: the copy ability. The people of Dream Land have stopped dreaming, leaving everyone cranky and on edge. Kirby checks in with his friends, only to learn they’re stuck in the same sleepless slump. “Something must’ve happened to the Dream Spring!” they say. The Dream Spring, powered by the magical Star Rod, acts like a dream reservoir for the whole country: it collects dreams and then returns them to the people each night. Curious and concerned, Kirby heads to the spring – only to find King Dedede lounging in it like it’s his private pool. It’s not hard to figure out who’s behind the problem. Dedede, caught red-handed, tries to explain himself, but Kirby’s not buying it – and for good reason. When questioned about the missing Star Rod, Dedede admits he shattered it into seven pieces and handed them off to his buddies. And just like that, Kirby sets off on a journey to put it back together.

HAL Laboratory was in a precarious position. Several titles hadn’t performed up to expectations – chief among them Metal Slader Glory in 1991 – and their costly move to Yamanashi, made in response to the company’s rapid growth, only added to the strain. The timing couldn’t have been worse: the relocation came just before Japan’s asset price bubble burst. It may well have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. HAL became functionally insolvent and was forced to file for bankruptcy.

Hiroshi Yamauchi, then-president of Nintendo, had long respected HAL’s contributions to the Famicom and was keenly aware of their technical prowess. He stepped in with an offer to help pull them out of bankruptcy – but reportedly with a condition: Satoru Iwata must become HAL’s new president as part of the reorganization. Iwata had no experience running a business. Did Yamauchi see a natural leader in him, someone with both the smarts and vision to steady the ship? In any case, Iwata didn’t have much of a choice. It was either take the helm or shut down HAL for good. The gifted programmer took on the role, and with Nintendo’s backing, HAL became a first-party developer. Their top priority? Climb out of the financial pit, fast. Iwata boldly declared what would become HAL’s north star: “From here on out, every game we create is going to sell a million copies!” A year before Iwata’s appointment, Kirby’s Dream Land had been released – a game completed before HAL’s financial woes had fully come to a head. It went on to sell five million copies. The right game at the right time, Kirby became a symbol of hope for the disillusioned employees.

HAL couldn’t afford any more grand bets, and so they bet on Kirby. Development on a new title started immediately after Dream Land wrapped. It was originally conceived as a straightforward home console port, but Masahiro Sakurai pushed back, armed with feedback from the first game and determined to expand on what made it work. What eventually became Kirby’s Adventure was equal parts exploration of the character, a playground for ideas that hadn’t made it into Dream Land (chief among them: the copy ability), and a showcase of HAL’s deep hardware expertise. Choosing to develop for the aging Famicom instead of the newer Super Famicom wasn’t just a safe bet – it gave HAL’s programmers a familiar canvas where they could do their absolute best work.

What they delivered in 1993, with the Famicom on its way out, was a visual and audio marvel. That Adventure exists at all, let alone in the form it does, feels like nothing short of a miracle.

Does it hold up? Now that I know more about the technical feats behind the game, I’ve come to appreciate it even more. For example, take the outdoor sections in Butter Building, where the tower appears to rotate as Kirby walks in either direction. It’s a clever workaround that mimics parallax scrolling – a trick where multiple 2D planes move at different speeds to create depth. The Famicom didn’t have the horsepower for true parallax scrolling, so what you’re seeing is HAL pulling off a smart trick to approximate it.

It’s a beautiful game – maybe the most beautiful game on the Famicom. Sure, there’s Metal Slader Glory, but this isn’t the Obama-awards-Obama-a-medal meme. If the world map didn’t convince you, level 1-1 will.

Look at it! Look how pretty it is! The world looks alive! This background work was rarely seen in the Famicom, and some developers would scoff at this level of detail, deeming the extra work not worth it. Not HAL. They went for it. Most impressively, it was all done using the Famicom’s single background plane. Maybe the background moving with Kirby is another hardware trick – I’m not sure. But it’s impressive all the same. It wasn’t the last first-party Famicom title, but given how lackluster the final ones were, it might as well have been.

I’d like to shout out the mini-games in Adventure. In an interview, Sakurai mentioned how he wanted “one-button games” to complement the main story. The results were a game of who could press the button first (Quick Draw), when to press the button (Egg Catcher), and how long to press it for (Crane Fever). I took to Egg Catcher quite a bit, although I recall being fond of Crane Fever when I was a kid. Not that I’m into crane games - I actually suck at them. But if I managed to grab the big Kirby? That was two extra lives!?

Is it as good as I remember? I don’t know if that question even makes sense anymore. I’ve played so many games since 1993, watched the medium stretch and shift in ways I never imagined. What once felt vast now seems small. Some of the games I’ve loved since may have been shaped by Adventure, their lineage hidden in mechanics or mood, but I wouldn’t always notice.

And yet, Adventure lingers. There’s a quiet rhythm to it – not too easy, not too punishing – that still feels right. But more than anything, it takes me back. Back to a time when life was smaller, too. My parents were carrying burdens I couldn’t see. But me? I just went to school, came home, ate dinner, played games, and went to bed. That was my world: safe, predictable, untouched by the kind of stress I now carry every day.

I can’t separate Adventure from that feeling. The game and that moment in my life are tangled together, impossible to pull apart. And maybe that’s part of its magic. Even if I return to it only for the comfort it brings, for the flicker of a time when things felt simple and full of wonder – that’s still something. That’s still worth holding on to.

Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land

I adore Adventure, but asking newer players to go through it is futile. Fortunately, HAL remade it for the Game Boy Advance nine years after the original. Surprisingly, putting it on a handheld shifts expectations compared to a home console, making it more palatable. I never owned a GBA, which means this run-in with Nightmare is my first ever playthrough. While some points of the main game are interchangeable with its remake, I thought it best to tackle it separately. Having this separation also ensures you, dear reader, won’t get confused about which title I’m referring to.

Nightmare’s development began in summer 2001, a time when no Kirby games were in production, even as the Kirby: Right Back at Ya! anime began airing. HAL wanted to get something out quickly and initially considered porting one of the Super Famicom games to the GBA. But Sakurai reflected that seeking momentary relief at the expense of long-term impact wasn’t a good idea. So then came the question: how quickly could a new game be produced? The team floated a concept similar to the cancelled Kirby Bowl – perhaps now was finally the chance for such a project to shine.

Then someone suggested what would eventually become Nightmare: “Why don’t we remake Adventure?” Sakurai initially resisted the idea but later suggested in an interview that it was the right path to take. He lamented how, as technology enabled greater scope, games weren’t doing much to lower the difficulty barrier. The design decisions behind Adventure spoke volumes about his philosophy: making games approachable, drawing in as wide an audience as possible, and striking a balance between ease and challenge. What helped Adventure was that it was already a complete game – no need to draft mechanics from scratch or experiment with structure – which made it perfect for a quick turnaround. Any reservations Sakurai had, in light of all this, quickly faded.

What’s different in Nightmare versus Adventure? For starters, the visuals got a major overhaul. Sprites were redrawn based on the ones from Kirby Super Star, and thanks to the GBA’s ability to handle more on-screen sprites, HAL was able to push smoother animations throughout. How many sprites? The developers said that the opening scene in Nightmare – with all the Kirbys rushing in for a wipe transition – used every Kirby sprite in the game. One of the programmers guessed the total was about 120.

Technically speaking, Nightmare holds a stable framerate compared to Adventure, which often dipped into the high teens. The GBA is roughly on par with the Super Famicom, which meant true parallax scrolling was now possible. In Adventure, only a few stages faked the effect; in Nightmare, it’s standard across all side-scrolling levels. That said, one of Adventure’s flashiest effects – the rotating tower in Butter Building – is gone. Instead, you get a layer of fog that gradually lifts. I don’t think it was a hardware limitation; more likely, it was a cut made to save time during development.

Minigames also saw a shake-up. Crane Fever was swapped out for Bomb Rally, a tennis-like game where you try to volley a bomb back and forth without letting it explode in your hands. Egg Catcher became Kirby’s Air Grind – a one-button racing game that doubled as a testbed for Kirby Air Ride, which would come out the following year. Quick Draw got a makeover to resemble Samurai Kirby from Super Star, but it plays the same as the original: first to press the button wins. And then there’s Meta Knightmare, the series’ first time letting players control Meta Knight. Unlocked after clearing both normal and extra modes, it’s a time attack challenge – beat the game using Meta Knight’s souped-up sword moves, but with only half the usual health meter and no saving.

I haven’t touched on Nightmare’s co-op mode since I never played it myself. Still, it deserves a mention. At the time, it was groundbreaking – maybe even the first co-op platformer in Nintendo’s history, predating New Super Mario Bros. Wii by several years.

How faithful should a remake be? I think they should be free to innovate within the bounds of what the project is trying to reconstruct – but given how much Adventure means to me, I can’t answer that without falling into the trap of wanting a 1:1 remake. It’d give me momentary happiness, but if I want more people to check out my formative game, that simply won’t do.

Some things I would’ve loved to see after seven hours with it: the old mini-games, with a fresh coat of paint. Even so, I admit I got addicted to Bomb Rally, perfecting my button presses to volley as fast as possible to my opponent. I would’ve loved a Super Star-style take on Fire and Ice: two abilities rolled together. The former – fire breath and the “Burning” fireball. The latter – ice breath and the “Freezing” blizzard shield, which freezes any enemy who gets close to Kirby. Reportedly, Sakurai wanted it this way, but one of the designers pushed back. I think that was a mistake.

Honestly, none of the above are deal-breakers. I appreciate and love – adore, even – how a modern take on my favorite classic exists for newer players to experience. And maybe Nightmare will become – or already is – someone’s first gaming obsession, just like Adventure was mine. When I think about it that way, it feels like I’m passing the torch.

I won’t feel as strongly about this version as I do for the original, but HAL did their best to recapture the magic. The fact that an Adventure remake was deemed worthwhile enough to get the green light and make it to store shelves is humbling. That, in and of itself, is enough for me.

Thanks, HAL, for making it happen. And thanks, Sakurai, for putting your reservations aside.

Signed, someone you’ll never meet – but whose life you changed.

I Cannot Reach You

I first heard of this series from a friend and an acquaintance, both of whom can read Japanese, enthusiastically discussing each new chapter as it comes out. It being a boys’ love manga, it was bound to catch my attention – alas, I can’t read Japanese. Thankfully, American publisher Yen Press picked up the rights in 2020, giving me an English version to read! Still, I put it off for the longest time – as I tend to do with most media, it seems. I tried to correct this in an unorthodox way: in 2023, I dared that same acquaintance to buy me the first volume in print, since they kept egging me on to start it. They didn’t – surprising absolutely no one.

Then, what I thought was a joke escalated. It started when I mentioned how I tend to take more recommendations from my friend, since our tastes align more than theirs — a comment they took personally. We ended up bickering for no real reason. Reading back on that exchange with the benefit of hindsight, it stung. I suppose I wasn’t able to rein in the worst of my impulses in that conversation.

If I wasn’t going to get volume one for free, then when did I buy it? Where did I buy it? I often share thoughts on books and book hauls with my friend, and I found a post with some thoughts on the first volume from around the holidays – and a separate haul that included volumes two through six. But where was the elusive volume one? Did I forget to share it with my friend? Maybe I posted it elsewhere? Did I use the wrong keywords when searching my emails? It bothered me so much, I went down a rabbit hole.

It wasn’t on an order from my go-to store, RightStuf (RIP), before that holiday haul. It wasn’t from Amazon, and Books-A-Million – the “once in a blue moon” bookstore – was a dud. Still convinced I wasn’t searching my emails correctly (and locked out of RightStuf’s order page for some reason), I even emailed Crunchyroll Store support to see if they could dig anything up. They came up empty. Just when I was about to give up – just when I was ready to joke that the book must’ve magically appeared in my hands – I checked my local bookstore and… there it was.

Odd. Local bookstores generally don’t carry BL titles. I must’ve bought it there and completely forgotten I did.

The beginnings of I Cannot Reach You (Kimi ni wa Todokanai, or Kiminai for short) struck me as peculiar. It started on Pixiv’s comics platform, Gene Pixiv, back in 2018. I’ve known Pixiv to be home not only to Japanese and Japanese-influenced illustrators but also to doujinshi artists; I just wasn’t aware of any illustrator whose work had started there and then exploded in popularity the way Kiminai did. What’s humbling, then, is that this wasn’t even supposed to be a series at first, as shared by its author, Mika, in one of their notes. It shows – chapter one reads like a one-shot, and everything after that expands on the story of two childhood friends: Ashiya Kakeru and Oohara Yamato.

Yamato is everything Kakeru isn’t – cool, smart, and good-looking. They’ve spent so much time together that they can’t imagine life without each other: two halves of a whole. But as they’ve grown into their teenage years, insecurity looms over Kakeru. He often questions how he’s still friends with someone like Yamato, especially when public outings draw comments from others that make him more aware of his shortcomings. All he wants is to be able to stand beside him as an equal, though he’d never admit that aloud.

But Yamato has romantic feelings for Kakeru. While watching over a sleepy Kakeru, he ponders in a narrator-like capacity: “I’m sure it can’t reach him. This feeling that’s not admiration or nostalgia… this ache.” If the subtext wasn’t obvious, when Kakeru later tries to distract himself from after-school work, he casually asks, “Is there anybody you like?” Yamato answers, “Kakeru.” Kakeru, assuming Yamato is just calling his name again, brushes it off. Yamato leaves, and though Kakeru might have an idea of what he meant, he talks himself out of it.

Yamato will never admit these feelings to Kakeru… or will he?

In volume seven, Kakeru and Yamato officially start dating after much soul-searching on Kakeru’s part, the moment sealed by Yamato’s passionate kisses in the school infirmary. Volume eight shifts to how they navigate the relationship itself – a major focus as Kakeru, completely ignorant about romance, finds the title of “boyfriend” somewhat embarrassing, though not enough to hide it. He confides in Kosuke Fujino, trying to figure out if he can see Yamato as more than a friend, though he never mentions him by name. Kosuke assumes Kakeru is trying to woo a girl – until he realizes Kakeru never actually specified a gender. He gives him two aquarium tickets (his girlfriend isn’t a fan of aquariums) and offers his support for whatever Kakeru needs. Since there are no afternoon classes, Kakeru takes Yamato there. It’s their first date after agreeing to go out!

Yui Hosaka and Soichiro Amamiya, classmates of the new couple, run into Kosuke after a karaoke party and invite him out to eat. They also text Kakeru and Yamato, but ever the aloof guy, Kakeru seems to miss the message. Not that it mattered – the pair were already on their way back and would bump into them regardless. On the train, Kakeru noticed Yamato seemed down and tried to get him talking, playing it cool with a callback: “Maybe it’s ‘cos you’re my boyfriend?” After getting off, Yamato, ever the assertive romantic, pulls him into a quieter section of the station and hugs him, determined this would be the last time he showed affection in public.

But it’s too late – Kosuke saw them and was in shock. Yui and Soichiro tried to give them an out, and Yamato picked up on the cue, playing along. Kakeru, however, couldn’t stand hiding the relationship any longer and declared they were dating. Kosuke excused himself, but the couple joined the others for lunch anyway. Kakeru felt awful about Kosuke shutting him out, but it was only after Yui, Soichiro, and Yamato cornered him for a proper heart-to-heart that things finally started to mend. Kosuke eventually admitted the shock wasn’t about them being together, but about not being trusted enough to know that Yamato was the “special someone.” Letting bygones be bygones, Kakeru handed out the keychains he bought at the aquarium so they could all have matching ones.

The latter part of volume eight depicts an overnight stay at a cabin deep in the woods. This happens during the spring break at school, and everyone comes – Kakeru, Yamato, Yui, Soichiro, and Kosuke. They haven’t spent quality time together since the school trip to Kyoto during the Fall (y’know, the place where Yamato confessed his feelings properly), and Kakeru wanted to correct this. Not many noteworthy events happen – this is as slice-of-life as it gets. On the relationship front, though, the couple seems to grow even closer. I found myself thinking about how the title relates to where they are now: maybe it once reflected how Kakeru saw Yamato as out of reach – his equal, but distant – and how Yamato worked to get Kakeru to see him as more than a friend, but in this new phase, Kakeru appears to have the same goal as before, but Yamato took baby steps towards the future he wants for both. And he wants even more.

Out in the woods, Kakeru had found a spot where cherry blossoms bloom – a spectacle he discovered on his own, then enhanced with floodlights he’d prepared in advance. He brought Yamato there as a belated birthday surprise. Back at the cabin, Yui noted how Yamato must be feeling frustrated not getting time alone with Kakeru – they sleep in separate rooms, and Kosuke keeps summoning him. He pleads with Yamato not to ‘explode’ – maybe alluding to what happened in Kyoto – his teasing tone clearly getting on Yamato’s nerves. The cherry blossom viewing becomes one instance in which they get time alone. The other one happens later that day, when neither Kakeru nor Yamato could sleep, and they step out. Soichiro brought with him a planetarium projector, and Kakeru was telling Yamato all about how cool it was. “Want to see the real thing?” Yamato proposes before going outside the cabin. It’s a beautiful clear sky, no light contamination typical of cities, and the stars are in full display. Sitting at a bench after admiring the sky, Kakeru admits he wants to touch Yamato, reaching for his hand before quickly pulling back. He thinks he’s being selfish – offering Yamato something he actually wants.

He pounces on him. “Yamato? Aren’t we stargazing?” “I’d prefer gazing at you.” Yamato passionately kisses Kakeru. “How far can I go? How much am I allowed to touch you?” Suddenly, showers stop their passionate display dead in its tracks. Was Yamato willing to go further in that moment had rain not fallen? I don’t know. What I do know is that, had they been sharing a room, kissing wouldn’t have been the end of it.

The childhood friend trope gets me every time. In Japanese media, it’s rare for the childhood friend to “win,” which makes me want to root for them all the more – if nothing else, it keeps me engaged. That said, I… didn’t feel the need to root for Yamato. Even when Akane Toyama, a girl Kakeru met at a mixer and instantly clicked with, seemed to pose a threat to Yamato’s plans, she was quickly brushed aside. In her own words, “I never had a chance.” Maybe the author simply wanted to explore the intricacies of the “my childhood friend is my boyfriend” dynamic – that premise alone can carry a story. But I can’t help wondering: what if Akane had played a more central role? Kakeru confronting his identity through her could’ve been compelling, even if we already know where it would lead – it’s all about execution. The less charitable read is that the author just isn’t built for worldbuilding or structure. Unfortunately, that seems plausible, given that most of their work consists of one-shots. Kiminai is only their second attempt at a longer-form story.

Moving to Yamato – how long he nurtured his feelings for Kakeru, how he carries himself in society – I saw myself in him. Hell, I’d say I’m in a similar scenario. My “Kakeru” is a guy I’ve known since elementary school. Funnily enough, we still don’t see eye to eye on when exactly we met – he says it was a year earlier than I remember, but who’s counting? I thought he was out of reach: the popular guy in class, always surrounded by his clique. I didn’t get along with everyone in it, if only because I couldn’t get time alone with him. I don’t know how much he picked up on my intentions or demeanor back then, and maybe I never will. It wasn’t until adulthood that I came clean about how I felt. I was even bracing myself for the end of our friendship – it’s different, after all, spending time with someone who’s admitted to having feelings for you.

But it worked. Maybe I’ve been without a partner for so long that I don’t see a future for us as a couple. He doesn’t consider himself bisexual, even if the label applies, but I keep reminding him that labels are for boxes. Still, I’m okay with our friends-with-benefits arrangement – it’s more than I ever hoped for, if I’m honest. And I can appreciate that my “ending” was a somewhat happy one, especially compared to what many queer people go through.

As for Kakeru, his aloofness crosses this thin line between endearing and annoying. It’s almost like these two traits are playing table tennis, and I’m being knocked around between them. While this back-and-forth can be exhausting, I don’t hate him. If I did, I probably wouldn’t still be reading – and yet, here I am, eight volumes in. Could he do something that diminishes him in my eyes? Maybe. Indecisiveness can only serve as a plot device for so long before it becomes tiring. I admit I was worried when his soul-searching after Yamato’s confession stretched on. I’m on record saying I can’t stand dragged-out confessions, and I’m starting to think it’s a concern I’ll always have in romance titles. Fortunately, it only took about three volumes – not counting the one where kid Yamato and Kakeru meet – which is surprisingly fast by genre standards. The author mentioned they mapped out Kakeru’s emotional arc in phases: brooding, hesitation, anxiety, questioning, and determination. It’s a methodical approach, if a bit unrealistic when compared to how relationships play out in real life. But honestly, I didn’t mind.

I’m profoundly disappointed in Kosuke. The way he acted – seeing Yamato hugging Kakeru and them coming clean about their relationship – struck a nerve. I’m not convinced this was about trust, even if he later proved he truly had no issue with them dating. The way he reacted, how he became an analogue for a society that recoils at non-heterosexual affection, just made me wince. My dude, have you never seen gay people before? My first thought was that Kakeru needed to end their friendship if this was how Kosuke was going to behave. But he won’t – he’s an anxious mess.

And honestly, I don’t think this callback to reality was needed. The unknown isn’t necessarily scary; people choose to make it so, for reasons that still elude me even now. We just want to be happy. It’s frustrating when society at large still struggles with something so basic – but there are signs of change if you know where to look. Japan’s local wards, for example, have stepped up to do the work that the central government continues to drag its feet on, hiding behind legacy and legalese. It’s a start – and for now, I’ll take it.

In conclusion, I’m endeared by Yamato and Kakeru’s relationship and want to see it through to the story’s end. If you’ll allow me a moment of fudanshi indulgence, I wish to see Yamato mess Kakeru up. The author noted they want to draw spicy scenes, but I’m told that kind of content won’t fly in Gene Pixiv. I wonder if authors are allowed to draw fan fiction of their own characters and put it out as a doujinshi…?

That’s it from me. See you next month!

7 min read

Eight years after the original Switch, its successor was unveiled on April 2nd. Fans were excited – understandably so, given the reactions to the early hardware glimpse back in January. Was it the bigger screen? The hardware leaks suggesting silicon tailor-made for Nintendo? Or maybe the fact that the Switch 2 is essentially the long-rumored “Switch Pro,” with several enthusiast wish casts now confirmed? Whatever the reason, if you were a gaming observer browsing social media that day, you couldn’t escape the excitement. And maybe trying to rationalize that excitement – to make it make sense to me – is a futile effort.

Switch 2 costs $449.99 in the US and will be available on June 5. A bundled version with the Switch 2 Mario Kart game, Mario Kart World, will also be available for $499.99. It’s their most expensive hardware yet – even before adjusting for inflation. I’d argue that not even those who bought the Switch OLED were prepared for this kind of price hike. Unsurprisingly, much of the initial excitement around the software evaporated once pricing details dropped, to the point that it’s doing real damage to Nintendo’s carefully crafted messaging. I’m reminded of the PS5 Pro – a mid-gen refresh with a price tag that doesn’t reflect its actual value. And in that case, players have pushed back, loudly. That may shift once Grand Theft Auto VI arrives, but for now, the fact remains: consumers are more price-sensitive than ever. I used to think Nintendo’s hubris showed up in other parts of their business, unlike Sony’s. But this pricing misstep has brought it front and center.

Former Nintendo PR Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang give their take on the price discourse.

If the hardware price didn’t sit well, Mario Kart World costing $80 stung even more. Reportedly, Switch 2-enhanced versions of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom will also carry that $80 tag. This is dangerous ground Nintendo is walking on: will every Switch 2 title cost $80? Will other publishers follow suit? Are we headed back to the ‘90s – a Wild West of game pricing before $60 became the industry standard? Keep in mind: the only Switch title priced above $60 was Tears of the Kingdom, and that’s without counting games with physical extras like those bundled with Ring Fit Adventure or Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit.

Some defenders might argue Tears of the Kingdom was worth the premium compared to Breath of the Wild, but remember – the latter’s objectively inferior Wii U version also launched at $60, the same as on Switch. So, should the Switch version have been priced higher simply because it’s the better version? And now, with the Switch 2-enhanced version of Tears at $80, is that price justified? Yes, game development has gotten more expensive. Yes, in many cases, discretionary spending on additional content already pushes the total cost of a game well beyond the $60 price tag. But that’s a choice – players opt into that spending because they see value in it. What Nintendo is doing now is trying to make that optional spending mandatory – give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile. And for what? So the chart line climbs a little faster? Price people out of the hobby, and all you’re doing is pushing them deeper into free-to-play – a model Nintendo has engaged with sparingly but never fully embraced. And what about the people you’re trying to reach? The ones who bought a Switch because it was the affordable console – enough to push Sony and Microsoft to match it? Or the ones who never bought consoles but still picked up a Wii? Gaming may be a luxury, but if the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns taught us anything, it’s that games offer some of the best dollar-per-hour value out there. Burning through customer goodwill for a quick revenue bump isn’t bold – it’s reckless.

Nintendo wants you to buy a Switch 2 at launch – that we agree on. However, outside the dangerous precedent they’re setting up with software pricing, I’d like for you to consider the following before giving them your hard-earned money:

• Among their launch lineup is one exclusive, two enhanced titles, and a hardware demo sold at full price – when Sony gave Astro’s Playroom away for free. It’s hard not to feel like Nintendo’s daring fans to justify the value here.

• Nintendo deliberately omitted the Switch 2’s price from the presentation because they knew it wouldn’t sit well with their customers. If the price has already been determined, why hide it? If you know the conversation will immediately turn to the price once it’s revealed, why wait? The fact that the price was disclosed the same day through third-party sources shows this wasn’t about assessing the market, but about doing pre-damage control.

• Reports suggest that some Switch 2 physical titles may not even be playable from the cartridge at all. If you’re concerned about a digital-only future disrupting the hobby, I’m afraid this is just the beginning.

• Nintendo’s legal team is notorious. As seen in their recent lawsuit against Pocketpair, developers of Palworld, they aren’t afraid to wield legal power aggressively. Bullying in any form is wrong, including legal bullying, and your money funds these actions.

• Emulators are legal – multiple court cases have confirmed that. Nintendo, of course, insists otherwise. Just don’t mention they used one in their own museum. “Rules for thee, but not for me,” as always.

• Nintendo and lost media seem to go hand-in-hand. The closure of the Wii U and 3DS eShops two years ago made hundreds, if not thousands, of digital-only games inaccessible – not to mention the thousands more lost with the shutdown of the Wii Shop Channel. I appreciate this is a sensitive issue for hardware makers with the rise of digital storefronts, and they’re trying to strike a balance between preservation and progress, yet this crass disregard for their platform legacy remains unique. Another example is Super Mario 3D All-Stars, a compilation of the seminal Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy. Bizarrely, this collection was available for purchase only for six months, both physically and digitally.

• Finally, remember the NES Classic Edition and its successor, the SNES Classic Edition? These wildly popular mini consoles were almost impossible to find on store shelves, creating a market for scalpers to sell them at ridiculous markups. Nintendo has long been accused of manufacturing artificial scarcity, whether with Amiibos, the Wii, or even the Switch itself. They’ll deny it, of course – but that defense doesn’t hold up well. If it’s not intentional scarcity, then it’s poor forecasting, which isn’t much better. Especially if the pattern does go back to the late ’80s. So, if you’re planning to pick up a Switch 2 – or just a game of theirs you’re excited about – don’t be surprised if it’s already sold out.

I want to believe we’re better than engaging in blind consumerism – y’know, ‘don’t ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next product.’ I’ve been let down before, but I’m hoping the current economic climate will make some reconsider whether this is worth it. The pain can only be dulled for so long before hard questions have to be asked. Hardware manufacturers ask for our money every seven or eight years in this way – I ask that we, and especially Nintendo fans in this case, start being more critical.

31 min read

Prior Entry | All Media Log Posts | Next Entry

Please be advised these posts aren’t spoiler-free.

I don’t feel obligated to write about everything I play, read, or watch – or at least I don’t think I do – but there’s one entry in this month’s log I debated including. I only added it because the log was looking rather empty midway through the month – not that it stayed that way, as I soon found out. You’ll probably know which one it is once you read it, dear reader.

On a gaming side note, after finishing my OMORI replay, I didn’t touch a video game for a whole month. It made me reflect on my relationship with the medium – how, as I get older and take on more responsibilities, I seldom have the time to play like I once did. Meanwhile, games keep getting bigger, prices keep rising, and publishers want it both ways: charging full price while stuffing their releases with predatory microtransactions. As a console-first player, I had little choice in what to play as the landscape shifted – something that became even more apparent with the death of so-called AA games by the mid-2010s, leaving studios with no option but to chase whatever was trending at the time. In fact, you can still see this play out even today.

With such a grim outlook, I started to wonder if gaming was even for me anymore, if it could ever engage me the way it once did. I have mixed feelings, and I don’t know what to make of them. But at the same time, I’m not ready to give up on a medium that has brought me so much joy. So, who will hold out in the end – the pragmatist or the skeptic?

Apologies for the somewhat depressing lede – I have a lot on my mind. Hope you’ll enjoy the March media log!

Rent-a-Girlfriend, Chapter 355 - 366

Last I checked on Rent-A-Girlfriend, human trash Kazuya Kinoshita was about to go out on a real date with Chizuru Ichinose. Not “Chizuru Mizuhara,” the rental girlfriend, but the woman she truly is.

Before this, in chapter 249 (!), all of the tenants of Royal Hills Nerima were evicted following an earthquake, revealing the building is not safe for anyone to live in. Kinoshita is down in the dumps, realizing they’d all live apart. That is, until Mini Yaemori proposes they all live together. She got the group back together at a bar, counting on Kinoshita getting so drunk that she could guilt-trip Ichinose into letting him have a room at the house she inherited from her grandmother. She agrees to take them in for a month, which works for Kinoshita as the place he’s looking at opens up right after that. After 59 chapters (!!) of living together, Kinoshita finally asks Ichinose out in chapter 315 (!!!). Having developed feelings for Kinoshita far before this point, Ichinose realized that the day would come when one of them would have to make the first move. When he asked her out within a certain timeframe, she turned him down – only to suggest a day that worked for her instead. She rationalizes the invitation as a call to further her “investigation” but in reality, she’s happy she got asked out.

This is followed by 37 chapters (!!!!) of date planning, later joined by Yaemori acting as an Ichinose stand-in to prep him for the real thing. And then, the promised day – May 17th – comes. It was a rainy morning – nay, a rainy day – and Kinoshita feared the date would be canceled. Yet, come rain or shine, the date moves on.

Picking up in chapter 355, Ichinose and Kinoshita just got off the train at Odaiba, their destination. He has this date planned to the minute: take her out shopping at Seaside Mall, have lunch, spend the afternoon at Joypolis, the indoor amusement park next door, then have dinner, all while covering for the day’s various whims so Ichinose doesn’t have to take out her wallet. But plans rarely go off without a hitch. The mall didn’t open until 11, and the lunch reservation was at 11:30. Ichinose mentions they should wait, which becomes an opportunity to make small talk. He asks if she’s been to Joypolis before – she has, as a rental girlfriend. She compliments his looks: given his usual attire, the fresh haircut and new clothes didn’t go unnoticed. He responds to the compliment with one of his own but it feels half-hearted. After a sarcastic quip, Ichinose laid down her cards – she wanted him to think she was cute.

They play air hockey against each other, check out a candy store, and stop by a shooting gallery. She glows whenever she’s playing something and there have been hints of it throughout the story, most recently a board game totally not called Bounce-Off to avoid paying royalties, but this is the most direct reference to her enjoying games. Lunch comes around, and Kinoshita’s a nervous wreck. He expected to guide Ichinose throughout, but it was the other way around. He covers the bill while she’s away, but she insists – saying they should split it as this date isn’t just for him, but for her also.

Kinoshita’s rehearsal with Yaemori finally came in handy when they strolled to Joypolis. So successful, Ichinose thought he’d come here before with his “ex-girlfriend” Ruka Sarashina. All the popular attractions have hour-long waits – he proposed to look for less trafficked ones, but she wants to board the roller coaster. Another chance to make small talk and Kinoshita sucks at this. The first of Ichinose’s pointed questions begins: “How many kids do you want?”, followed by a flashback to young Ichinose at school during Parents’ Day, where her grandmother is absent due to prior commitments. It seems Ichinose being an only child weighs on her, and she doesn’t want her children to experience the same.  Another pointed question followed: “[sic] when do you consider it cheating?”. This last one references her acting career and the possibility of having to perform intimate scenes with other actors, not to mention her rental girlfriend work. Were Kinoshita’s answers satisfactory? Only time will tell.

The mood lightens up when they arrive at an aquarium. There’s a photo booth that takes pictures of guests and casts them in front of a manatee. Kinoshita made an unintentionally funny face and, when they figured out what the attraction was about, he and Ichinose made silly faces on purpose. While figuring out what to do next before the dinner reservation, Kinoshita receives a call from ex-girlfriend Mami Nanami. Does Kinoshita answer? Does Ichinose notice that she’s calling him? That gets covered in a chapter outside this batch - chapter 367 is out as of writing, but I won’t be reading until I have another batch to go through.

After that explanation of what happened in those chapters, how do I feel? To start on a positive note, I appreciate how series author Reiji Miyajima uses real locations in his story. For instance, Seaside Mall and Joypolis are actual locations in Odaiba. The latter seems quite fun from the few videos I watched of the attractions and it fills me with longing – I wish I was in Japan, experiencing it all firsthand. Furthermore, I like the included short games – sometimes appearing before a chapter starts or, in this case, seamlessly woven into the story: a matchstick puzzle and a maze-like challenge scattered throughout the queue the duo was waiting in. I went one for two on the matchstick and completely failed on the maze-like, as I misinterpreted what the puzzle required to solve it. Finally, Kinoshita’s pet lungfish-acting-as-commentator has got to be one of the funniest long-running gags I’ve seen yet.

Now, the bad stuff, and the critique is not unique to these chapters but the series as a whole. I don’t like how Kinoshita ogles every woman he’s even remotely interested in. Ichinose, Nanami, Sarashina, and even poor Sumi Sakurasawa – all have been victims of his horny glare, giving Miyajima an excuse to draw close-up shots of breasts, legs, and butts. Given how often this happens, I must question the author’s motivation: does Miyajima think all young adults are like this, that they never grew out of being hormonal teenagers? Was he like this when he was younger? I’m not above fan service, but Rent-A-Girlfriend is too much. And yes, I realize this critique might not carry much weight coming from a gay man, but I’d like to think it unsettles heterosexual readers as well.

I don’t like Kinoshita’s constant internal monologues and getting flustered over the most asinine thing. There are two such moments in these chapters: “I’m touching Mizuhara’s phone…!” and “I drank Mizuhara’s water!”. This last one is indicative of the ‘indirect kiss’ trope so common in Japanese media, despite it… being an easy mistake to make – one often brushed off with a laugh and a request for a refill. Ichinose calls this “self-absorbed narcissism” early on in the series – I’m inclined to agree.

Finally, this story is much longer than it needs to be. I lay the blame on the aforementioned monologues, in which Kinoshita tries to both be good *and* bad at the same time, and these traits clash with each other. There is nothing wrong with a dichotomy, and it can create interesting drama and storytelling. However, when the main character's goal is to get a girlfriend, I find it hard to take seriously. Having run this long without any meaningful advancement, I believe either Miyajima himself or his editors want it running this long. As Bakuman. illustrates, once editors have a hit on their hands, their priority is to keep it going for as long as possible.

Still, it’s a series I check out of morbid curiosity. Like a drug I can’t quit, I read on, hoping to see if Kinoshita and Ichinose’s relationship makes any meaningful progress. For the longest time, I wondered if I’d have another guilty pleasure series after Sword Art Online, and I must accept that Rent-A-Girlfriend became one, as it meets all the criteria. At best, the series is a solid 6 out of 10, and there’s little it can do at this point for that to change – not even the Movie Arc’s attempt at redeeming Kinoshita moved the needle.

Love Melodies

Love Melodies isn’t the first webtoon I read – that’d be BJ Alex – but it’s the fastest I pick up one. I ran across it when someone I follow on Bluesky reposted this lovely illustration of the artist’s original characters, Hazuki and Forte, drawn in the style of a sequence in the opening of season 2 of The Apothecary Diaries anime. I’m happy to see more illustrations in my skyline, so I checked their profile for other work they did. I learned about the webcomic, that these two characters are a couple – well, eventually become one, and that they’re not the only OCs they have. However, what sold me on the webcomic was the Gay Stuff: not-safe-for-work illustrations of Hazuki and Forte, in which I simply needed to know how they came together.

Summarizing any slice-of-life work is challenging, but I’ll try. Love Melodies, the brainchild of writer/artist duo Lolina and KasuTama, tells three character stories during their formative school years, running in parallel until their inevitable intertwining. With themes such as family, friendships, and love, the cast navigates their turbulent lives as feelings grow ever stronger, showcasing their efforts to make a place for themselves in the world. As of writing, the series is shy of its fourth anniversary, with its introduction first published on their German Patreon page in the spring of 2021, followed by an English release on WEBTOON in the summer. The first four chapters introduce the main cast and setting, starting with the Tamashiine twins: Zai and Inoru. Their story begins when they leave the orphanage they’ve lived in for years, having been adopted by the O’Donnell family. They can’t come to pick them up, as they’re abroad for work, but get a key to their house. What welcomes them is an unkempt place: dust everywhere, books outside their shelves, and dishes that haven’t been washed in days – does anyone even live here? Noru, the cleanliest of the twins, takes issue as Zai looks for pictures of their adoptive parents. Shortly after, they meet their foster brother Lawrence, who goes by Rory. Chapter two introduces the school the twins attend: Takaon Junior High. Other characters in the main cast also attend this school, setting the scene for the upcoming intertwining of stories.

Chapter three introduces Mono Kurone, an Osaka native who’s huge into gaming but not into socializing after one too many heartbreaks, and Merlow Armone, a genderfluid person who considers Mono his first friend at school. Chapter four moves to Kouon High where Rory and our next characters attend. Firstly, Hazuki Kaneda is a meek and unremarkable student. However, in private, he’s a seamster hobbyist with aspirations of getting into the fashion world, and a nurturer of a crush for our last main character, Forte Armone. Son of two successful business owners, good at school, sports, music, and even a model – he seems to have won the life lottery, but why does someone like him speak to Hazuki? There may be more than what meets the eye; Forte feels similarly, but perhaps neither is willing to make the first move out of fear of rejection. I won’t dwell on how Forte developed feelings for Hazuki, as I’m sure that’ll be answered eventually. Still, I wonder how much of a role Akio Kaneda, his assistant and Hazuki’s older brother, had in it – whether through casual remarks, nostalgic stories, or the kind of warmth that made Hazuki seem all the more special in Forte’s eyes.

One important aspect of works in the slice-of-life genre is the dynamic between the characters. I want to start with Hazuki and Forte, which is why I began reading Love Melodies. Initially, I was looking forward to Explicit Gay Stuff happening but was disappointed to learn that they were not a couple yet. However, how people come together is often more compelling than what may happen after the chase. While exceptions exist, I have yet to encounter an in-relationship story engaging enough to stick with it. I’m concerned about the slow progress of Hazuki and Forte’s relationship, potentially overstaying its welcome. Long, drawn-out confessions are frustrating to watch – a clear example of this is Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You. I’m hoping the writer handles the transition naturally and effectively. That said, I grew to love how Forte lifts Hazuki from his self-doubt. This is particularly evident in chapter 12 when the honor student visits Hazuki’s house to assist with summer homework; what starts as a study session ends with a pep talk from Forte about being open about what he wants. There’s something almost too fitting about a model encouraging a business student, who’s only in it out of obligation, to follow his real dream of fashion design.

Next, we have Mono and Mero. I thought this pair would annoy me, but I’m pleasantly surprised they didn’t! If Mono is a chaotic gremlin, Mero matches that energy, resulting in entertaining interactions between them. Their mutual support is worth noting: Mero, noticing that Mono only eats snacks instead of a proper meal at school, has his assistant prepare a bento for him, helps him during a panic attack after his phone breaks, and even encourages him to rejoin the football team. In return, Mono indulges Mero’s every whim, teaches him how to swim, and in chapter 11, shares a bed with him. They’ve come to enjoy each other’s company, which I’m happy to see. I don’t ship them as hard as I do Hazuki & Forte, but I wouldn’t mind if they became a couple as they’re perfect for each other.

The weakest of the main characters are the three the story introduces first. I find neither the Tamashiine twins nor Rory exciting, and not even the brotherly banters between them make it, at most, tolerable. The worst offender is Zai: I thought the karaoke outing might be the moment he finally wins me over, and he shines, alright – just like a gaudy neon sign: loud, overbearing, and impossible to ignore. It’s perhaps fortunate how much of his appearances are accessories to something else happening, with the aforementioned outing chapter being the exception. His likely being the only heterosexual among a cast of queer people means that when his dating arc comes around, I won’t care much for it.

Moving on to Rory. What do I know about him? I know that he’s struggling with depression, with the unkempt house in chapter one being a sign. At first, I could’ve chucked it up to laziness, but looking closer, it felt like something else. Depression can make even basic upkeep feel overwhelming or pointless – I know, because I’ve been there. He seems to suffer from stress-induced migraines, which keep him from attending school. When he does attend, Forte’s nagging and the bullies’ harassment make these migraines worse. He gets along with Hazuki, with the way he teases him depicting a degree of comfort, similar to how he interacts with the twins back home. I’ve nothing else in my recollection, and there’s not much for me to latch on. There’s a chance Rory’s character gains a newfound appreciation once the truth about the O’Donnells comes to light. So far, I don’t connect with his big brother role and, while I enjoy his banter with Hazuki, I find Hazuki’s relationship with Forte more compelling.

When it comes to Inoru, I deeply relate to him. I know all too well what it’s like to stay in the closet out of fear – fear of a society that can be ignorant at best and outright cruel at worst to queer people. He hasn’t even told his twin brother, the only family he has, which hits close to home not only for me but for others in the LGBTQ+ community. I’m sure Zai picked up on the same signs readers have, and when Inoru comes out to him, it’ll be a turning point – I need nothing less than unwavering support from him, or he’s as good as gone to me. With that out of the way, it’s a shame that I view Inoru as a weak character because of his association with Zai and Rory, especially given how much we share. If only he had the chance to stand on his own, without Zai around. Twins are often said to be inseparable, always together, but for Inoru to truly understand how he feels – and possibly come to terms with his identity – I feel this moment without Zai is necessary. To end on a positive note, I enjoy it whenever Inoru and Momo are together. As the former is a senior to the latter, the chaotic gremlin shows a meeker side. The senpai-kohai dynamic between them is a lot of fun, especially since Momo can’t fully turn off his chaotic gremlin side – likely due to Mero’s presence and Zai’s dislike of him, creating a perfect blend of humor, almost like a sitcom. I look forward to reading more!

Love Melodies is available in English via WEBTOON and Tapas. In German, it’s available on Animexx.

Low Tide in Twilight

Content warning: Mention & discussion of sexual assault.

I must’ve run across this manhwa while looking for Free! Iwatobi Swim Club doujinshis, according to my browsing history. Or did I see a recommendation in some random comment section and curiosity got the better of me? I genuinely can’t remember. I’ve heard numerous bad things from people I trust about the Omegaverse genre, and I’ve done my best to steer away from works that purport to be from that genre. It’s clear I didn’t read the list of genres on the landing page for the series – I began seeing the signs of this work being omegaverse as soon as the second chapter. You’d think that, even if I didn’t read the genre list carefully, I’d know it’s an omegaverse by a conversation of the mobsters at the beginning of the first chapter, but that’d require me to be familiar with the genre, which I’m not. I could’ve bowed out early but as I was already there, might as well give it a go. What could possibly go wrong?

Kim Euihyun lost the will to live. Carrying his little half-brother Kim Euiyoung, Euihyun chooses to end it all by walking into the ocean. As both of them already had a rough life, he couldn’t live with himself if something were to happen to his kid brother in his absence. Just before the water goes above his hips and is swept by the current, Yeo Taeju pulls him out. The man is a mobster from whom Euihyun’s father, Kim Sahyeok, borrowed at least 180,000 won. Unfortunately for him, he was named the guarantor, likely without his consent given his protests. Not like it makes any difference to the mafia – his father ran away, and someone needs to pay that debt. Observing how he was willing to commit suicide with his kid brother in hand, Taeju suggested that Euihyun become a sex worker to pay back the debt. There were mentions among the mobsters as to how Euihyun is an omega, and Taeju happens to be an alpha. And it appears Taeju wanted a piece of Euihyun ever since they first came into contact, as he sexually assaulted him. Shortly after, Taeju secures accommodation for Euihyun and his brother, along with a choice of jobs – strangely charitable for a mobster. But does Taeju genuinely want to help Euihyun, or is there something more to his so-called generosity?

To first address the elephant in the room, the sexual assault chapters were tough reads. For three-quarters of the story, every sexual encounter between Taeju and Euihyun is either coercive or met with resignation by the latter, which I’m not a fan of. If chapter 2 was tough, 53 is even worse – I was on the verge of quitting after being exposed to a deeply disturbing alpha rut, all while cursing the desire that led me here. Taeju, realizing what he’s done, chooses to stay away from Euihyun despite having fallen in love with him. I’m generally apathetic toward redemption stories because they often feel like an easy way to force character development. Too many of them seem desperate to make me understand a character’s perspective when I’ve already made up my mind – and I rarely feel compelled to change it. As it relates to this story, even if the alpha doing this kind of introspection is rare in omegaverses, he is and will continue to be a red flag, even if Euihyun is the one who chases him in the end.

And so, the one who saved this story for me is Kim Euiyoung. Even amidst the messed-up situation they’re both in, he finds a way to lighten up this otherwise dark story. Where most of Low Tide in Twilight’s comedy comes is from the six-year-old’s crying over kid stuff – he’s a crybaby, but an adorable one. But also, a family angle comes through in how he keeps Euihyun grounded – his reason to live – and the bond they share after everything they’ve been through, especially with their dad, Sahyeok, falling short as a role model. He even gets his shot at moving the story forward: when his omega birth father comes to take Euiyoung back, he decides he doesn’t want to live with him and seizes a chance at school to run away, returning to his brother. A supporting character graduating into a main one, albeit temporarily, seldom works. Fortunately, this was the only time it was attempted – and it worked here, but repeating it could have easily backfired.

Kirby’s Dream Land

I’ve been playing Kirby games since I was a child, and it’s no exaggeration to say they’re an important part of my growing up as a video game player – hell, he’s about as old as I am! I remember Adventure more fondly, with much of my spare time spent on it, but Dream Land still drained countless batteries off my Game Boy. At first, I doubted whether I played this entry before and it turns out I did. Even now, I struggle to recall what games six-year-old me owned for the handheld. As the North American release of the Game Boy came bundled with Tetris, I likely owned that, too? Tetris didn’t see much play since I didn’t know how to play it until a cousin taught me around 1998.

In a 1993 interview with the Dream Land team, Masahiro Sakurai, best known for his work on the Super Smash Bros. series, mentions that he came up with Kirby when he was first hired at HAL Laboratory in 1989. The game would target the newly released Game Boy, a platform that had less than 10 games, and it needed to be something “that anyone could enjoy.” Kirby’s design, then, is just a series of circles: simple enough for anyone to draw, although there are conflicting accounts as to whether this design was originally intended as a placeholder that Sakurai later embraced, or if it was always meant to look this way. Key to Kirby’s traversal and offensive ability is being able to inflate himself like a balloon, leading to flying and inhaling enemies to either spit or gulp them. The copying mechanic wasn’t introduced until Adventure, a response to player feedback that the previous game was too short and easy. Agree on the latter, but on the former, we should be aware of the limitations. Nintendo’s “Game Pak” cartridges of the time were designed to hold between 64 and 128 kilobytes of storage, the latter via ROM bank switching. Even with the formidable programming skills of Iwata and Suga, the game’s design still had to work within these storage limitations – despite the final product using a 256kb Game Pak. And, in software development, it’s generally good practice to leave some buffer space.

As with most games in this period, the story wasn’t communicated within the game – you’d have to read the booklet. King Dedede and his minions steal all of Dream Land’s food and the Sparkling Stars, which are said to help the citizens gather it. Kirby volunteers to take on the gluttonous king and bring the food back. There are five levels, each ending in a boss fight: Whispy Woods, Lololo & Lalala (a reference to HAL’s early work Eggerland Mystery, which never released in the West), Kaboola, Kracko, and finally, Dedede. Even at a leisurely pace, my time was a little over half an hour, with no game over screens. I have no doubts it can be beaten faster – for instance, a speedrun leaderboard site lists 9:46 as the fastest Dream Land run as of writing.

I knew about the more difficult Extra Mode, with its devious tricks designed to whittle away at the player’s health, but I wasn’t too eager to play it – until I saw the timer. That was enough to talk myself into it. You don’t even need to have beaten the game: press up, A, and Select on the title screen and you’ll be greeted with the “Extra Mode” bar. It certainly delivered on the difficulty, with some even saying it made Dream Land as tough as your average NES game. I got about six game-overs from it myself. Then, I noticed a pattern – Extra Mode required observation and dexterity to come out largely unscathed against both regular minions and bosses. But Kaboola breaks that pattern entirely: it’s unforgiving, and even with careful play, I still racked up three game-overs between its normal appearance and the rematch in Dedede’s castle. Best to go into that battle with full health and all of your lives! At the end, the timer added another hour to the total playtime.

Overall, I understand the potential the higher-ups at HAL and Nintendo saw in Kirby. Sakurai understood the basics of platforming well enough to implement them robustly in his game. True, they’re not unique ideas, but they carry Kirby through and through, making the game more than just a cute character – I’d say it was a job well done. Even though Kirby is a Nintendo IP, Sakurai still doodles him alongside his signature, which speaks to how important the character is to him. Who knows – there might not have been a Super Smash Bros. without Kirby.

SPY x FAMILY, Season 2

Looking through my e-mails, there was one from Viz Media in 2019 announcing the inclusion of SPY x FAMILY on the Shonen Jump app. It aligns with when it came to the West after gaining popularity in Japan. It’s been on my radar since, but it wasn’t until 3 years later that I found out how it could be up my alley. I started with the first anime season, and sometime after, I bought volumes one through seven of the manga. Bulk buying like this I only do for series I know I’ll like, as spending $60+ on something lesser is far too risky. I was getting into the hobby of buying manga, perhaps too much of it – I don’t consider myself a bookworm, although some of my friends would say the signs are there.

SPY x FAMILY is a spy comedy set against a serious backdrop. Westalis agent Twilight is sent to Ostania to spy on Donovan Desmond, leader of the National Unity Party, who is suspected of potentially destabilizing the region and reigniting war. Political divisions like this have existed before – most notably in Cold War-era Germany, where the nation was split between the Allied-controlled West and the Soviet-controlled East, leading to decades of tension. Given Ostania’s general paranoia and Donovan’s high position in society, he isn’t a man you’ll see walking down the street. Desmond’s son, Damian, studies at a private school, and Twilight identifies it as an opportunity to get close to him – posing as a fellow parent. Thus, ‘Loid Forger’ is born. He adopts Anya from a sketchy orphanage and hastily marries Yor Briar, a civil servant who doubles as an assassin, after accidentally upgrading his role from fake boyfriend to fake husband at a gathering. Later, the Forgers adopt Bond after Anya asks for a pet as a reward for her good deed at school.

Season one, within two cours, adapted books 1 through mid-7. Season two adapts the latter part of 7 through mid-9, with the Luxury Cruise Ship Arc being the major story covered here. Posing as a bodyguard, Yor is hired to protect a mother-son duo – the last surviving members of the Gretcher crime family – from hitmen while seeking asylum in a foreign country. Their getaway is set to take place aboard the Princess Lorelei, an Ostanian luxury cruise ship, under the cover of a fireworks show. Loid and Anya, while out shopping, ran across a table in which a raffle was being held. Anya took an interest in its top prize and won it: two tickets to board the Lorelei. This development was unexpected, as Yor didn’t count on her family being on board. On the other hand, the father/daughter duo didn’t hear about the job – that she’d be “entertaining guests” looking to do business in Ostania – until after they won the tickets.

The Lorelei was gorgeously rendered on CGI, but some of the shots used to showcase it are weird. Too many instances in which aerial shots are used – reveals, panning, and dollies, among others – and they add nothing to the story. I think it’s done to fill up time, although I don’t put it past the episode and/or series director thinking it looks cool. There’s nothing inherently wrong with aerial shots, but what bothered me is how the shots have no concept of proper object placement against the 2D background. Look at the Lorelei reveal shot above: the plot of land in the background appears to pan right as soon as it’s introduced in the aerial shot, but as the camera goes to the lower third and behind Anya, it takes a slight zig-zag to accommodate. But the land continues panning right instead of accounting for the last-minute movement – it’s jarring. I’m supposed to marvel at how big this cruise ship is, as Anya is doing, but instead, I’m complaining about the camera shots. The above is bad, but the shot of Loid returning to the ship carrying an asleep Yor and Anya is awful. It could’ve been salvaged if Loid moved away from the viewer and my gripe would be as strong as the one above. Their implementation of dolly zoom just doesn’t work and it gives weight to the critique that the dynamic shots were chosen for flare instead of serving a purpose to the narrative, I feel.

I’ve had this nagging feeling about episode progression since season 1. Something felt off – the episodes didn’t appear to follow a logical order. Also, the way the anime switched between serious and ridiculous moments gave me whiplash. Not that either tone was a problem on its own – and both work well in the manga – but the way the adaptation handled the transitions made them feel more jarring like it wasn’t always sure how to bridge the gap between extremes. I’m not about to pin this on Endo, the series author, as balancing those extremes is tricky. But I do think the anime director might’ve taken an approach like, ‘Okay, part A was super serious, so let’s go full comedy for part B.’ Not every episode had this issue, but when it happened, it was noticeable. Since season 2 followed the same structure, I decided to check which chapters were adapted, and – sure enough – I think I found the culprit: the episodes were out of order. To explain what I mean, I’ve made a bullet list which should make it easier to read:

• Episode 1 adapts Extra Mission 2 in Book 3.

• Episode 2 adapts chapters 39 & 40 in Book 7 with a twist – part A is 40, part B is 39.

• Episode 3 adapts chapter 41 of Book 7 for part A, Extra Mission 7 of Book 10 for part B, and Confidential Files in Books 2 & 7 for part C.

Hope I didn’t lose you – I certainly was trying to make sense of this. It isn’t until episode four that the series gets back to a natural progression, which is necessary to begin the Luxury Cruise Ship Arc. But after that’s done, it goes back to adapting episodes out of order – episode 11 (Berlint in Love) happens after 12 (Bond rescues a pug from a building in flames) in the manga, not before. Why finish this season’s run with a Bond episode? Why are these Extra Missions and Confidential Files adaptations not extras in a home video release or even an ONA, or original net animation? The series composition is a mess, and it’s yet another example of an anime adaptation stumbling at the finish line due to the constraints of a 12-episode run.

To end on a positive note, the SPY WARS! episode is superb. And not just because it parodies James Bond – I love those films, RIP Eon Productions – but because it’s a love letter to ’70s and ’80s anime. I’d love to explore that further, but I’ve already gone on for too long.

That’s it from me. See you next month!