March Comes In like a Lion - Season 2 (2017-18)

The second season of March Comes In like a Lion is 22 episodes long. It’s based upon the manga of the same name. Following Kiriyama, who is a high school student that’s a professional shogi player. Having debuted into the professional scene when he was still in middle school, he is considered somewhat of a prodigy but what lays beneath is complicated. Kiriyama is definitely good as shogi, but so are many others, and it is actually that we see him losing more often than not.

The anime starts off straight after the previous season, and we get a more in-depth shogi match than what we’ve seen so far. It’s not to the point of showing off all the moves, but it lingered on the match longer than usual, and if you’re a viewer with limited knowledge of shogi, then it can be confusing or boring to watch. Nevertheless, this anime doesn’t focus too much on shogi since it is primarily looking into Kiriyama’s personal life, and the complex relationships he has, but mainly the problems that everyone faces.

Soon into the season, it lingers onto a topic that’s tough to watch. Even more so when it happens to the siblings trio that Kiryama had befriended. The sisters Akari, Hina and Momo are so friendly and nice that it hurts you to the core to see what happens to them. It reflects reality on how life isn’t fair, and the type of justice you see in stories is just an idealised version that doesn’t exist. While heart-wrenching, it handles it well as it is a delicate situation that’s not easy to rectify.

The anime strings you along with its various dilemmas. Each one comes in and out of focus. Just when you think the situation might be resolved and the characters are going to move on, it comes back and shows off what had progressed. Again, this is like reality, and unpleasant things just don’t magically go away by themselves. In that aspect, it’s has a good grasp of these tough situations where it’s practically a lose-lose situation no matter what you do. At the same time, it’s also depressing when that is what you have to look forward to, both as the character, and as the viewer. It toys with your emotions, but uses this to give character to Kiriyama, and plenty of heartwarming moments.

That one major arc overshadows most of the season, and when it is finally resolved, it’s a big sigh of relief for both the characters, and the viewer. The resolution is satisfactory, it’s not idealistic, but it’s not grim either. Although it follows its tendency of revealing the other character’s motivations, to justify their actions, but sometimes, it is better to just leave them alone for the viewer to make their own impressions. So once this arc is over, it is nearly almost all sunshine again, these flips and backflips in mood can be jarring as a result.

A theme of the anime is how times moves on. You might have a good or bad moment now, but the situation will continue on and things change. You have to accept it and make the most out of today. Connected to this is how Kiriyama has a lot of prove as one of the few shogi players who turned professional when they were still in middle school. you wonder might this be the time we can finally see Kiriyama start to succeed and progress through the shogi tournaments that he’s participating in? That said, it shows that no matter how good you are, there are always other players who can at least match you if not best you, it’s a never-ending strive for the top.

The anime has a few powerful moments where the emotions of the characters come tumbling out. It’s a sight to behold when a character that’s usually cheerful and bubbly breaks down, or when someone who’s usually emotionless or at least stoic has their emotions gushing out. These elements make the scene even more poignant and coupled with either a soft piano, or the stronger guitar strings, playing in the background, and these scenes hits you hard.

It’s hard to end this season given that the structure of the anime is so that a lot of the episodes, and even the sections within each episode, are so self-contained. Nevertheless, it manages to achieve quite a bit by the end of the season, and it gives off a nostalgic and bittersweet feel. It keeps to its theme of people moving on, but also enjoying and appreciating the joys of the present. All the characters have dramatically grown, and it’s thank to the heavy character development of all the characters that manages to pull off such an ending.

However, also due to its structure, the tendency for supporting characters to pop in and out means that we do not get any resolution for them. What seemed like important characters when they have whole episodes dedicated to them are shoved off the limelight straight away with nary a mention. It’s a bit of a shame when this happens, especially for characters such as Kiriyama’s mentor Shimada, or his rival Nikaido.

Overall, the second season of March Comes In like a Lion is a much stronger, much more powerful story than the first. It touches upon several heavy themes and depicts them in a more realistic way than one would expect. Given it’s such a complex subject, naturally there were myriads of ways it could have ended or developed. Nevertheless, the anime manages to balance and constantly swap between Kiriyama’s personal life that dealt with his relationships with others, and Kiriyama’s professional life as a shogi player. It shows how shogi is an extremely complex game with many elements and strategies, making each game completely different. As a result, each swap complements the other, giving the viewer time to digest and reflect on what has happened.

---------------------------------------------------

For other anime reviews, have a look at this page and this page.

Root Double: Before Crime * After Days (PC)

Root Double: Before Crime * After Days is a visual novel for the PC and other console systems. It is set in 2030 where the characters are trapped in a lockdown of a nuclear research facility, and they’re in a race against time as they attempt to survive and find a way out. It’s a classic visual novel where the story is the main draw, the game is comprised mostly of reading interspersed with sections where you make choices to influence the developments and the ending that you will achieve.

The only input from the player comes from the Senses Sympathy System. Instead of specific choices at decision points for the player to pick, instead, these points allow the player to adjust the protagonist’s impressions of other characters. To be honest, this can be quite confusing, as you would have little idea during your first playthrough on whether to increase or decrease the meter, even more so when there are multiple characters’ gauges to adjust. These directly influence the endings you’ll get though so these decision points are extremely important.

The game is split into four routes, and the Xtend Edition has a new ending. The Root A (for “After”) route follows Watase Kasasagi, a rescue worker sent to the research centre just before the lockdown before becoming trapped in there. He’s joined by his two colleagues Tachibana and Moribe. In this route, we quickly learn about the situation of the game and the predicament the characters find themselves in. The facility houses a nuclear reactor, whereby an accident has occurred, resulting in a meltdown.

Now, with radiation levels starting to rapidly rise, the facility has locked down and cannot be accessed by outsiders until nine hours as passed. The trio must find a way to survive the nine hours. There is a theoretical drug called AD that helps them nullify the negative effects of the radiation but they must inject themselves with it once per hour. Thereby, the story resolves from the characters desperately searching for AD to finding more survivors to finding an escape and eventually discovering the secrets of the facility.

The story immediately grips, first off with the dangers of a nuclear meltdown, and then later on with developments into cause of the accident. It becomes clear that there are sinister movements happening in the background, and the facility is much more than it seems at first glance. Things rapidly escalate and it does not shy away from being dark with its subject matter. Corpses, murders, blood, they’re all here and it really shows how despairing the situation is.

With that said, there are times where the story switches to typical visual novel fashion with hints at romance and minor sexual references. It can feel out of place but they’re quickly brushed away to return to the serious situation at hand. The first route takes around four hours to finish if you read at a fast pace, although the ending does not resolve anything, it just raises a lot more questions that the other routes will probably address.

The second route, Root B (for “Before”), can be played before or after Root A, but if you’re completing the routes in alphabetical order than this will be second. It follows the other cast that had sporadically appeared in Root A. Here, it follows four high school students, with the protagonist before Natsuhiro. It follow the events that leads up to what we see in Root A. As a result, it starts a few days before the accident in the research centre and takes the time to slowly introduce the high school characters.

Unfortunately, after the gripping fast paced Root A with its mysteries, Root B feels sluggish and bland in comparison. It feels like a completely different game and story, as it is more akin to the slice-of-life stuff you see in romance visual novels. While it follows a pattern, it still takes quite a while before things start to take shape and even then, it feels light on content. There is a heavy tendency for flashbacks, which is kind of annoying when it ends up being a flashback within a flashback. It also takes a significant time before the route catches up to the events of Root A, which is what most players would be caring about by this point.

It takes around four to five hours to finish Root B as well, and there are several big revelations at the point where it converges with the beginning of Root A. Some of these revelations you would have probably guessed, especially since it is fairly cliched, while others are clever in their own right and is a satisfactory reason for why certain events were the way that they are.

Finishing both Root A and Root B will unlock Root C (for “Current”). This finally brings the story back to where it began. It shows a new perspective to the events of Root A, clarifying a lot of questions that you would have had while playing. It slotted into perfectly. Root C is a short route, designed as an intermission of sorts, for the player to catch up, so it only takes around 45 minutes to complete and has no bad endings. That said, when it finally reached its ending, it nicely summarises the questions remaining, and they were good questions. The promise of resolving all these questions in the fourth and final route is too enticing to ignore. After the relative blandness of Root B (although it gave required information to fully understand the events), Root C brings back the intense addictive storytelling from Root A, while promising more.

Root D (for “Double”) is the final chapter that brings the story to a close. This is a longer chapter, on par with Root A, so around four to five hours. This chapters brings everything together neatly and explained pretty much all the questions it had raised. It’s one revelation after another and it does not disappoint. That said, it tends to drag on a bit, especially with its decision to go through each of the nine characters’ pasts in such detail, to the point of the structure feeling repetitive and predictable.

Nevertheless, with everything that has happened up until this point, you realize that there were so many events it’s crazy how far the current situation has evolved. It’s unrecognizable at times and the events of Root A feels so far in the distant past. The solution to their problem, the disaster of the research lab, and how everyone escapes, was fine. By this point, as so much time was spent on understanding the characters, everyone’s actions feel justified and you care about their fates. In abundance to the multitude of bad endings, there are also several alternate endings. The two good endings are just that, good, but not perfect.

The later releases (including this PC release) has the Xtend Episode, which has extra content. It’s not as much as you would expect and it’s quite disappointing. It sets to explore the motivations and backgrounds of the characters even more so than the story, but presents it as in chronological order, which means around 70% of the content is rehashed scenes and text from the main story. You have to go through these same “memories” in order to get to the new content, which is short. It’ll take around two hours to get through and most of that is skipping scenes you’ve already seen. So all in all, the game takes around twenty hours to complete if you read fast and follow a guide.

Overall, Root Double: Before Crime * After Days is a fantastic visual novel. Visual novels live and die by the story that they tell, and this game tells an amazing story. It immediately grips you, and while the second route has a bit of mood whiplash swapping to a slice-of-life high school drama that eventually wraps back to the current disaster, it’s an intricately planned story that brilliant in its execution. The choice system can be annoying and hard to tell which is the correct route at times but the story and the themes it explores is well worth the effort.

-----------------------------------------------------

For other game reviews, have a look at this page.

March Comes In like a Lion - Season 1 (2016-17)

The first season of March Comes In like a Lion is 22 episodes long, and is based on the manga series. The anime follows Kiriyama Rei, who is a 17 year old professional shogi player. Don’t expect this anime to be like a one from the sports genre, since it’s more about the emotions of the characters rather than playing shogi itself. Kiriyama, despite being amazing at shogi, has experienced several tragedies in his life and is currently living alone in an apartment.

He was lucky enough to be befriended by Akari, Hina and Momo, who are siblings of the same family. They too, have experienced their fair share of tragedies, and they help look after Kiriyama. It’s a wholesome experience, and is a very nice thing for them to do. The anime shows off a lot of moments where the characters are coming to terms with their loss, and the emotions that’s currently threatening to overwhelm them. It’s meaningful and gives depth to the characters.

The art style is odd though. It aims for the effect of having the background be a different simpler style compared to the character designs. However, it tends to be too blurry / fuzzy and clashes too much, so that it ends up looking odd. You will get used to it but it does strike you, and not in a positive way, at first.

While it never stops the focus on Kiriyama’s personal relationships with others, and how he is slowly growing into adulthood, there will be times where it swaps to his professional job of shogi. While it is beneficial to at least know the basics of shogi, the anime gives you a quick crash course, and it doesn’t get too in-depth with the matches. Sure, there are shots of the characters strategically moving places, and discussion on specific moves, but a non-shogi player doesn’t feel completely left out and the purpose and themes of the scenes is still apparent. It might surprise you though how long some of the shogi matches can go for.

However, it’s definitely Kiriyama’s interactions with others that is the highlight. The sister trio siblings come in and out of focus, but they definitely give the anime a wholesome feel whenever they come back. They shine in all the scenes that they are in, and they are so nice to Kiriyama, genuinely caring and worrying for him that it’s hard to see them in any light other than a positive one. This makes the scenes without him kind of empty at first.

Thankfully, Kiriyama’s sphere of friends or acquaintances soon expand, especially from the shogi side. There’s no sugar coating with some of Kiriyama’s experiences. He faces a lot of people that clearly have issues. He carries some of his own, but it’s like every character has some sort of bad personality traits that manifests from the trauma that they have faced. Some are definitely unhealthy and require help. It’s like the theme of the anime is that there are broken people all around you, but each will find their own way to cope.

It’s also great that despite quickly telling us in the beginning how much of a prodigy Kiriyama is, and all the high expectations, he isn’t an unbeatable opponent. Actually, he seems to often get a slice of humble pie, but what pushes this back into positive territory is how he learns, and how he develops and matures as a result of these losses. As a result, when combined with all his other experiences, the anime is surprisingly engaging.

There are a few elements that aren’t flaws per se, but are distracting nonetheless. As mentioned, Kiriyama doesn’t just indiscriminatory win through every match, and the same goes for his peers and mentors. It swings too far in the other way, where it can become too depressing when you heavily suspect that they will crash into a wall, have to experience a bout of pain or tragedy, before moving forward. Coupled with the supporting characters constantly shifting in and out of focus, and the character arcs can feel incomplete.

Overall, March Comes In like a Lion is an interesting anime. Instead of a hotblooded approach like many sports focused anime, it dials that down and focuses more on the personal relationships of Kiriyama. It’s a story about how he was alone throughout most of his life, and now, thanks to shogi and other unrelated coincidences, he slowly moves on, has friends and peers, and becomes more confident in himself. As a result, the anime feels wholesome and while it can be overly down at times, the positives and seeing Kiriyama grow helps to overcome that.

----------------------------------------------------

For other anime reviews, have a look at this page and this page.

Marvel’s Spider-Man (PS4)

Marvel’s Spider-Man is a Spider-Man game developed by Insomniac. They’re a quality developer (most well known for Spyro the Dragon and Ratchet & Clank), so you know the character is in good hands. And first impressions are, the game is solid and polish, but ultimately lacks originality. The graphics are stunning and its depiction of New York is great, but it’s it combat and open-world gameplay that’s too predictable and stale.

First off, the great thing with this game is that it doesn’t deal with Spider-Man’s origin story. Thank goodness as that was already way overdone in the movies. Instead, Spider-Man is already a well-known superhero in New York, with his fair share of enemies and supporters. The game’s plot focuses on Fisk, whom Spider-Man had managed to help the NYPD capture, but he is still causing issues behind the scenes.

The gameplay is easy it pick up. You can’t help a Spider-Man game without the web-slinging and this is one area where the game pretty much nails it. There could still be improvements but it’s natural and flows well for a first try. You hold down the trigger button and this will have Spider-Man automatically swing through the buildings. Pressing X will allow you to speed up, and through a few other buttons you can him aim and shoot at a target to pull himself there, dive, and wall run. Once you get the hang of it, it's heaps of fun swinging through New York. Plus, Spider-Man actually shoots web at buildings, so he’ll naturally lose height if there are no nearby buildings that’s high enough. The animations are also another aspect that shines.

The other major aspect of gameplay is the combat and this is where the unoriginality lies. It’s basically the combat system from the Batman Arkham series, and this is extremely disappointing. Not because that combat system was bad, but because it so blatantly copies it. Spider-Man chains together combos using one button but then has other buttons mapped to his various gadgets and web-shooting abilities. Coupled with a combo meter that once full allows him to execute special takedowns and it’s effectively a carbon copy, just not as polished. Different enemy types will appear and requires different moves to beat them.

Furthermore, there are sections where Spider-Man can stealthily take down his enemies. Perched high above, he can hang someone up with his web, lure guards away and distract them or pounce at them from afar. Spider-Man gains experience points during all this, which give him points upon levelling up in order to unlock new skills and moves to use.

So barring the combat being familiar, the same thing goes for the open world gameplay. This time, it takes its notes from Ubisoft and Assassin’s Creed. You need to find towers to hack into them and uncover it on the map. This allows you to see the various activities and collectables in that area. There are various side missions to attempt and your standard collectables scattered in the environment, as well as collectables that are slightly more involving like taking a photograph. Again, this is very uninspired and it’s disappointing that it doesn’t attempt anything new.

While most of the game has you controlling Spider-Man, there will be times where you’re out of the suit. During these sections, they’re either exposition heavy scenes, or stealth sequences. The stealth sequences are generally quite easy and clear on what you need to do. That doesn’t stop it from being annoying and boring though. There seems to be just a tad bit too many of these stealth sections, where it feels like you are pulled out of what you want to do against your wishes. While useful to try and provide variety as well as telling the story from a different perspective, they drastically slow down the pace of the game… in a bad way.

With that said, once you get into the swing of things and more options unlock, both in terms of combat and side activities, then it all gels well together. Sure, it’s not ground-breaking but it is still a lot of fun. The swinging, and the satisfaction you feel when you get into the rhythm of when to jump off and gain speed is one of the highlights of the game. Even the side activities that constantly pop up and are the same few types of templates are forgivable just because of how quickly you can get through them and continue onto the next one.

As Spider-Man is already so well acquainted with his enemies, you can’t help but think this is a sequel and you had missed the first game. While at first you would have thought the game would take on a smaller scale and have a closer more personal conflict between Spider-Man and Fisk. It does that for only the earlier parts of the game and then introduces several more opponents. It builds up to a nice point in the second half of the game where you see the rise of a villain here, and the appearance of a villain there. It touches upon your nostalgia as the new designs are different yet familiar enough that you recognise them at first glance. It also helps that Peter himself has some great one-liners that isn’t afraid to reference other incarnations of Spider-Man.

The finale comes quicker than you’d expect. Even the build up to the climactic battle was much longer. You know the final two bosses were coming… but then they arrive sooner than expected and go down faster than expected, such that you’re seeing the credits before you know. The boss battles are more cinematic than ingenious in its execution. They look great, but they all devolve into dodging the boss’s attacks before counterattacking, so they all feel samey. It’s a good ending though, and comes packing with its last surprises.

After you finish the game, there are still all the side-activities left. The collectibles aren’t too bad if you had been collecting them as you play along with the game. The challenges are probably where you’ll spend most of your time in. None of these activities introduce anything new, but will satisfy any appetite you had for more content. Lastly, patches added in a New Game+ mode where you get to play through it again carrying over all your unlocked abilities.

Overall, Marvel’s Spider-Man is a fantastic action game, and one of the very best Spider-Man games we’ve had since the PS2 movie tie-in. The game nails the webslinging aspect, where it’s just pure fun swinging through the buildings. The combat is passable, it’s familiar but even with all its variations in the form of gadgets, can feel like there are not enough options and fights become similar to each other. Nevertheless, the game feels polished, with a great story, it is one of the best Spider-Man stories in a video game.

----------------------------------------------

For other game reviews, have a look at this page.

Purchase from Amazon using this link.

(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)

Pacific Rim: The Black - Season 1 (2021)

Pacific Rim: The Black is an anime sequel to the two Pacific Rim films. It takes place in the same universe and tells a different type of story. Interestingly, it is set in Australia, which is rare but basically just shows off a lot of desert landscapes. It assumes you’ve seen the movies and are familiar with the backdrop. Basically, giant monsters known as Kaiju appeared and are bent on destroying humanity. Humans developed giant robots known as Jaegers, piloted simultaneously with two pilots, to battle against them.

The anime starts off strong, with a fierce battle between Jaeger and Kaiju. It does seem off at first, as the Jaeger lacks weight in its actions (even more so than the second movie). It has similar choreography as several key fights from the movies, so it tries to cement itself as a natural extension, but comes off as trying to hard by copying the moves near exactly. The anime’s a darker and bleaker take on the universe, showing what happens when Kaiju succeeds and overruns the continent.

Unfortunately, if you were hoping for some Jaeger vs Kaiju action like the movies, you’d be disappointed. The anime soon discards the Jaegers (or at least not including them in a meaningful way) for a more personal story. The story follows siblings Taylor and Hayley, as they discover the Jaeger Atlas Destroyer, and how they survive in this new world order that they find themselves in.

It’s hard to deny that this is an interesting setting, post-apocalyptic but not quite. Civil human civilisation as the siblings had known does not exist anymore. Now, there are pockets of survivors and settlements, and it’s basically survival of the strongest. Furthermore, Kaiju are prowling everything, it’s a miracle that anyone can survive. Hence why being in possession of Atlas Destroyer is so important, and also why this ends up being overly focused on humans, taking away from what made Pacific Rim so engrossing in the first place.

The anime is animated with 3D CG, which traditionally can be awkward and tough for the eyes. Polygon Pictures has done a great job here, managing to avoid the stiff animations and clashing models against backdrops that plague so many other attempts. Even the Jaeger and Kaiju movements, which can be hard to pull off, is done well (apart from the nimbleness and lack of weight at times for such big heavy objects). Therefore it’s all the more shame that we don’t see much of them, even more so when we consider their other work with mechas like Knights of Sidonia and Transformers : Prime.

Somewhat contentious is what the anime contributes to the lore. We’re used to certain expectations based on the movies, and since this is canon, firstly we now have a place where Kaiju’s have won and what that means. Next are the new different types of Kaiju that we see, and how they supposedly reproduce. Finally, there’s also the mysterious boy that the siblings pick up, who you’d expect to have special powers of his own and you’re not sure how he fits into all of this.

The anime has a cruel and bloody streak. It’s not afraid to show bloody shots and cruel moments to highlight its hard world. There are various tense and dramatic moments, with one scene that has a slight horror tinge to it. This helps it break away from the “kiddie” mentality that a lot of animation gets as this is very much an adult oriented show. It doesn’t go so far as to have complex themes, but it’s dark enough that it never feels like it's trying too hard to cater to the grown audience.

There are several neat references to the movies. They’re infrequent but when they appear and you recognise them, it’s satisfying. Perhaps more surprising are how some of the events of the movies have consequences that the characters in this anime are experiencing. It definitely makes it feel part of the same world, and gives a heavier gravitas to the lighter tone of the movies. The familiar yet not the same orchestral theme music helps.

Being only seven episodes long, with each episode being between 20 mins to 30 mins, there’s not much time to set up a long story arc and resolve it. Thus it leaves a number of unanswered questions as well as teasers for its future. The ending does resolve a few things, so it doesn’t completely leave the viewers in the dark. As expected, the Jaeger vs Kaiju action is mostly in the finale too, but it’s nowhere near as well choreographed as the movies, but the visuals are at least striking and beautiful to watch.

Overall, Pacific Rim: The Black has a lot of potential but doesn’t quite make the transition from movie to anime unscathed. The tone is different, being darker and more serious, so it doesn’t quite gel as well with its source material. The heavy focus on the human aspect rather than the Jaegers or the Kaiju is another thing that would disappoint the people who would be interested in this. That said, it does well enough expanding the lore, even if some of it might be controversial. In the end, this anime still deserves a recommendation as it does enough things right to be enjoyable.

----------------------------------------------------

For other anime reviews, have a look at this page.