Retrospective: Ocarina of Time

The first entry in the series rendered in three dimensions, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time elevated the Zelda narrative to new heights. The way the camera pans and zooms to reveal significant locations or objects in the scene comes straight from cinema (Link’s first meeting with Zelda provides good examples of this). The rainy, ominous opening sequence with Ganondorf expands upon the precedent of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past‘s opening act to establish a tangible sense of foreboding.

The Decline and Fall of Angry Birds

I came across a Business Insider article talking about the resignation of Rovio (Angry Birds) CEO Mikael Hed. Basically, the company is tanking because they bet it all on one franchise which they thought would spawn multimedia success with movie tie-ins, merchandise, etc. to rival Disney’s best mascot-promotion efforts. As it turns out, this particular bubble has burst magnificently. BI’s diagnosis of the situation is, in short, that

“The mobile games business is notoriously difficult: Games are essentially fads, and the Angry Birds fad is long over — eclipsed in part by Supercell’s Clash of Clans and King’s Candy Crush Saga.”

So the mobile games industry is singularly flighty. Nothing we don’t already know. What’s particularly troubling about the widespread penetration of this sector of the gaming industry is the values it represents: slavish imitation, pandering, and, most importantly, manipulation.

Visions of the Ineffable in Japanese Popular Media

“[Yugen or ‘ineffable grace] is like an autumn evening under a colorless expanse of silent sky. Somehow, as if for some reason that we should be able to recall, tears well uncontrollably….When looking at autumn mountains through mist, the view may be indistinct yet have great depth. Although few autumn leaves may be visible through the mist, the view is alluring. The limitless vista created in imagination far surpasses anything one can see more clearly”

Hume, Nancy G., ed. Japanese Aesthetics and Culture: A Reader. pp 253-54.

Ancient Greek philosophy, figured as a tradition stemming from the person of Socrates, who was perhaps mostly an abstraction, undergirds the entirety of subsequent Western thought, to the extent that Bertrand Russell has referred to the latter as mere footnotes to Plato, Socrates’ successor and dutiful biographer. If Platonism is the wellspring of Occidental thought traditions, the same may be said of East Asian philosophy and Buddhism. Japan lived long in isolation from the world before conflict, commerce, and religion brought it into contact with the Asian continent. It absorbed traditions from mainland China, integrated them into its existing Shinto religious system, and transformed them into something uniquely Japanese, just as China had done with the Indian traditions that became Buddhism.

Game Review: Final Fantasy XIII

Partway through a replay of 2009’s Final Fantasy XIII, recently re-released for Windows PC, I’m starting to think that it’s the most misrepresented and unfairly maligned game of the previous console generation.

Roger Redux: On Play

Dear film critic Roger Ebert shook the blogosphere when he claimed that games could not be considered art because art is finite and auteur-focused, whereas the former are infinite and auditor-focused. There’s plenty to unpack from Ebert’s arguments, and more than a little generational bias. The greatest significance of Ebert’s assertions, however, is that they forced a very uncritical group of people to think critically (or at least attempt to do so) about their favorite pastime.

Roger Ebert vs. the Number

With the passing of Roger Ebert on April 4, 2013, America lost one of its greatest pop culture critics. Unlike many of his peers in film journalism, Ebert was able to instill readers with a broad sense of understanding and empathy regarding their medium of choice. Rather than seeking a broad, faux-objective schematic for his evaluations, Ebert prized the relative and subjective experience of movie-watching above all else. Despising “best-of” lists, he rated films not all against one another, but rather against those of their ilk and in the perspective of their likely audience. This often led to shocking and controversial results, such as The Godfather: Part II and The Longest Yard receiving the same three-star score.

Track Review: “Go ft. Blood Diamonds” by Grimes

It’s been a while since a new Grimes track–two and a half years to be precise. If 2012’s Visions channeled Mariah Carey by way of 80s throwback sythpop, 2014’s Grimes dives headfirst into pop mega-balladry arranged with all the trappings of terrible hip-hop.

Site Review: Ulillillia City

I’ve spent only a few hours on Nick “ulillillia” Smith’s sublimely bizarre digital autobiography, but I already feel it subtly insinuating itself into my waking thoughts. For both depth and breadth, its complex tendrils resemble the nervous structure of an actual human brain. Alternately brilliant and absurd, candid and arcane, it singularly stands out as a work of fearless, uncompromising self-examination by a uniquely troubled individual, whose problems seem inextricable from the digital culture that is their crucible.

Game Review: Final Fantasy X HD Remaster

“This is it. This is your story. It all begins here.”

Final Fantasy X is a homecoming of sorts. For a Japanese role playing series, Final Fantasy seldom represents anything reminiscent of the Japanese experience. What began as high fantasy inspired by Western literature gave way to science fiction inspired by Western film with nods to apocalyptic anime (which also finds its roots in the West) and the dystopian novel.

The Best and the Worst: Beginnings

Urged by the suggestion of an acquaintance toward an idea long in gestation, I have created this blog. Am I a pop culture critic? No, I’m an amateur classical linguist by way of a bachelor’s degree from a small liberal arts college. What are my intentions? Why have I undertaken to effuse about my measly ideas and opinions for all the billions of netizens to see? Well, dear readers, the most public of places are simultaneously the most private. The greater the crowd, the less discernable the individual. Allow me to hide in that sea of mediocrity.