Kaiju No. 8, Vols. 1 - 14 (Written and Illustrated by Naoya Matsumoto)
Contrary to what a lot of people say this isn't an Attack on Titan knockoff, it's the love child of Attack on Titan and Parasyte. I'm not just talking about the protagonist getting infected with an alien organism, Kaiju No. 9 killing a guy to assume his form is hauntingly similar to the one parasite killing Shinichi's mother to steal her body.
If you're looking for a more light-hearted take on the "guy who wants to kill monsters gains power to turn into the thing he swore to destroy" trope than Attack on Titan then Kaiju No. 8 has you covered, but you have to be willing to excuse themes and philosophy interfering with character development. Everybody else's reaction when Kafka reveals himself as Kaiju No. 8 is pretty optimistic, if that's the right word. I get it, it's a story about having faith in your friends and that things aren't as bad as you imagine them in your head, but Kaiju No. 8 is playing things just a little too safe.
But once Kaiju No. 9 kidnaps, uh, a certain somebody, the story becomes super decompressed and things grind to a crawl. Forget writing for the trade, this is writing for the anime. I swear the battle with Kaiju No. 9 and its creations takes up a third of the manga's current run and as of writing this it's still not done because Volume 15 isn't out yet. I couldn't help but think back to how Parasyte told its entire story in eight volumes.
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Ultraman, Vols. 1-11 (Written and Illustrated by Eiichi Shimizu and Tomohiro Shimoguchi)
I read up to volume 11 because that lines up with the first two seasons of the anime.
The first eight volumes of the manga correspond to the first season of the anime, and the anime is almost a direct adaptation. There are a few changes, like the anime dropping the plot about the black market of human bodies and Red, the big alien that hangs out with Jack. Rena's 180 on her opinion of Ultraman is nowhere in the manga. There's also a major change the anime made to Moroboshi and at the risk of spoiling it, there's a point in the show where he's talking to some SSSP agents and says the aliens "look at us [humans] the same way we look at apes" but in the manga he says "If I told you guys that you suddenly had to go into the jungle and live like monkeys, could you?" as if he agrees with the aliens that humans are inferior.
I could point out other changes, like how the battle where Shinjiro learns to fly plays out or the anime removing a few characters from the battle with the Ace Killers, but I should probably talk about how the manga holds up as its own thing. Well, I liked the twist with Adad's floating mines better in the anime - that was kinda fun, here it's just dull. But the biggest edge this has over the anime is characters emote better, no doubt because you can make characters do whatever you want with ink and paper while 3D models are limited by their rigging. Remember when I talked about how awkward the argument between Shinjiro and Moroboshi in the elevator was, and not for any intentional, narrative reason? Here it's clearer the whole confrontation was Moroboshi being a jealous ass and Shinjiro getting sick of his shit. And instead of Shinjiro punching a fuse box in frustration and doing no damage to it, he punches a hole through the floor. And dear God, when he breaks that kid's leg just by grabbing it in the anime, he crushes the kid's leg in the manga.
Volumes 9 through 11, the Star of Darkness arc, cover Season Two and has many of the same elements but the execution is wildly different. If I had to guess it's because an alien drug is a major plot point in this storyline and drugs are bad, mmkay? So the anime completely rewrote it to be about aliens teleporting people away with cameras. The anime also changed Kotaro getting his powers from an accident with this alien drug to one of these alien weapons malfunctioning, and his friend getting killed by aliens and triggering his first fire form rampage to his girlfriend. Maaya and the Wadorans are completely new to the anime, and because it took me longer than it should have to realize why Moroboshi wanted the bruiser alien's head, I was a bit let down when he stole the kill from Jack. I was sitting here thinking "So, what, was it the bruiser alien's brother they put in... oh, OH!! Yeah, okay, fair enough."
Jack doesn't do as much in this arc as he does in the anime (strange how he became less effectual when he got an Ultraman suit), and I realized what happened in the transition from manga to anime. The anime removed Rei, Moroboshi's little brother (which might be the reason they made that other change to him - without Rei to teach him compassion for the weak, why would he be fighting the fight he is?) so they gave the "big brother" aspect of Moroboshi to Jack. He intervenes when kid brother Kotaro is having a tantrum, when he jumps in to stop the fight between Moroboshi and Kotaro it's like the big brother breaking up a fight between the middle and kid brothers, and the anime lets him take out the bruiser alien. For clarification, Jack isn't actually any of the other characters' older brother, he just plays the role of one in the group.
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Cuphead (PC, E10+)
I played through the main game, but not the DLC which I'll review separately when I get to it. That said, when I purchased the Converge shot, the three-way lightning weapon, I quickly learned how overpowered it was and used it for the last several bosses. I didn't realize it was from the DLC and when I learned that I, uh, felt like I'd accidentally cheated and had to go back and beat those bosses with vanilla Cuphead weapons.
If you somehow don't know what Cuphead is, think Contra meets Fleisher cartoons with the occasional round of Gradius. The run and gun stages are whatever (I could be wrong but I'm not entirely sure you have to beat them, you just need them for the coins to get extra gear), what you're really here for are the boss battles which range from pirates to haunted trains to boxing frogs, and some are fought in side scrolling shooter bits. I didn't think the game was as brutally hard as a lot of people make it out to be (except for that fucking robot, I swear I downed the Devil in fewer tries than that asshole), but it still offered a decent challenge.
I thought King Dice was going to be a total dick move. The first phase of his fight has you rolling a die to move along a board and fight a miniboss that corresponds to the place you land on, and depending on how well you roll the die you have to fight anywhere from three to nine minibosses (or more if you're really unfortunate) before you take on King Dice himself. Most of the minibosses have simple patterns and don't take too long to kill (except for the monkey in the claw machine, that one can go fuck itself) but the first time I got to King Dice himself with one HP, died, and got sent to the beginning I thought "Oh my god, you're going to make me go through this every time I lose??" But once I got a handle on rolling the die and learned which spaces to land on i.e. anything but 9 which takes you to the damn monkey, it turns out King Dice himself is a joke. He only has one attack and it's just a skill check to make sure you've gotten the hang of parrying.
And since we've brought Contra into the discussion, Contra: Hard Corps has permanently screwed up how I play run-and-gunners. A key defense in that game's onslaught of enemy bullets was that you were invincible while sliding, so now whenever I play a run-and-gunner with a dash or slide maneuver, I keep dashing into enemy attacks thinking I'll go straight through them. So when I found Cuphead has a badge that makes you invincible while dashing... yeah, guess which badge I stuck with for the rest of the game (and in case you're wondering, yes, Athena was my go-to upgrade for the dash in Hades). The drawback is you have to know where you're going to be at the end of the dash because the badge also make you invisible while dashing.
I'm going to leave you with a realization I had about this game: there is absolutely Rule 34 out there of King Dice and Tenna and I will not be the only person suffering with that knowledge.
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The Mask (PG-13)
I saw this when I was a wee little lass, but all I really remembered were the scenes of Jim Carrey explaining to the one woman how the mask worked, and the shot of the big bad entering the club while wearing the mask. I mean, besides all the clips of the Mask imitating Red Hot Riding Hood you see all the time.
You're mainly here to see Jim Carrey answer the question of "how would the real world handle Bugs Bunny," so how you feel about the movie depends on whether you find the Mask's antics charming or irritating. Personally, I wasn't overly bothered by it, but the movie could have benefitted from having more of an actual plot.
But learning more about this movie's background makes things a little more interesting. Out of context the Mask robbing a bank seems kind of random, though I guess you could justify it as Ipkiss venting his frustration with his place of work, but it makes more sense when you know this is based on a rather horrific comic book. In the comic the police were after him because he was going around killing people (you know the scene of Ipkiss getting payback on the car mechanics that swindled him? That's a lot darker in the comic) but the movie changed Ipkiss into a hopeless romantic who's obsessed with Looney Toons, so they had to come up with another reason to get the police on his tail.
And hey, kudos for subverting expectations on the two love interests, movie.
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A Very DC Holiday & A Very DC Holiday Sequel (Various Writers and Artists)
These are an improvement over the DC Halloween collection from a couple months ago, but since DC superheroes are meant to invoke the same feelings of hope and good will as Christmas, it'd take some effort to get something more disappointing than that book.
The story where Batman sings carols with the police interested me, and not just because of the idea of Batman singing carols with the police (remember, I'm a tasteless dipshit who thought that episode of The Animated Series where the kids were hiding Batman in their basement, the one everyone cites as the worst episode of the series, was kind of adorably stupid). While Batman is singing instead of keeping watch over Gotham, people throughout the city are in the process of committing crimes but change their tune when they see an image of Batman - for example, some hoodlums steal some toys from an old woman, find one of them is an action figure of Batman, and return them. It reminded me of an experiment somebody did where they had somebody dressed as Batman hanging around a subway station, and just being reminded of Batman caused people to behave better.
Also, yeah, I realize Grant Morrison's thesis statement on his Batman run is "all interpretations of Batman are valid" and maybe I should just appreciate the sentiment, but I still can't get my head around Damian Fucking Wayne giving Jon Kent a video game console. But if Wayne Family Adventures is any indication, modern Damian Wayne is less "the son of Satan" and more "Dennis the Menace."
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Sakamoto Days, Vols 1 - 12 (Written and Illustrated by Yuto Suzuki)
Yeah, despite featuring this as an Easter egg in one of those Spamton comics, I had not read this until now.
Like Kaiju No. 8, you have to be willing to excuse the story pulling its punches for the sake of the themes and message it's trying to get across, in the case of Sakamoto Days, forgiveness and redemption and how far gone somebody has to be before they deserve neither. Several opponents wind up becoming allies, and the main cast has a strict no-kill policy. Oh, the secondary characters and antagonists are free to massacre their opponents in brutal ways, but when Sakamoto jams a pen into a guy's sternum other characters have to stress Sakamoto missed his vitals and the dude's only incapacitated. But then there's a high speed car chase on a highway, with Sakamoto and Shin sending cars and drivers alike flying, and I'm supposed to believe they're just getting knocked out? Yeah, no, this is Batman: Arkham Asylum "I just strung a thug from a gargoyle, then cut the cable with a Batarang so he dropped thirty feet onto his head but the game still insists he's unconscious" levels of bullshit, they're fucking dead.
One story arc takes the gang to the lab Shin got his psychic powers from and you're thinking, oh shit, did he undergo traumatizing experiments like Jack from Mass Effect 2, and this visit to the lab is going to be a confrontation with his past? Uh, no, he was put under the supervision of a scientist who wasn't at all abusive, just a bit scatterbrained not great with kids, and Shin drank a potion the dude had concocted. Guess I have another reason to call back to this!
And I realize I'm American and my perception of obesity is wildly different from the Japanese, but why does everyone talk to Sakamoto like he's a fatass land whale when he's just a bit plump?
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Batman - Santa Klaus: Silent Knight (Written by Jeff Parker, Illustrated by Various Artists)
Now, if you're looking for a Christmas-themed DC story, this is a solid recommendation. Yeah, there's no metanarrative about superheroes bringing out the best in people, it's just a fun little romp where the Justice League, Teen Titans, and various other DC heroes kick ass alongside Santa Claus to stop a wave of mythical beasts being unleashed by Krampus. Wait, what's that? You think the idea of Batman training under Kris Kringle is stupid? Don't you know Santa is such a badass he busts into into Apokolips every year to give Darkseid a piece of coal? Besides, it leads to this glorious moment where we see the childlike betrayal in Superman's eyes when he finds out Batman knew Santa Claus all these years and never introduced him.
Also, because of Dan Mora's involvement with this book and Grant Morrison's history with DC, I kinda want to headcanon this Santa Claus as the same one from Morrison's Klaus, but then I'd have to explain what's up with Krampus.
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The Butcher's Masquerade: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book V (Matt Dinniman, Kindle eBook)
Capping off the year with one last Dungeon Crawler Carl book.
Somewhere in the YouTube comments section of a video I don't remember, I saw somebody telling the story of how they were reading Dungeon Crawler Carl and their eleven-year-old nephew was interested in the idea of a guy exploring a dungeon with his cat, and so he got the kid a copy of the book. Somebody else responded with "Dude, I love me some Dungeon Crawler Carl as much as the next person, but that is not a book series for an eleven-year-old." Yeah, the first person must not have been very far into the series (hell, did they even make it to Odette?) because otherwise I don't know what they were thinking. As if the AI with a foot fetish and the sex doll possessed by a lust goddess weren't enough, something seriously fucked up happens here involving two of the antagonists. If you've read this, you know exactly what I'm talking about, and now I'm left wondering what the fire on the cover of the book is supposed to be.
A side effect of how many characters and storylines have been introduced into the series is how bloated the books are starting to get. I guess Dinniman felt the same way, leading to the cast here getting a bit of a culling as that dark undercurrent from the previous books creeps further and further to the surface.
And without wishing to spoil anything, somebody in the book's epilogue was clearly not listening when Thanos said "You should have gone for the head."
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