So, Teen Titans Go?

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Teen Titans Go probably isn't as bad as you've heard. But, since you've heard that Teen Titans Go is capable of causing aneurysms and murdering puppies, that's a weak defense. In its favor, it has pretty solid animation - it's very fluid, looks natural, and the style reminds me of a mix between WordGirl and Star vs. The Forces of Evil. It fits with the kid-friendly nature of the show. I also like the poppy color scheme - lots of blues, greens, pinks, warm colors like that.

Alright, that's about all I got. In truth, I'm probably giving Teen Titans Go more credit than it actually deserves. I never said this show was very good. A lot of people hate this fucking show with a passion; I merely dislike it, and I think it's another one of those disposable, invisibly mediocre cartoons that networks like Nickelodeon seem to be indulging in. But I figure that, if you want to look at film and cinema on a large scale, you have to break apart or analyze the criticisms and community surrounding a film or a television show, and that's exactly what I'm going to do. The purpose of this is to examine why people despise this show so much, and I think I have an idea why.

For starters, it's stupid. Like, really stupid. The thing about Teen Titans is that it was a brilliantly-written drama that was still very kid-friendly and appealing in spite of its darker elements. It appealed to a broad audience of kids and adults like. It's also one of those few shows that stood the test of time; I was re-watching some episodes the other day and I can still appreciate the amount of effort that went into them; I'd wager it was even better than I remember. So, given these circumstances, creating a spinoff of a dearly-beloved show was risky from the get-go; turning it into a comedic was even riskier. The original Teen Titans was funny enough; in fact, the constant drama and action helped give weight to the moments of levity and comedy.

It was comic relief in an otherwise serious, heartfelt show. To turn it into a full-stop comedy and put the humor front and center would not only remove the dramatic tension but trivialize the circumstances and characters. And the characters are indeed trivialized; in fact, the minimal character development is by far and away he worst aspect of the show. They aren't characters anymore, they're stereotypes, and stereotypes can't be used as effective characters. The Titans have a lot of their negative traits exaggerated for comedic purposes; and they are, intermittently, comedic. They are also, far more than intermittently, not comedic. The characters' flat personalities (the sassy black guy, the shrill young leader, the annoying green guy, the ditzy redhead, the emotionless chick), and the low number of gags that can be taken out of those personalities, makes the whole premise seem incredibly trivial.

The show fails on a narrative perspective, too. It's bad enough to have unsympathetic characters (though that's not a pre-requisite, there hasn't been a good kid's show without somewhat likable heroes), but to have a go-nowhere plot is arguably worse. The original Teen Titans was made up of a collection of shorts and isolated stories, but it had reoccurring plot elements and villains that gave it momentum. Kind of like what Cowboy Bebop did. Teen Titans Go doesn't have that sense of momentum; it doubles down on being spontaneous and random at the expense of being consistent. There's a lack of bite in its conflicts, characters, and even morals. In fact, having morals in the story to begin with is contradictory; because the characters are specifically designed to be inflexible, having them learn a moral or message by the end of each episode is pointless and counter-intuitive.

It's manic as all hell, which isn't really the problem; it's the constant chaos that makes it exhausting. Each individual scene is exactly the same as the one before it, and it becomes tedious by the end of everything. It's not insufferable; the Young Justice crossover episode was actually funny because of how absolutely deranged it was; it was mocking itself. But, as a whole, it is tiring, more than it should be.

In spite of that, I believe the reason people hate this thing so much is because of how uncaring the show as a whole is towards its fans and viewers. There is a particularly infamous episode, "The Return of Slade", that pretty much affirms this. I'm not going to go into depth about what happens in the episode, but the entire episode basically makes a claim that animation and cartoons are just for kids, and anybody who criticizes this show just needs to accept that they're taking it too seriously. It's an attack on the critics, which is never a good idea. It's callous and petty, and also retroactively ironic because Teen Titans proved that animation can be more than just children's entertainment.

And, at the end of the day, that's ultimately why people don't like it. It's easy to overlook the animation, the static characters, the voice acting (although I will admit the voice actors sound incredibly depressed working on this), and all of that stuff. But, the "who gives a shit" attitude the show takes on is a problem. While I personally am not insulted by that philosophy, I can easily see why people would be, especially long-time fans of the show. Animation is for everybody, even cartoons. There's nothing wrong with a silly cartoon, or a dramatic cartoon, or a silly and dramatic cartoon; there's nothing wrong with an American cartoon, or a Japanese cartoon. But for the series to condemn the modern-day attitude that animation can and is for every age group is something of a trigger to those who watch this show, and for good reason.

Am I sympathetic towards TTG? No. No, no, no. It makes me laugh sometimes, but other than the solid animation and good color scheme, it gets pretty much everything else wrong. Cartoon Network has to lean on Steven Universe / Adventure Time and pray to God they still have an audience anymore.

Til next time.

Jet Set Radio: Multiculturalism and Expression

It would be great if I could find more resources on what the production of Jet Set Radio (known as Jet Grind Radio in the US because of a legal dispute) was like inside the studios of Smilebit (of Panzer Dragoon fame), because I’m positive it would have been one hell of a thing to see. On its short-lived but very important release in the US in 2000, it was hailed as one of the great, influential video games of late 90’s, early 2000’s lore, pioneering the use of cel-shading graphics in video games and it’s really easy to see why. I distinctly remember buying this game and thinking that I had never seen anything like it; and, to its credit, I still haven’t. It has a cartoonish vibe that flows surprisingly well with the spiky, distinctive character designs, the sharp, angular backgrounds and buildings, the music. The absolutely mesmerizing design choices and style were enough for me to overlook the few flaws this game had.

The controls, though realistic, were trash sometimes.

A word that comes to mind when trying to describe Jet Set Radio is “eclectic”. Eclectic, according to Oxford Dictionaries, means “[a person, object, or thing that] derives ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources”. A diverse range of sources indeed! Jet Set Radio is a platformer skater game made by a division of a big-name Japanese publisher with influences derived from old school 80’s-90’s hip hop and J-pop made to look appealing to both an American and European audience while keeping its distinct Japanese sensibility. The end result is a game that, by all means, should logically be cluttered and unfocused, putting its fingers in way too many pies, but all of the influences and scattered elements come together and create a product far more than the sum of its parts. It’s Tony Hawk meets Akira meets American 90’s hip hop meets Sonic the Hedgehog, and it’s an absolutely perfect world to set its characters and circumstances in. It’s got style, finesse, a multicultural flair.

Ah, multicultural. Now that’s a good word to describe Jet Set Radio, too. In fact, this game seems to have quite a lot to say about culture. The primary conflict itself revolves around the efforts of the Tokyo-to Police and Military to suppress the counterculture of the Rudies, who express themselves and their culture by spraying graffiti everywhere. The villain of the story is an evil business magnate who wants to spread over-saturated, bland, homogenous entertainment and art. It’s a full-out culture war. The game handles these themes with a cheesy, lighthearted air (the villainous plot itself is really tongue-in-cheek), but it does make for some pretty hefty stuff if you look at it a little deeper. The idea of cultural suppression has been shown in media countless times before and after Jet Set Radio. In The LEGO Movie, creativity is discouraged by Lord Business; everyone needs to follow premade blueprints. In Footloose, pop music itself is banned. The world in Fahrenheit 451 is one in which books and literature are outlawed / burned to a crisp. The same circumstances are going on in Jet Set Radio, albeit with a considerably less dramatic nature; while it doesn’t encourage the player to go against the law, it also has more than a few things to say on the nature of expression and artistry.

Keeping in with its multicultural yet structured feel is the soundtrack itself, which pretty much everyone who played this game remembers fondly. It’s a wide, wide array of original and licensed songs that manage to both draw from a lot of sources (amongst them are J-pop, metal, funk, hip-hop, trance, EDM, progressive rock) and manage to have a distinct, consistent sound. It makes use of sampling, looping, a wide variety of instruments and people, capturing the rhythm and movement of the streets and people perfectly; everyone is a different, distinct person with their own personal stories and styles, but we’re all basically the same. That, to me, is what the soundtrack is like.

Jet Set Radio is a jam-packed game full of ideas, themes, individual grace notes that really shouldn’t come together but they do so almost flawlessly, in a way that I think few forms of media manage to do successfully. It’s handsome yet ragged, tough inside and out yet sensitive to kids, and even its worst thematic or narrative missteps are due to its ambitious nature, which is always a good thing to me. It’s rare to see something that truly stands out in a wave of mediocrity, something absolutely creative and ingenious. Mediocrity, after all, is what Jet Set Radio condemns. Freedom and the power of imagination are truly incredible tools.

El Señor de los Cielos Review

Hey there, this be Sam. This post is going to focus on the ridiculously fucking long telenovela “El Señor de los Cielos”. This isn’t going to be a review so much as an examination of the script’s strength. Normally in a review, especially for film and TV, I’ll focus on all the elements of what makes a show or film work, but in this case I’m solely going to focus on scriptwriting and storytelling. I’m not going to bother focusing on the acting (which is hilariously broad, though it has its moments), the cinematography (which is aggressively mediocre), none of that shit. Just the script.

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El Señor de los Cielos is easily one of the worst American-produced TV series I’ve ever had the displeasure to watch. This isn’t a consensus opinion: it’s a show that’s largely regarded as a good soap opera with fairly strong acting, an engaging storyline, and distinctive characters. Although I’d like to argue the terms “good” and “soap opera” don’t belong in the same sentence, I can also partially see why people would like this, at least from an American standpoint. It’s very reminiscent of shows and films such as Breaking Bad, CSI, Scarface, The Wire. Which is sensible because it’s American-produced. And given the mind-blowing amount of episodes produced in such a short amount of time, it’s evidently very popular. I don’t want to begrudge nor insult anybody who likes this show. Even if I personally dislike something, that doesn’t inherently mean that you should do the same if you have half a brain. If you like something like El Señor de los Cielos, that’s completely fine. This analysis, after all, isn’t pointing out what’s wrong with the fans, it’s about what’s wrong with the show.

It’s really hard to know where to start with El Señor de los Cielos, because other than really good costume design and fairly slick editing, it does basically everything wrong. There is a plot, and there are characters, and there are environments / locations, but never do the three elements tie together in a way that is entirely natural or enjoyable. The essential storyline involves seemingly powerful drug trafficker Aurelio Casillas and his daily adventures, most of which involve trying to not get his ass handed to him by the DEA, rival gangs, or anybody else flying toward him in all directions.

Aurelio Casillas is a bad protagonist; he is, in fact, so incredibly poorly-written that it’s impossible to get a bead on what type of protagonist he is. He at first to be an egotistical drug lord who’s more than willing to torture, kill, steal, or one-up anybody who stands in his way; he is also a humble family man, but not too humble, because it’s proven he has practically the entire female cast riding his nuts and he’s more than happy to oblige; he is apparently a broken soul or some deep shit like that. Aurelio appears to be quite a lot of things. However, one thing he is not is a satisfying protagonist.

The writers doubled down on giving Aurelio a multifaceted personality, at the expense of coherency and logic. He is incredibly inconsistent, his motivations are either cliché or incredibly vague, and makes bafflingly stupid decisions without any sort of consequences or penalty. This last part especially bugs the shit out of me. Aurelio is so ludicrously powerful it’s impossible to feel any sort of tension in any scenario he’s put into. He can sleep around with as many women as he desires, but he still manages to maintain the love of his family without any effort; he has a fuckton of assassins and police officers sent out against him, but his brother and lawyer almost always have his back, which means he’s invariably going to escape or come out without any deep scratch. All of this happens very early on in the series and pretty much sets the stage for all of Aurelio’s actions throughout the series, effectively ending any feeling that Aurelio might get fucked for the rest of the show. It is not remotely thrilling or intriguing to find out whether or not Aurelio wins or gets away with his actions in the long run, because the deck is always incredibly stacked in Aurelio’s favor for the sake of getting more out of the show.

He’s also impossible to like. Having an unsympathetic protagonist has been done before; however, it has been done so much better. I’d like to compare Aurelio Casillas to Walter White from Breaking Bad, because duh. They are similar in the vein that they are powerful drug lords who definitely enjoy what they do, but hold onto their human side and care for their family. However, Walter White’s actions throughout the show were completely in-character for him; he didn’t do a single thing we expected or anticipated, but never once did the script force him to break character or do something wildly inconsistent. Walter White was a pretty great character, and Bryan Cranston was outstanding in that role. Those same privileges are not extended to Aurelio Casillas. His status as a drug lord and his status as a family man are two completely different sides of him that never come together in a satisfactory or natural way. He is a sadistic, ruthless, power-hungry, lustful asshole, and yet we are expected to believe he is also a loving family man. His status as a loving family man is invalidated by the first ten episodes alone, having revealed he’s slept with multiple women during his marriage with Ximena, including some actress, the manipulative Matilde, and the faux-villain Monica. We’re supposed to assume that Aurelio feels guilt for his actions, but not only does his sense of guilt come completely out of left field, it’s been shown multiple times that Aurelio doesn’t give two shits about torturing or murdering to get what he wants.

Again, having an unlikable protagonist is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s been done well before. However, the show focuses nigh-exclusively on Aurelio. He needs to be sympathetic enough that those of us who aren’t drug dealers can root for him, dangerous enough that the audience needs to recognize he’s a threat, and act logical enough that these two sides of him can tie together. They never do, as point of fact. The scriptwriters were just interesting in having a fucking deep character, and they figured the best way to do that was throw in all sorts of random personality elements and pray to God the audience could find something to like.

All of the other characters aren’t much to talk about either. The show is wildly sexist and has a very petty, chauvinistic mindset; all of the women are fucking satellites around Aurelio, characterized only by their interactions with Aurelio or their feelings about him. This is especially true of Monica Robles, who is apparently not motivated by power, or the desire to gain territory, or the desire to one-up the Mexican drug traffickers; she is motivated by her love of Aurelio Casillas. She becomes even more of a stereotype in the second season; whereas she was a recurring figure who showed up in brief snippets each episode, she is constantly onscreen in the second season and her presence quickly becomes annoying and degrading. She fails as an antihero and a villain; she isn’t threatening enough to come across as a genuine danger to anyone’s safety, considering how the Robles absolutely suck at pulling off assassinations and heists, and any sympathy we feel toward her is quickly diminished by how petty and callous she can be. So she’s just a black hole, devoid of personality or true depth. Matilde isn’t much better; her motivations are never clear. The only thing we know about her is that she’s ambitious and sneaky, but her endgame or super objective are never shown nor even implied / inferred. She’s just there to provide drama, as a plot device. Characters need to exist within their own universe and make decisions that are sensible for them to make, not just because the plot demands it.

The men of the story are the ones who do all the important plot stuff, but guess what? They suck, too. The policeman Marco Mejia is perhaps the worst of the bunch; he hates Aurelio Casillas for torturing and killing his father, and basically obsesses over Aurelio. Now, rather than trying to destroy the supply line Aurelio has set up, rather than whittling down his supporters and suppliers and militaristic strength, he decides that the best course of option is to simply put Aurelio behind bars and do all the hard work afterwards, completely disregarding the fact that Aurelio’s drug trade system would continue to go on even if he was behind bars at all times. This is so laughably stupid, and we’re supposed to believe Mejia is good at his job. Suspension of disbelief doesn’t even apply here; this is just fucking stupid. Victor never registered, to me, as anything more than a plot device or a vessel for pointless, irrelevant drama.

So when the characters aren’t being stupid, the plot itself is really poorly told. It lacks a sense of urgency despite the rapid editing and pacing; a great many things happen, but it takes a fucking long time for the main plot points to surface. The first season is apparently all about Aurelio Casillas getting plastic surgery in order to operate unseen and undetected by those gunning for him. It takes a stunning seventy-four episodes for Aurelio to undergo this surgery. This is just icing on the shit cake; the script can be so frustratingly padded-out and superfluous that it can be flat-out unbearable. It is absolutely bombarded with poorly-choreographed gunfights and sex scenes when it should be dealing with the fucking storyline. Where’s the urgency? Where’s the sense that the characters are in any actual danger after a certain point? Why are the police so inept? The script is full of enough logical fallacies and inconsistencies that it’s practically pointless to flesh them out. We’d be here for quite a while if I tried to do that.

What I have basically sketched out is the argument that El Señor de los Cielos is a terribly written show full of slippery characters, a lifeless story, unengaging drama and nonexistent comedy. Even worse, this is just a rough outline of the basic problems the show has; there are many, many more problems both major and minor, broad and subtle, that pockmark the show. If this post has come off as nothing more than a tirade or disjointed complaining, forgive me, dear reader, but this is something that just leaves me in an irritated mood. I’m aware this is a fucking soap opera, and it’s not like, Hamlet, or anything, and I’ve probably disliked it more than it deserves. It’s no worse than any of the overlauded, over-produced soap operas on syndicated television. But rarely does one come across such a pompous, uncompromisingly shitty show. It does a great many things that never come together as a cohesive whole. Everything about it just puts me in a bad mood; because there are very few things I hate more in this world than people getting rewarded for doing a terrible job. This series has made way too much money for its own good.

And that’s that. If anybody reading this actually enjoys Cielos, more power to you, man. I won’t criticize you for enjoying yourself and being entertained, because that’s dumb. If you see some of the issues I pointed out differently, that’s fine. However, I have to view things from a critical perspective, being a critic myself, and from my own perspective, this is an absolute trainwreck that is nowhere near enjoyable as I was led to believe. It was a challenge to get through and a complete time-waster. Maybe next time I’ll actually review something fun and enjoyable!

God this show sucks

Til next time.

Fresca, For All It Be

Sam here. I apologize about being off so long. In order to make up for the absence, I’m going to discuss my feelings on Fresca.

It’s pretty good.

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In all seriousness, Fresca is something of a blank space in the history of sodas. It definitely exists and was even popular at one point, evidenced by the amount of 70’s and 80’s commercials for it. Fresca can be easily purchased at any local Wal-Mart, Safeway, Target, at least where I live. Yet despite the easy availability, I know very few people who have actually heard about it, let alone tried the damn thing. One has to wonder – why the lack of popularity in America come 2015?

It might be attributed to the basic idea of Fresca. Fresca was launched as a grapefruit-flavored soda; although it comes in other flavors now, that’s what it’s best known for. When one thinks of “grapefruit”, they generally don’t associate it with “soda”, and therein lies the problem. While there are a variety of lemon-lime drinks and carbonated soft drinks in the world, grapefruit soda is an interesting idea at best, but not something you could see putting your money into at first glance. Not to mention grapefruit is incredibly bitter as a standalone fruit, which us lightweight Americans hate (but Europe eats that shit right up, go figure). There’s a lot of competition for soft drinks in the US, especially artificially-sweetened ones, and grapefruit isn’t exactly a popular choice. Squirt suffered from the same problems, ditto for Tab.

And speaking of Tab, despite the ever-rising demand for diet sodas, Fresca and Tab (which are inherently diet) seem to be dwarfed by Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi (which are just artificially flavored Coke and Pepsi ripoffs). This always stymies me. The artificial sweeteners in Diet Coke are absolutely repugnant to me; it leaves quite the aftertaste. Fresca’s sweeteners, however, are actually sweet. It is the only diet soda I can actually tolerate because it was made to be a calorie-free diet soda from the get-go, which gave it a genuine, non-filtered taste. Yet Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi sell more (which is retroactively ironic, considering Fresca is a Coca-Cola product to begin with).

Perhaps I’m being too limited in my modern-day urban whiteness. I hear tell that Fresca has garnered lasting popularity in Mexico (Mexican Fresca is, btw, fucking delicious, despite not being calorie-free) and Europe; former President Lyndon B. Johnson was a fan of Fresca and apparently had a Fresca fountain installed in the White House; it’s apparently popular as a mixer in vodka, gin, tequila. And despite having virtually no reputation good or ill outside of hardcore soda buffs (like me), it still has quite the loyal fanbase. If you want to check one out, do so – try finding the Latino version if at all possible. Fresca is a very sweet, refreshing drink, leaving only the mildest of aftertastes. And even if you don’t like the grapefruit taste, there’s plenty of other types to check out, such as Peach, Black Cherry, Cherry Citrus (my second favorite).

Til next time.