Studio Ghibli part 2

Laputa: Castle in the Sky

Dir: Hayao Miyazaki 1986

The first official Ghibli film. It is usually recognized as one of their stronger works. At over 2 hours it is a little bloated, you may find yourself wishing they’d get to the titular castle in the sky a bit sooner. The attempts at humour translate a little awkwardly as well with some strange bits of slapstick.

It also feels the age it’s being aimed at feels a little more awkward. Tonally it can feel very much like a children’s film, and at other times seem to be well above the heads of a younger audience. Other films by Ghibli have managed to strike a better balance. That said it does create a vibrant, exciting and charming world, but if there’s an overarching theme and moral to the story it’s not expressed very clearly. But I’m probably being harder on it than it deserves. It’s an important one to see in the Ghibli collection.

Tales from Earthsea

Dir: Gorō Miyazaki 2006

A rare case of a Ghibli film that disappointed me. Slightly odd, unsatisfying structure that doesn’t have the usual charm of other Ghibli work. It’s much more black and white in its depiction of Good and Evil. Lots of their works have been adapted from Manga series, but this is a rare case where it feels as if there’s an established world that hasn’t been explored properly. The film seems obliged to make some nods to the series but doesn’t really focus on them. My research tells me it focused on a story from the middle of the series, which would account for why it feels a bit disjointed. Another issue is a very strange decision was made in English dubbing. I vary in whether I choose to watch these films in English or Japanese, but this is one where despite some good acting. The slightly transgender main character has a creepy male voice where in the Japanese dub it has a seductive female voice. Very odd decision.

Studio Ghibli

I used to be a bit put out by anime, I tended to find the animation style unappealing, particularly in its facial animation. It often seemed odd to me that I didn’t really go for it, considering my love of Japanese video games. Years ago, Spirited Away from the infamous Studio Ghibli studio seemed to be one that really broke to the mainstream, in 2001 but after seeing it, I still remained unconvinced and it still seemed to do things that I found off-putting, although thinking back now, I’m not exactly sure now what my logic was and may have just been some irrational prejudice. 

 A few months ago though, I gave ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ also from Studio Ghibli a chance and it changed my attitude completely. It struck an emotional chord with me in a way I can’t really remember feeling before. Studio Ghibli are often seen as “The Japanese Disney” but that doesn’t do them justice. They do animated films, usually but not always aimed at children. It difficult to judge sometimes as their ideas of what’s suitable for children can differ from western ideas. 

 Their range of work is more diverse, more idiosyncratic than Disney and even more so than Pixar. They deal with themes of greater maturity and in doing so the lighter moments by contrast can feel warmer. At the same time in their more epic works, the battles between good and evil are a little greyer. It’s rare that you’ll find an entirely evil antagonist. The main creative forces behind Ghibli are Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata though with a few being taken on by other directors, and more recently, Miyazaki’s son Goro has taken up directing some of their films. Takahata hasn’t had as much to do with them for a while, but he’s tended to experimental one, to Miyazaki who prolifically delivers most of the studio’s works, though they have always been about collaboration. 

My Neighbour Totoro. 
Dir: Hayao Miyazaki. 1988

 I’ve talked a bit about it already, but it’s main beauty lies in how it captures childhood and what it doesn’t do. In American animation the children could very easily be bratty and annoying, but here they feel charming and adorable. It’s also intriguing for the way it handles the magical elements. The father indulges the children’s belief they’ve found the magical Totoro creatures. It’s ambiguous whether they really believe the children have seen these magical creatures. But the father ultimately lets them believe and doesn’t doubt them. This is a more realistic depiction than getting angry with them and telling them these creatures don’t exist - which you can imagine happening in animation from other cultures. 

 There are more serious themes as well, as the families mother is suffering from an illness in hospital. She’s expected to recover, but it dangles the possibility that she could die. The concept of illness serves as pretty much the only antagonist in the movie. It’s a world free of evil characters. 

 But it trusts children to be mature enough to handle its darker themes and understand them. This lack of condescension means it can appeal to all audiences without a need to sneak in pop-cultural references that only adults get. 

 Kiki’s Delivery Service
 Dir: Hayao Miyazaki 1989.

 One of the other differences in Ghibli’s films over western films is an ability to utilize young female characters. And no not in a way that’s at all sexualized. Kiki is a witch who on her 14th birthday as part of her training must leave her parents and move elsewhere to try and make it on her own to develop her skills. As quite typical of Ghibli young female characters, she’s a determined, resourceful with good intentions that are maybe a little set back by her naivety. It’s refreshing to have characters like this be such a focus of their films and be depicted in this way. Delivery Service is probably one of the more slight Ghibli works, but also a very warm and charming one. In the English dub, Phil Hartman plays her cat; only witches are able to understand cats, in a nice expansion on the mythology of witches with cats. Although I have to say it feels a bit jarring tonally. He seems a little too wisecracking for this world. 

 Ponyo
 Dir: Hayao Miyazaki. 2008.

 One concept in quite a few Ghibli films is to subvert traditional stories and fairy tales. Ponyo is a twisted take on The Little Mermaid. It does the Ghibli thing of living in a realtively innocent and peaceful world. There isn’t an evil queen or anyone in the undersea world, just someone who has to take a very harsh but fair attitude towards keeping the sea in balance. And in this case the love story occurs between two rather adorable young children. And the human/fish hybrid isn’t exactly a mermaid, but something a bit different. Iit’s the boy that lives underwater that wants to become human. It’s not their most original or daring work, but it’s a very warm and uplifting world. It feels quite similar to Totoro in a lot of ways, albeit a slightly safer, faster version. 

The Secret World of Arrietty 
Dir: Hiromasa Yonebayashi. 2010

 For me, this is the best non Miyazaki or Takahata work. There’s some utterly beautiful animation of the intricacies of gardens leaves and grass blowing in the wind, animation of insects and The interiors walls of the house. Like Ponyo, it subverts a traditional story, in this case the borrowers and it tells the story more from the perspective of the little people rather than the humans. But it tackles other more serious films of debilitating illnesses there’s again some parallels with Totoro that I won’t get into for fear of spoiling too much. The score is beautiful as well, and it gets away from the traditional Japanese scoring and utilizes a more Celtic sound from French singer and harpist Cécile Corbel, who uses English Language vocals on some tracks even in the Japanese dub. It’s one of their more small scale works, set in one house and in its garden for the most part. But it’s one their more emotionally resonant work. One of my favourites. I'll continue to add to these reviews over the weeks.

Hey where the hell have you been?

I know I needed a bit of a break, then I had a longer break then planned, then I got ill, then it got really hot for a week and I couldn't concentrate on anything for more than a second. Then I couldn't think of anything to write about, Then it was the Olympics, and after that it had been so long, I'd forgotten how to write. Really will try to get back into the habit again soon.

My exclusive non-spoiler review of Batman - The Dark Knight Rises

Yes I know it hasn't even been released yet, but I managed to sneak in to an exclusive preview screening, it did add an extra layer of tension to the experience, wondering if I'd get caught, but I was soon so swept away by the movie I soon forgot all about it. So I've written some of my thoughts below.

It's good, but not as good as this.

Mass Effect 3 Ending DLC and Death in Video Games

*Just a warning to say that this blog will spoil the endings of Mass Effect 3, Red Dead Redemption, Shadow of the Colossus and L.A Noire.*

The Mass Effect 3 Ending DLC has been released, and the general opinion from its critics seem to be that’s it’s slightly better, but it doesn’t really solve the core issues with the endings. I’m one of the people who’s of this opinion; I only finished the game for the first time a few days ago so, I was able to go online to watch the extended endings as soon as I’d seen the regular endings. I think I’ve gone through the five stages of grief in reaction to it, at first I thought it was okay - I was in denial, but then gradually the more I thought about it, and the more I looked at blogs and YouTube videos criticising the ending, the worse it seemed. I think I’ve moved past the anger and bargaining parts now though thankfully.

Most comments from mainstream articles on the story seem to have missed the point of why people were complaining. In particular the defence seemed to be that people were just unhappy that there wasn’t a star wars style handing out of medals at the end. But that isn’t what most of the criticism is about. Although I will say it is a bit contentious to suggest the Mass Effect series is so much deeper than Star Wars just because it didn’t have a happy ending where everything is wrapped up properly.

Most things that can be said have been said have been said at this point, but there’s a particular idea of the story I want to investigate, namely the endings in which Shepard has to sacrifice him/herself in all the choices it brings you. Now I’m fine with the idea that Shepard would have to die at the end, the possibility was foreshadowed in the game and I was prepared for it being a possibility. The problem is the way it’s handled is wrong for the medium of games. Even putting all the problems with the ghost child AI aside, seeing that ending play out in a movie, might not be good, but it would be more palatable. Doing it in a game however is very frustrating.

I want to stress, you can have the main character die in a game, but there’s a particular way it should be done, and the best examples I can think of are Red Dead Redemption and Shadow of the Colossus. (Well he doesn’t technically die, but it uses a model that I’m suggesting other games could learn from)

You know that point in so many games where you fight your way through hordes of enemies, overcome traps and trials. Then a cut-scene happens and an enemy gets the jump on you somehow, or your character just does something stupid. It’s in countless games and it’s always incredibly annoying, because you feel like if you’d been in control, it wouldn’t have happened, and you resent your cut-scene avatar for not being up to the task.

Things like this are actually fine though when there’s an in-game moment where you’re scripted to fail. It can’t suddenly change the physics and believability of the gameplay’s internal rules too much, but if done right it works well. The moment at the end of Shadow of the Colossus essentially forces you to give up as a magical pool starts pulling you towards it, and as much as you try to run away and hold on to ledges, you know you don’t have a chance. People aren’t all going to experience that moment in the exact same way, they might not give up at the exact same moment. But when you do let go, you know it’s on you and that makes the moment so much more powerful.

In Red Dead Redemption, you send your wife and son to run away and then step outside to face hordes of lawmen. You’re impossibly outnumbered, but you go down in a final stand-off and try to take as many with you as you can. There’s a moment the first time you play it when you think “this is ridiculous there’s no way I’m going to be able to take down this many people, its impossible” And of course it is. There’s no way you’d be able to succeed even within the framework of the game. You realize you were destined to die and you feel silly for thinking you’d be able to pull of such a miracle. At first you think the game might restart and maybe there’s some trick you’re supposed to pull that you didn’t see the first time. But it just cuts to the next scene of your wife and son running away on horse, and you’re in control of the son now. It really subverts the game logic you’re used and that’s why it’s effective.

L.A noire, another Rockstar game however, screws this up a bit. Where you character simply gets swept away in a drain flood, undermining all the effort you made to get to that point. Not to mention that game commits some even more sins earlier on by revealing your character has been having an off-screen affair. It doesn’t seem fair to have your character do things you wouldn’t do if you were in control. At least in a game where you make a lot of choices for the character.

Mass Effect 3 doesn’t quite do any of these things. You admittedly have an in-game choice to make, but you’re still essentially just choosing how you want to die in a cut-scene, and that’s incredibly frustrating. In the game part you survive against impossible odds, time and time again, but cut-scenes demand you die.

The ending would have been better if Harbinger had taken you out properly on your run towards the citadel and you died there. Though on that topic, I didn’t particular care for how it does take you down at the same scripted moment. I tried to roll to the left, but Shepard was suddenly rooted to the spot. The game 'me' should have survived that moment. If the laser had taken me down and proved impossible to dodge further on, or if Marauder Shields had proved too powerful, I would have preferred that. 

 The difference between games and movies is that we aren’t supposed to be powerless over the main protagonist’s actions. If you take away the player’s right to that power then we’re just watching a movie.  I don’t want to be too rigid and say that games should have to abide by these sets of rules, because it does seem to undermine gaming as an art form to say the main character can’t die outside of gameplay, and I’m sure there must be plenty of exceptions I’ve not thought of. But at the very least, developers need to understand that in games you want to feel like you’re the hero, and you want to be rewarded for your efforts, If you’re going to subvert that, think about why you’re doing it, and how best to implement it.

Misogyny in Video Gaming: Hitman Trailer, Tomb Raider, Anita Sarkeesian

So I thought I’d write about sexism in video games, after all, it’s about time a white man gave his perspective on the issue. It’s a topic that’s been coming up a lot recently and lots of other blogs and articles have already echoed my own thoughts, but I’d thought I go through the issue nonetheless.

At the end of May IO Interactive, released this trailer for the new Hitman Game. 

There’s already been articles written on the topic here that dissect the controversy, this one does a better job that I’m going to do 

But let’s just summarise what happens in this trailer: Agent 47 takes off his blood-soaked clothing, cleans his wounds, and then puts on his iconic suit and tie. Meanwhile a group of Assassin nuns , march towards Agent 47’s motel, strip-off their garb to reveal latex PVC/latex leather bondage style nun gear, continue towards the motel where Agent 47 is hiding, and shoot it with a rocket launcher. Then there’s a cut and Agent 47 appears behind them silently takes a couple of them down and a gory battle ensues in which he violently takes down these eight scantily-dressed, tattooed assassins.

I’m interested to know the thinking behind his plan exactly. These women have been tasked with assassinating Agent 47, so they disguise themselves as nuns, hire a school bus and then take a rocket launcher with them? Um Okay? Well uh… maybe dressing as nuns meant they’d be able to sneak through passport control without suspicion or something, I don’t know. I still don’t get why they had to strip down to latex gear before shooting the motel with a rocket launcher. Didn’t exactly seem combat practical, a little less unwieldy than nun’s robes I guess, but you’d think they could have something much more suitable on underneath. Maybe they all have 2nd jobs at a bondage club and they knew they wouldn’t have time to change after the assassination?

Well whatever flimsy excuse you could conjure together, the main visual images of the trailer is women stripping off into revealing gear and getting violently beaten and killed by agent 47. Yes this kind of violence isn’t really anything, and this kind of objectification of women isn’t really anything new either. Taken on their own they’re slightly dodgy, questionable things, but have become so ingrained that we’re used. The real problem comes from the combination of the two. Firstly there’s cheap shock value of juxtaposing the traditionally ‘pure’ repressed nuns with overt sexuality. Then they strip off and attack agent 47, and it’s now that we see him violently killing them all. I know their assassins and he’s defending himself, but there’s a subtext that they’re being punished for being slutty. It may not have literally been what the makers of the trailer intended, but this attitude is so prevalent; it’s hard to see it being taken any other way. This has been quite an on-going trope in media  this was something initially pointed out to me by a university lecturer that the “promiscuous” girl in a horror movie will be the first victim. This isn’t just about religious ideas, there’s an ingrained idea in society that it’s worse for a woman to be sexually promiscuous. Women should be virgins… men not so much. Although women shouldn’t be frigid bitches either of course.

I’m hardly the first to point this hypocrisy out of course, but I’ve started to think this needs to be pointed out a lot more and men should probably be more vocally against this as well, In part I’ve been inspired by Greg Proops’ Smartest Man in the World podcasts, and Jen Kirkman's Jen Kirkman’s blog on women in comedy 

But as I was saying, it’s the combining of sexualisation and violence; these two things together reveal some troubling attitudes. Evil femme fatale/ asskicking, scantily clad assassins aren’t that unusual, though they’ve always been a dubious premise for film and videogame characters, but even putting that aside, putting such overt objectification and graphic violence towards women is something else entirely.

That’s what commenters on the Keza MacDonald’s article seemed to miss and it’s the sheer defensive rage and idiotic point missing on display in these comments about representation of women in video games that’s troubling to me. It made me realize that this is a more pressing issue than I’d first thought.

So I became slightly alarmed by the language the Executive Producer of the new Tomb Raider game used when discussing the new game. The new character design for Lara was actually quite encouraging , she’d considerably less sex appeal, and the game was promoted as an ”origin story” a reboot for the franchise. It seemed like they were trying to make the character less defined by her assets. But as more was revealed, there appears to be something slightly sinister to the game, much of the focus seemed to be on how much physical punishment Lara takes. This is still potentially justifiable, action heroes will suffer before they triumph. But then Executive Produce Ron Rosenberg said this in an interview with  Kotaku

"When people play Lara, they don't really project themselves into the character," Rosenberg told me at E3 last week when I asked if it was difficult to develop for a female protagonist.

"They're more like 'I want to protect her.' There's this sort of dynamic of 'I'm going to this adventure with her and trying to protect her.'"

So is she still the hero? I asked Rosenberg if we should expect to look at Lara a little bit differently than we have in the past.

"She's definitely the hero but— you're kind of like her helper," he said. "When you see her have to face these challenges, you start to root for her in a way that you might not root for a male character."

Now this doesn’t quite seem right. The implication is there’s a distance between player and character. It’s very misguided in its language. What they’re doing seems to be trying to forge a stronger emotional connection to the character.  But phrasing it in this way suggests it’s about male characters wanting to protect the vulnerable helpless little lady, which is something Lara’s supposed to be perfectly capable of doing. To top this off he also said revealed

“In the new Tomb Raider, Lara Croft will suffer. Her best friend will be kidnapped. She'll get taken prisoner by island scavengers. And then, Rosenberg says, those scavengers will try to rape her.

She is literally turned into a cornered animal," Rosenberg said. "It's a huge step in her evolution: she's forced to either fight back or die."

Which does make it seem like the use of magic in the series is going too far.

But anyway the rape bit is what’s concerning. I’m fine with games addressing this as an issue, but the problem is from what we know of its use, it’s just a bullet point in the trials Lara will have to endure. It’s not going to be a serious analysis on the psychological effects of rape, and it’s a lazy device to provoke emotion. There’s not really much more nuance to “bad evil rapey man” and “pretty, vulnerable young woman” scenarios.

To be fair, this sounds more like a case of bad PR that doesn’t quite explain things in a satisfying way, the offhand way it’s mentioned doesn’t even seem like he’s courting controversy to me. It just sounds more like men, not really thinking about how women might really feel in this situation. But some of the intentions in the game do seem good, just ill thought out and misguided.

*edit* Since writing this it's turned out the game is being written by Rhianna Pratchett who wrote Mirrors Edge. She talks about the story and the scene here http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/10/11/rewriting-lara-croft 

So the other reason this topic has been in the news is because of a Kickstarter Project. A woman named Anita Sarkeesian started a project to:

“Explore, analyse and deconstruct some of the most common tropes and stereotypes of female characters in games.  The series will highlight the larger recurring patterns and conventions used within the gaming industry rather than just focusing on the worst offenders. “

As you can imagine this made YouTube commentators mad. The mere idea that someone would even want to research the possibility sent these people into a blind rage, this wasn’t even someone decrying games as being massively sexist, and this was a gamer wanting to put together a research project on the idea. It’s hardly even worth pointing out that there are nasty comments being made on the internet, but this rage was so misdirected it almost reached the level of surrealist art. You can see why young men on the internet could feel defensive over the accusation that a hobby of theirs is wrong and misogynistic. And indeed perhaps the reason they might not like seeing a woman tell them what they should and shouldn’t be doing reminds them of their mother telling them what to do, and that puts them into a childish, petulant rage. It’s hardly surprising games have been so marginalized when there’s appears to be its core audience.

The irony is of course that the abuse was so out of hand, the twitterverse and wider circles of the internet caught hold of the story and the abuse, and it helped the campaign immeasurably, meaning the project raised far more money than its initial target.

But these stories do reveal a very real problem of attitudes women, not just in video games, but in wider society. Some of these online abusers may just be young boys that will grow out of it, but it’s quite likely if we saw the general age, a lot of them would be grown men too. So to other men out, I think we need to make of a fuss about this as well. Terrible representation of women in games is insulting to us as well. If we want nuanced female characters we have to demand these things as well. If developers realize their market isn’t just misogynistic young men then they’ll realize there’s much wider market that they can appeal to and profit from. But that change isn’t going come from tolerating the kind of crap we’ve been getting.

*UPDATE* I was just reading this article on the topic  and found this quote too good not to update

Blystad is a nice, well-meaning man that simply doesn't understand why anyone is mad about the trailer for his game. This is actually a very large part of the problem.

Blystad isn't sure why this trailer in particular upset people, when he feels this is the way the series has always presented itself. When I asked him why these ladies were in dominatrix gear, and why they had to remove their nun costumes before coming to kill Agent 47, he said the ladies are "dressing as something less conspicuous, getting up to their mark, and revealing their true colors."

He does not realize that giving these women dominatrix outfits as their "true colors" is the problem.

Well there you go then, I think that sums up the problems perfectly.

E3 2012

The e3 conference 2012 passed in fairly unremarkable fashion this year. There was a slight lingering tension that it might be the year for Microsoft or Sony to unveil their new consoles, but it wasn’t to be. As a gamer, I’m happier with that decision. There was a bit of a cold war scenario going on between Sony and Microsoft where if one revealed their new technology, the other would be under pressure to prove they could match this. But I don’t want either to rush into releasing a new console yet. Last time this resulted in some faulty consoles and some technical decisions were made that might not have been for the best.

Nintendo meanwhile had more of the upcoming Wii U to show off, but it somehow lacked any real excitement, it didn’t really feel like the next generation, it felt like it was catching up with the technical abilities of the PS3 and Xbox360. This didn’t matter with the release of the Wii because its focus was completely different. It has a unique interface and it was bringing gaming to a whole new market that wouldn’t normally play games. At the same time, it was doing something fresh and new in a way that interested hard-core gamers. It’s hard to see this having the same success as the Wii. The console seems to merge the functions of the Wii and the DS. One of its major selling points seems to be its portability and the fact that the console can be played on a tablet. While that may be convenient for some, sharing a television isn’t an issue for me. A big television is still a preferable way to play console games than a tablet. But of course I’m not everyone and others may see this as a good thing.

While there were plenty of exciting releases shown to be coming, the conferences did suggest perhaps the end of this generation has been approaching, particularly with quite a big focus on family games and gimmicky interfaces.

Microsoft went out first; they had probably the least successful conference. Their focus seemed to largely be on gimmicks rather than games. The main game attraction was the new Halo which seemed to have taken a lot of inspiration from Metroid. But the main push of their new show was the new smart glass concept was. It’s hard to see it having much affect at this time, and how much affect can it really have on a console so late in its life. If anything it seemed like what we were seeing could have been a test, an experiment that could be later expounded upon on Xbox’s next incarnation. The rest of the presentation was fairly gimmicky, an NFL commentator was brought out to promote the new Madden, and a voice interface seemed to show that FIFA would allow you to get booked by the referee for swearing at him. How this could be seen as anything other than a gimmick that’s amusing for 2 minutes I’m not sure. They finished the show by bringing out Usher to perform a song for some bored journalists.

Sony faired a lot better. Jack Tretton comes across as rather humble and likeable for the CEO of a huge company. (Well, the American branch of it anyway) The highlight of the show was probably Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, which made physical violence look like it actually should be, horrible and painful. The idea that having to kill to survive actually felt like the dark and harrowing prospect it should be, albeit in a way that looked fun and exciting. I’m suspicious if it’ll manage to sustain this throughout the game though. The dynamic between the two characters was a better example of “interactive storytelling” than David Cage’s efforts. As much as I’m glad there’s someone that aspire to the things Cage does, his latest effort, Beyond which was the other highlight of Sony’s conference. It doesn't really look like he’s moved on from the writing ability he displayed in Heavy Rain. It’s too early to tell, and I may be interested to ‘play’ it when it comes out, but I remain sceptical. Still the presence of Ellen Page in the game may mean the acting will be better than his previous games. The other large feature in their show was Wonderbook:  Book of Spells (you know, for kids!) something that seems to be trying to find a use for eye toy. It could well be very good and fun for children, but again, it’s too hard to predict at this stage.

The Nintendo conference promised to be more focused on games, but didn’t quite deliver on that. My twitter feed went wild at the reveal of the new Pikmin, which must be another video gaming icon that passed me by somehow. I’ll have to go on faith that this was a good thing. But the bulk of it was dedicated to promoting the new Wii U and a bizarre amount of time was spent on showing a new version of Batman: Arkham City. It just seemed like a very weak way to appeal to hard-core gamers, as well as showing off the new interface design, anyone who would care, has already played it. I’ve already talked about my scepticism at the Wii U, so I won’t repeat myself. They showed some things that would appeal to their fan base, but I don’t think they did much to reach outside their own demographic.

It’s been said by many, but the real winners of the show were Ubisoft. Assassins Creed 3 and Watch Dogs the real highlights of the show.

In many ways the live streams has affected the way the e3 conferences are viewed and presented, the conferences now have to consider the large audience watching at home, but it’s not just intended for them and so too much is made of which company “ won” the conference. So the conferences aren’t quite satisfying for journalists, viewers or the company’s stock-holders. It’s become a weird meshing of different aims. So let’s try not to make too much of them.