2018 Games in Review

It's that time.  Here's what I played in 2018!

Cartoon Corner- Zombieland Saga

This show went and did a thing, and it works hard to undue some of my goodwill toward it.
Don’t set up a redemption arc for your abusive asshole character unless you’re willing to really put in the work folks.

Cartoon Corner- Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse

So why haven’t y’all watched this yet?
There’s some visual elements in the film I don’t want to give away to an unawares audience, but almost all my impressions of it are really based on them, so between that and the movie being out a mere weekend as I’m putting this up… yeah.  Go catch it on the big screen now, then come back to me.  It’s good, 8/10 stuff, but with plenty of bonuses.  Go!

Cartoon Corner- Ralph Breaks the Internet

This sequel feels more like a Disney movie than the original.  The Pixar-ian emphasis on creating the world of the original forms the backbone of that story, and having that in place is the only reason this film can have an entirely new setting but have the conflict it does.
Although I guess in a way the saturation of reference humor maybe makes this the Dreamworksiest of Disney films.

Cartoon Corner- Coraline

The first time I watched Coraline, I hadn’t really read any Neil Gaiman.  And while I still haven’t read Coraline, I’ve read some of his other work, I’ve seen some of his work on Doctor Who, I have a pretty solid grasp of Neil Gaiman’s quirks and the stamps he puts on his work.

Cartoon Corner- Chicken Little

So I watched this a couple days ago and mostly forgot it.  Rather than do the simple thing of watching it again, I think writing things out to remember them will more accurately capture what this movie is about.  Chicken Little is in the running for worst film of the Disney Animation Studios canon, and while the other two most-cited contenders aren’t movies I’ve seen, that’s definitely a fair statement.  And the reasons why it fails are best illustrated by this lack of memorability.

Cartoon Corner- Gravity Falls (Season 2)

Dipper Pines and the Quest for Manliness (Part 2).

Cartoon Corner- Gravity Falls (Season 1)

The thing about perpetually coming late to the party, especially for a completed series like Gravity Falls, is you tend to get people’s impressions based on how things end, not how they’re received as they air.  So in that respect the oddest thing about Season 1 is how much of a slow burn it is.  ‘course, considering it spent a year and a half airing 20 episodes, and included a lot of overt elements to intrigue fans between episodes, it’s a fair argument to say that watching all of them over the span of a few days isn’t the intended means.

Celeste- A Trans Narrative?

Sometimes when you make a deliberate allegory in your story, the sort of pedantic nerd that analyses things will take that as a challenge.  I mean, if you spend a lot of time looking at subtext for hidden things works without overt meaning are about, you start seeing all the ways things that do claim to be about things don’t exactly line up with that thing.

Hi, it’sa me, CK!  So let’s talk about Celeste, seemingly the big Indie Game Hit of 2018.

Cartoon Corner- Steven Universe (Season 1)

Steven Universe is the show humanity needed, and I hope it wasn’t too late.

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga- So what’s an RPG anyways?

jRPG nuts often talk about the Super Nintendo as the golden age of the genre.  And like most nerd things, that discussion centers on defining a holy trinity.  Of course, because the SNES happened 25 years ago and basically everyone was between “literal child” and “not born” at the time, the trinity is really two firm selections (Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger) with a rotating third cast member depending on the personal biases of the speaker.  Myself, I like to slot Super Mario RPG in there.

Cartoon Corner- Incredibles 2

So, after chewing on this a few hours this morning, I started coming up with crazy theories.  Buuuut it’s also out in theaters now, so let’s talk some basics first before we get down to that.

Cartoon Corner- Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F

I think I’m kinda bored.

Cartoon Corner- DuckTales: Treasure of the Lost Lamp

So when I sat down to watch this, it’d been many a year since I’d actually seen the film.  I was immediately struck by the fact that the villain was unmistakably Christopher Lloyd, and I somehow didn’t know this fact.  Clearly my memory and insights will be impeccable for this outing.

Cartoon Corner- Castle in the Sky

My first temptation is to just pick out all the Miyazaki-isms and talk about how this fits in the Ghibli canon.  Except this is the first time I’ve covered one, and also I found something more specific to talk about with it anyways.

Cartoon Corner- Batman Beyond (Season 1)

Okay, so… what if Spider-Man… but BATMAN?

Cartoon Corner- One Punch Man (Season 1)

One Punch Man is a strange show; not quite parody, not quite a regular comedy, definitely not straight shonen.  And as usually happens in those cases, I’ll be forming thoughts on this one in the writing, because organization is for chumps.