2022 Q3 Media Roundup

Good evening!

Here's some things I've been enjoying over the last few months:

Four Feet Under by Tamsen Courtenay

This is a compilation of the stories of various homeless people in London that I picked up in preparation for my current job. It was exactly what I was hoping for -- extremely eye-opening and informative. It got me to consider the myriad issues people who are homeless face on a daily basis that had never even occurred to me. I think the book would've been stronger without the writer inserting her opinions and perspective but I can recommend it for anybody looking to learn more about this subject. It is one of the most difficult things I've ever read however and comes with pretty much every content warning you could imagine.

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

When I was in Edinburgh in August, I went into a bookshop looking for a few things and didn't manage to find any of them. I sat down to rest my feet before I left and this book caught my eye with its bright cover, having been discarded next to the seat by somebody else. I picked it up, read a page and decided to buy it.

It's a short novel about a teenage boy who is relentlessly and ruthlessly bullied by his classmates, a girl in his class suffering the same fate who reaches out to him, and the relationship that forms between them. Kawakami's writing style is dreamy and captivating, and I was enthralled by the dense atmosphere this short book created. It's unlike anything else I've ever read and I've already bought Kawakami's two other novels that have been translated into English as she instantly became a favourite author of mine. It's another difficult read and comes with warnings for all kinds of violence but definitely one I recommend to anyone looking for a unique and vivid little read.

ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Dept. and Regards

I finally picked ACCA up from my to watch earlier this year after being excited to check it out for a long time. It's a story set in a world different to our own, in a kingdom split into thirteen territories, and follows ACCA, the authority that rules over the territories as a whole, formed a hundred years ago following fears of a coup d'etat. The series follows main character Jean Otus as he traverses the various territories to uncover more after rumours of a coup are renewed.

I didn't particularly know what ACCA was about when I picked it up, which was probably for the better, as it isn't the kind of story that would typically attract me. It is first and foremost a political thriller, but even though it comes with a whole  world to build, it never feels bogged down in its own details. For the first half or so, I was enjoying the show's atmosphere and artistry most of all -- it has quite a distinct visual style, a great soundtrack, and is generally dripping with style. But as time went on, I became steadily more invested in the plot and characters. It's a well-paced show that packs a lot into its single cour of episodes without feeling overstuffed, and the OVA is a really lovely way to round of the series and our time spent with the characters. ACCA is a very subtle show -- for the most part, it doesn't boast huge twists, dramatic scenes, or emotional character arcs, but there's something really lovely in its understated yet delicate approach to storytelling. It was a show I became really fond of.

Higurashi Rei: Oniokoshi-hen and Hoshiwatashi-hen

These two are a bit difficult to talk about as I read them alongside one another as they were releasing and as such don't have as solid of a view on how they come together as overall stories.

Like a lot of people, I wasn't thrilled when I first heard about Rei, but always kept an open mind about it. In the end, a lot of my fears were borne out. I wasn't on board with the idea of marring the original cast's happy ending again, even in a brand new set of fragments/continuities, and introducing the stories on this premise made them feel sort of fundamentally cheap to me. The original cast felt like they were being used as props in the worst way, the new cast got minimal development with the arguable exceptions of Keitarou and Kururu, and we weren't given an opportunity to bond with the group as a whole and get to know their relationships, the very thing that makes the original so special. The mystery itself was interesting at points, particularly set against the backdrop of era-specific social commentary, but ultimately lacked the charm and personality of the original, and I found myself dragging my feet through reading Rei a lot of the time. A lot obviously comes down to how the answer arc/s is/are handled, but right now, I'm not convinced these manga really need to exist, at least in their present form. We could've had a whole new cast with no ties to the original club, or else a story that really utilised the original club as well. In spite of my contention with certain narrative decisions, the most exciting parts of Rei, for me, are when the original characters show up, and particularly when they interact with one another. One thing I can say is that Kei Natsumi's art is stunning, as expected. Otherwise, I'm just going to have to wait and see how the answer arc(s) turn out to have a better picture of how I feel about these entries to the Higurashi universe.

Chainsaw Man

A few months back, I was in a bookshop with a 3 for 2 deal on manga and having trouble finding anything I wanted. I had no intention of picking it up otherwise, but have a friend who really likes Chainsaw Man, and decided to take the opportunity to grab the first volume, if only to talk to her about it. I'm really glad I did, as in the time since, I've devoured all the currently available chapters and become a pretty big fan in the process.

It took me quite a while to properly warm to Chainsaw Man. It was a fun read and one I had little trouble getting through, but the handling of the female characters in the earlier volumes put me off, and I wasn't overly invested. Over time, however, this slowly began to change, and when I got to some of the more recent volumes and their developments, I realised I had completely fallen for these characters.

For anybody who's been living under a rock, Chainsaw Man is about a boy called Denji living a lonely and destitute life, looking for any way to pay back the humongous debt his dead father left him with. In the story's world, there are monsters called devils that terrorise the general public, and after Denji makes friends with a devil dog with a chainsaw protruding from its head called Pochita, the two team up to eke out a living as devil hunters.

Chainsaw Man has bucketloads of personality. Both the art and the actual way the story is conveyed through panelling and so on are utterly striking, and its tone is completely unique. Chainsaw Man is very concerned with existentialism and we see this in both its humour and horror, but more than that, it's the way it contrasts the utterly mundane everyday with these things that makes it stand apart. Above all, it feels like an incredibly genuine and impactful exploration of trauma as experienced in realtime. Chainsaw Man weaves its larger than life story beats with scenes of the characters' daily lives as they wrestle with the fallout, and rather than these moments being a respite or shift away from the action, it treats these things as two parts of one whole. It's as we begin to really see how the characters' experiences are affecting them and their relationships with one another that Chainsaw Man sinks its hooks into you, and I hadn't realised just how much I'd come to care about the cast until the story made me feel it in the worst way. I ended up barrelling through the second half or so of what's currently out in about two days, and am now a firm fan. I loved the first episode of the anime and am so excited to see what comes next. It's not often I have as much pure fun with a series as I am with this one, as bloody, bleak, disgusting and heartbreaking of a series as it can be!

Finally, some videos I've liked:

Neon Genesis Evangelion Is A Great Giant Monster Series by blunova

Why Japan's Homeless are Different from North America's by Life Where I'm From

Aespa’s Music Could Make or Break Kpop by mera (yes, I'm a K-pop fan)

Playing Detective: Comparing Ace Attorney and Danganronpa by Tehsnakerer

My Top 10 Vocaloid Songs by ubnubmaster

How Call of Duty turned war into a circus by Polygon

Oscars 2022 and the Death of Cinema by Broey Deschanel

What Song Are You Listening To? OSAKA, JAPAN by JESSEOGN (These videos are so fun, there's a bunch on this channel)

Talk soon!