Let’s get the elephant out of the room straight away. This is Makoto Shinkai’s first film after the huge hit Your Name, and it’s not as good. But that’s a bit like saying gold is not as good as platinum. I mean, they’re both quite nice, aren’t they. Following Your Name with something even remotely comparable was a near-impossible task, but why compare? If Shinkai can be faulted it would be for not doing something different enough, although it’s far from being just more of the same. Studio Ghibli sidestepped the problem of following Spirited Away by doing something completely different, but then again Studio Ghibli nearly always does something completely different. Shinkai has favourite themes he likes to explore and a trademark visual style, and that’s a perfectly valid approach. In particular he has often made use of the weather to help tell his stories. Continue reading
Never Back Losers is an unusual entry into the Edgar Wallace Mysteries series of films. There is no detective, and for much of the film I didn’t think there was going to be a murder either. Despite that, I found this one just as entertaining as the murder mysteries, if not more so.
“A Sudden Reunion“
Sleeping in Light. The words appear on the screen in the opening but there are no opening credits. 20 years have gone by since the last episode and Michael Garibaldi says that this is the day they all dreaded. John Sheridan is dying.
There’s been a lot of hype around Baldur’s Gate which returned in a playable, Early Access form in October of 2020. I was surprised to see an Early Access game released for full price, but Larian Studio’s knows the power that name has with gamers. Baldur’s Gate is a Dungeon’s and Dragons Role Playing game. It has a reputation. Now, I typically will pick up an Early Access game because the price is usually right and this is one I want to play, but not until it’s actually ready to be played. With this one being full price, I decided to go for a similar style game at a fraction of the cost, just to scratch that itch. In Baldur’s Gate, you meet allies along the way and you travel with them, do battle and typically unfold their stories as you play. I really like RPGs where you get a team. Which brings me to Pathfinder: Kingmaker. 
Does it bother me that I feel like I already covered this with the Babylon 5 episode 
The premise of this series requires some suspension of disbelief. The idea is that humans originally lived below the sea, until some decided to live on the surface instead. This has created a divided human race. The ones below the surface have a substance on their skin that allows them to breathe under water. If they remain out of water for too long it starts to crack and peel. A person from the sea and a person from the land can have a child, but that child will not generally possess the ability to breathe under water. So there are a few aspects of this we just have to allow to wash over us, if you’ll pardon the pun. The humans on land seem to be aware of the underwater humans and don’t think this is anything unusual, although there is a distrust between them, so it’s used very effectively as a way to explore themes of xenophobia. You have to accept the sight of people not only breathing underwater, but walking along the surface at the bottom, and even talking to each other in the normal way (how does that work?). However, once you’ve got past the incongruity of seeing normal life going on, with the only thing to indicate anything being different the sight of some fish swimming around, it will be worth making that leap of faith to give this series a try. For one thing, the visuals are as stunning as the concept would suggest, with a whole town built under water. I’m not sure I ever quite got past the silliness of the idea entirely, but it didn’t really matter as I was so swept away (sorry) by the story. That took a while, though. 
We start once again with a burglary at a business premises and a safe being cracked. This time the thief in question, Frank Murray, really hits the jackpot, finding £10,000 in cash. How much is that in today’s money? Answer: a lot. It’s all in new notes, so something dodgy was going on, and the owner of the photography shop doesn’t want the police to know that he had that money in the safe. He says he was keeping it for a client. Yeah, right.
“Proof She’s Alive“
“This place kinda grows on ya!”
As long time visitors to the Junkyard know, I really loved 
Kai is a grumpy teenager. If you’re an anime fan, you’ll recognise the character trope, a boy who doesn’t seem interested in life and can’t get enthusiastic about anything. He is virtually railroaded by a couple of friends into putting a band together. The two friends are Kunio and Yuho. You’ll recognise their character tropes too. Kunio is the funny and not very clever male friend. Yuho is the enthusiastic girl who is full of life and can’t stay angry with anyone for very long. But tropes are not necessarily bad things, and they serve their purpose in the film. The key decision that sets the chain of events in motion in this film is the location the trio choose to play their music: Merfolk Island. This is Ningyojima in Japanese, and ningyo is the Japanese version of the mermaid myth. It’s similar to legends of mermaids you will find elsewhere, but an important characteristic to ningyo is the danger they present. They were very much creatures to be feared, capable of bringing bad luck and terrible weather. This is very cleverly used in Lu Over the Wall as a way to make a story about the dangers of xenophobia and the exploitation of minorities. 
This is a curiously structured murder mystery because the running time is about the usual 55 minutes for this film series, but it takes 30 minutes for the first murder to happen. That actually works surprisingly well, because we know there is going to be one and the suspense builds up to that moment. When it happens, it’s not the murder we were probably expecting. Clever stuff.
The Junkyard presents a review by Daz of the anime series The Legend of Black Heaven: 
“Fake Memories“
In 1985, there was a movie called St. Elmo’s Fire. My cousin loved the soundtrack and back then, we were together a lot, so I heard it often. One song had a line in it that disturbed me; a simple lyric: “Time goes on, People touch and they’re gone, And you and I will never love again, Like we did then.” As a young lad of 13, the idea of people coming and going in our lives made me sad – I still have a hard time listening to this haunting lyric! I didn’t want to have to say goodbye to anyone. But time and life happen and invariably even the best of friends sometimes become part of the fading tapestry of memory. The main point here is that I really do not like goodbyes. Yet I love the gentle ending to this series and I think that’s because stories make that a little easier. We can part with our “friends” knowing that we can relive that sweet sorrow as often as we like, because we can always pick up that book or watch that show again. It never has to be a permanent goodbye, where real life is rarely as certain. 
Recently, I’ve been discussing Violence in Video Games, and Assassin’s Creed is a prime example of where a game can go over the top with violence, but it’s not without merit because there’s also an educational element to the game, and it has a diverse background. That’s not for now, though… I’ll come back to the overall topic soon and will use some of this game to illustrate points, but for now, let’s just talk about the game itself.Contact Information
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DrAcrossthePond
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