#AGhibliADay #PrincessMononoke

Today we watched Princess Mononoke, one of Hayao Miyazaki's best fables about man versus nature. I had never seen this before, but the girl had, many years ago.

Like Shigeru Miyamoto, another great Japanese creator, Miyazaki has long used nature as a main source for his seemingly inexhaustible creativity. You can point at almost any Miyazaki film and see how important nature is to the story he is trying to tell, from Nausicaä to My Neighbor Totoro, from Pom Poko (which he neither wrote nor directed, but was his idea) to Princess Mononoke, and beyond. Nature, and humanity's role in it or against it, is the central idea in most of his stories.

Princess Mononoke begins with humanity in opposition to nature. Lady Eboshi, probably the most interesting character in the whole film, is strip mining the forest, killing all the animals, gods, and spirits who get in her way. She doesn't care about any of them; she only cares about the iron under the ground. She's cutting down entire forests. But she also saves lepers and prostitutes, and gives them jobs and a home in her Iron Town. The population of Iron Town is fiercely loyal to her. She's saved them all from hard, mean lives, after all.

Near the end of the film (which I won't discuss in too much detail because of spoilers), Lady Eboshi does something truly heinous and directly causes some really bad stuff to happen. But at the very end of the film, we are supposed to believe she has learned her lesson, even as she suggests she is going to continue doing what she was doing "better than ever".

It's difficult to truly hate Lady Eboshi, and it's even harder to say she's the villain of the piece. Yes, she's in direct opposition to the title character for pretty much the entire film, but she's not a wholly bad person. From her viewpoint, she's just making sure her people can survive, and even thrive. Why should these enigmatic gods and spirits get in the way of giving her people better lives?

Ultimately, the correct answer is that everything is better when man and nature coexist and work together, as is always the case in a Miyazaki film (and most likely real life too).

Video Game Round-Up! - April/May 2020

Welcome to another Video Game Round-Up! I did not play a lot this past month for three main reasons: 1) We had to finish writing the first draft of the next Sherlock Sam; 2) I have been watching a lot of classic movies in my free time instead of playing video games because a friend has been challenging us all to share our annual top 10 films lists, and I realized I have watched a woefully small amount of pre-1980 films; 3) The girl continues to bogart the Switch for Animal Crossing, so I can’t use it for anything else :P

The world is still extra dangerous right now thanks to the coronavirus, and I haven’t left the house since my last Video Game Round-Up! I might be developing a bit of agoraphobia, but I have been exercising a lot more in the house, and cooking a lot more (simple things, but still, way more than I was before all this). I keep finding new and interesting things to do in the house to keep me busy and sane, and sometimes that means less video games and more movies, or writing, or writing about movies :)

But enough about that, let’s get to the games!

#AGhibliADay #MyNeighborsTheYamadas

Today, we watched My Neighbors the Yamadas (a first for both of us), which is like the black sheep of Studio Ghibli films (at least the ones from the 20th century; I'm not 100% sure about the ones from this century) because it was so different. The subject matter is different (it's based on a comic strip), the format is different (it's a bunch of short vignettes instead of one longer narrative), and the art style is markedly different. No other Ghibli film, even now, looks anything like this (with the possible exception of The Tale of Princess Kaguya). It's very, very cartoony, all the characters are chibi-ized, there are often no backgrounds, and it looks almost like it was drawn with crayons. In short, it looks nothing like a Ghibli film. That's not a bad thing (I actually like this art style quite a bit), just prepare yourselves if you're expecting like Totoro or Mononoke.

But boy howdy is it hilarious. It's true that some of the jokes don't land, and some of the vignettes are actually a bit sad, but by and large, these vignettes are quite funny. Some had me howling with laughter to the point of not being able to breathe. My favorite joke, for those of you who have seen this before, is the shopping list joke between Mr and Mrs Yamada. I had to pause the movie and rewind because I was laughing so hard.

This is a great movie to watch right now. I think we all need a good laugh or two 😃

#AGhibliADay #KikisDeliveryService

We've decided we're going to watch a Studio Ghibli movie a day since they're all on Netflix! Some of them we've seen before, some we haven't, some only one of us has seen, but it doesn't matter because you can't really go wrong with Studio Ghibli films!

Today we watched Kiki's Delivery Service. We'd both seen this before, but the first time I watched it, I didn't really care for it. It seemed simple, had very little plot, and didn't seem to say anything profound like Studio Ghibli had accustomed me to in the movies I'd previously watched. But as an adult (and with the help of Patrick H. Willems' excellent video essay), I realized Kiki's Delivery Service did have a profound statement to make, and that statement was about burnout and depression. About how doing the thing you loved could become difficult, even impossible. No matter how good you are at it, no matter how much you love doing it, the things you love can burn you out.

Kiki loves flying. It's the one witchy thing she's shown doing (besides talking to her cat). She can't always do it super well, but she doesn't let that stop her. She loves flying so much, she makes it a key component of her new business when she sets off on her own. But pretty soon, that city living wears her down, and she stops being able to fly. She's angry at her friends, at the people who have helped her out, and it isn't until she takes a sabbatical out in the country with Ursula, a painter she befriended earlier (and a well-timed emergency involving one of her friends) that she learns to fly again.

Ursula talks about her painting, and how she's always wanted to do it, but sometimes, she just can't, and she needs to take a break before she can do it again.

I think we all have that one thing (or maybe many things) in our lives that we love to do, that we can't imagine not doing for the rest of our lives, that we nevertheless have to occasionally take breaks from because it's just getting to be too much, or too hard, or not fun anymore. And we take our breaks, sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for a few months, sometimes for a few years, and then we remember how great it felt to do it before, and we start doing it again and we can't understand why we stopped doing it in the first place. Sometimes that feeling just magically comes back, sometimes it takes a lot of work, and sometimes, you fear it may never come back at all, no matter how hard you try. Yeah, that happens too. Fortunately, it didn't happen to Kiki, and it hasn't happened to me either.

Video Game Round-Up! - March/April 2020

Hello! Welcome to another Video Game Round-Up! As I’m sure you all know, it’s a pretty weird time right now. Thanks to the current pandemic, I have been stuck at home for about five weeks now. I am lucky and privileged enough to be able to work from home so even though my job is not at all essential, I can still do it and draw a regular salary. This means I don’t have to commute to and from the office, but it also means I don’t go outside very much at all (and when I do, I wear a mask and am socially distant from anybody else who might also be outside at that time). So what’s a guy to do with slightly more free time on his hands? Play a bunch of video games.

Let’s get to the games!

Video Game Round-Up! - February/March 2020

Hello! Welcome to another Video Game Round-Up! It may seem like I didn’t do a lot of gaming this past month from the quantity of games listed below, but that’s only because I’m still basically playing The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt almost exclusively. Also, I read two prose books and started writing a new Sherlock Sam book. I’m also still watching a lot of Star Trek.

But enough of reasons of why I didn’t play more games, on to the games!

Video Game Round-Up! - January/February 2020

Hello! I didn’t play a lot of games this past month for various reasons, but mostly because I was overseas for like 10 days. Also, I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek. Also also, I’ve been playing one game almost exclusively. You can probably guess which game that is :P

Now, on to the games!