I don’t often write about films these days, but I recently saw something at the Japan Film Festival in Australia that was powerful, profound, and haunting enough that it has since occupied all my thinking. Kokuho, directed by one of Japan’s most noteworthy art film directors, Lee Sang-il, is, as we enter an era where AI is undermining the very…
As most people know, I’m generally opposed to streaming streaming services. I find the idea of ceding any control whatsoever over what you can see, hear and play to corporations to be a very bad idea, and the fact that stuff moves into and out of these platforms (meaning your…
Read MoreI’ll never pass up an opportunity to play with Tohka. She is, of course, the very best of best girls, there’s no saying otherwise (unless you want to be wrong) and I won’t hear anything else of it. The point is that Date A Live: Ren Dystopia is an opportunity…
Read MoreLet’s all remember for a moment here that Sony basically gutted its Japanese game development operation, and the developer behind Astro Bot, Team Asobi, was the only one that survived. Even then it was diminished. Then consider that it created this game, with its abundant creativity and warmth. Where all…
Read MoreIs it strange that of the four titles in the Castlevania Dominus Collection, the one that was most interesting to me was the bonus? That’s not to say that anything else in the collection isn’t very worthwhile, but it’s a full-scale, total end-to-end remake of Haunted Castle, the classic (and…
Read MoreLollipop Chainsaw is back! Lollipop Chainsaw is back! FINALLY! We’re very excited about the imminent re-release of the game with the cheerleader, her mini-skirt, and all them zombies to slay. But we’re also very interested to see if the discourse behind this game has changed in any way, because it…
Read MoreAt the risk of irritating a certain group of fans to the point that I need to lock down the comments box for my own sanity: I have an issue with how a lot of games handle the Warhammer 40K license. Not that I want to get into this debate…
Read MoreDoraemon is one of the most iconic, influential cultural icons in Japanese entertainment history. It’s a blue robot cat with a pocket that contains everything, and he and his human pals (Nobi and co) have gone on so many adventures that it’s almost impossible to count. The manga came first…
Read MoreWhat if Harry Potter was something that you could enjoy without the knowledge that every word you read came from someone who is deeply, aggressively hateful? What if you could jump into the body of a student of magic and fall in love with all the characters? That’s essentially where…
Read MoreVisions of Mana is Secret of Mana, 20 years later. I said as much in my preview, and the deeper I played the more the game seems exclusively interested in tapping into my nostalgia for that SNES classic. Given that the Mana series has been otherwise highly experimental in recent…
Read MoreNintendo must have liked the response that its remake of the first two Detective Club titles got when it released them on the Switch a couple of years ago. Now, decades after those games got their first run back on the Famicom, we finally have an all-new entry in the…
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