Quarantine Control #120: We’re Junctioning Stray Dogs Ourselves
Yes, yes, COVID-19 is still a thing. But who wants to talk about that this week? It is goddamn HOT outside, one of the biggest scorchers of a summer worldwide in a long time — if not the biggest ever. Europe has been most seriously walloped by the extreme heat, thanks to how air conditioning is a luxury in several countries within the continent. The United States has been dealing with this a little better, but that’s not to say we’re handling it well, nor is this over. These excessive heatwaves will only occur more frequently with the climate changing, but don’t worry — we’re set to do nothing to mitigate this. It could be said that this is not cool.
Geoffrey Barnes
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Source: Starz on Demand
Episodes: 1 movie (the third Spider-Man movie in the current series)
Spider-Man: No Way Home was by far the biggest recent example of a film that showed how hard it is for producers to keep all of a movie’s twists under wraps, and how goddamned difficult it is to dodge spoilers for anyone who’s cursed themselves to remain on social media. Nearly everything about this movie leaked everywhere, and too many ardent Spider-Man/Marvel Cinematic Universe fans couldn’t help themselves from discussing it in detail. The promotional campaign made a valiant effort to hide most (though not all) of the bigger twists, but it was nonetheless very difficult to dodge all of them before the theatrical release — and especially for anyone who waited until it was available on other services like me.
That said, it’s always the hallmark of an enjoyable movie when it remains fun to watch despite a bunch of twists being ruined. This thankfully applies to No Way Home.
NWH quite literally picks up where Far from Home ended (meaning spoilers for that film), with Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) revealing the identity of Peter Parker (Tom Holland) as Spider-Man to all of New York City, and thus the world. This, to no surprise, makes life absolute hell for Parker and everyone associated with him, which forces him and Aunt May Parker (Marisa Tomei) to relocate to another location with the help of the late Tony Stark friend Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau). But the story really kicks into high gear when Parker meets up with Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), who talks him into performing a spell to undo all the damage done following the reveal of his identity. Unfortunately, Peter is still a teenager here (despite Holland looking slightly aged), and changes his mind enough times during the chanting that it causes Strange to flub the spell, opening the portals to the Multiverse. Thus begins the madness.
The promotional campaign and leaks helped to prepare viewers for what to expect. Every MCU film is driven by fanservice in its own way, but this especially applies to NWH given the sheer number of cameos from previous films. The references to Spider-Man’s cinematic legacy make up a significant part of the film, but the filmmakers fortunately made sure to include character development for Holland’s Parker and the those around him, including Michelle Jones-Watson (Zendaya) and high school best friend Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon). The movie’s 148-minute runtime was enough to capture the feel of a solitary Spider-Man film and have time for fanservice.
Also commendable is how it manages to do this with solid pacing despite its length. By the movie’s end, I never felt it was too long or too short, but the perfect length for the movie to do what it set out to accomplish. Heck, the core drama for Holland’s Parker manages to be even better than the one presented in Far from Home, the movie that did an underwhelming job convincing anyone that Parker truly needed to step in for the late Tony Stark.
I won’t argue against the presence of fansevice from the slew of returning villains from previous films, but in the end, it was a little sad that this film didn’t have any original or repurposed villains for Holland’s MCU Spider-Man world. It is an unfortunate damning indictment of the MCU Spider-Man villains introduced thus far that some among those who cameoed in this film were more memorable, though I’m not saying that Michael Keaton’s Vulture and Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio were anywhere near bad. I also won’t argue against this film being a technical marvel (no pun intended), but the excessive green screen use and CG is at times extremely obvious. Granted, some of it had to be used thanks to reported pandemic protocols.
Those admittedly-minor issues are nowhere near enough to stop No Way Home from being a fun film to watch, and the best Spider-Man movie in more than a decade. Holland might be taking a break from filming movies for a short time, but hopefully this won’t mark the last time we see him put on the costume (so to speak). He still has to team up with the Defenders when they make their ideally inevitable debut in the MCU proper, including with the one who makes a brief-but-wonderful appearance in this film.
Angela Moseley
I realized I don’t really write much about the games I’m streaming. I should probably change that as I do have opinions.
Final Fantasy VIII Remastered (2019)
Source: Square Enix
Episodes: 1 Video Game, Endless Suffering
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know I’ve been playing Final Fantasy VIII for roughly the last 12 weeks on livestream. Of the Final Fantasy games to appear on the PS1, FFVIII was the only game I had not played. It is probably one of the most divisive titles in the series. People either really enjoy the game or they deeply dislike it– there’s very few in-between sentiments. With opinions sharply divided about the game, I knew it was something I’d have to play for myself. So when a good friend made a request to stream it, I figured it would be a decent way to motivate myself to finally play.
Consider this contribution to Quarantine Control as more of a chance to vent my frustrations opposed to a proper review. I’ll probably spin my notes into a review once I’m actually done with the game– as we don’t have a review of FFVIII on this blog. Also, if you’re a big fan of FFVIII these are just my thoughts and impressions. This game’s battle system mechanics aren’t my thing.
I went into Final Fantasy VIII with a fairly open mind, but as the weeks went on I discovered myself sliding toward the negative end of the divisive scale. The story and characters have been rather intriguing. The gameplay is where I take issue with FFVIII. After much fuming, I’m finally able to pinpoint what bothers me the most with the Draw & Junction system. It punishes players for daring to treat the game like a traditional JRPG, yet it has all of the elements of a traditional JRPG. To make matters worse, the Draw & Junction system are poorly explained in-game. Add to that a myriad of other poorly explained and questionable mechanics and I’m not surprised to see how my optimism dissipated as time went on.
Players are expected and encouraged to draw (or steal) magic from enemies as mana or magic points do not exist. Additionally, summons or Guardian Forces must be equipped to use basic commands and to learn new skills, and those skills have to be equipped. Otherwise, players can only use the “attack” command in battle and limit breaks at low health. The magic drawn from enemies can be cast in two ways. Accessing drawn magic via the “magic” command or cast from the enemy itself using the “draw” command. A total of 100 magic spells can be saved. (On a fun note, the lower a character’s magic stat, the harder it is to draw magic from enemies.)
Magic can also be junctioned to a character’s stats to improve them. The more spells a character has, the better. The more powerful the magic, the better. This junction feature replaces traditional stat growth as characters stats don’t improve as they level up. Junctioning also serves as a replacement for armor, which is another way players usually improve character stats. Junctioning magic to improve stats would be a decent system if it weren’t for two glaring issues that are never directly touched upon by the game itself.
If you cast magic from your characters the number of stocked spells decrease, and you actually weaken your character’s stats unless the spells are replenished. This essentially turns magic into consumable items that are best not used by the characters except for in emergencies. This is a let down if you’re the type of player who enjoys magic-based builds. Worst yet, if you don’t know that magic essentially replaces stat growth and armor, it is possible to hit a wall and never figure out why your characters never get stronger, even as you level up. This is because the enemies scale to your party’s average level. To put it plainly, players could level up and inadvertently make themselves weaker by either failing to draw magic or properly junctioning it without ever knowing why.
Another issue I had is with the equipping of summons/GFs and how non-intuitive the game is when it comes to effectively junctioning them to your character. The GFs themselves function like a traditional summon, AND like magicite from Final Fantasy VI or materia from Final Fantasy VII– sans the ability to directly learn magic. Instead you learn skills from GFs which can be equipped as passive abilities or usable skills. Junctioning one or more of them to a character allows that character to junction magic to their stats.
However, there’s little indication on what’s correct just because your stats increase. You still may not be using the best magic in the correct spot. With armor you would know what pieces improved what stats, but here it’s guesswork or using a walkthrough. Additionally, players are allowed to choose what skills their GF’s learn, but it’s possible focus on the wrong skills. In short, there’s a correct way to junction magic and learn skills and a wrong way. The game itself is silent about it, and again it’s possible get far into the game completely ill-equipped for stronger enemies.
As a final middle finger from Final Fantasy VIII, it occasionally forces players to swap junctions to other characters. If a character with the needed junction is rendered unusable, you’re not allowed to transfer that junction. This could mean not being able to use any command except for “attack” for long stretches. Out of all the JRPGs I’ve played, I’ve never come across a game so dependent on loadouts being attached to characters and being screwed if you literally can’t transfer said loadout for arbitrary reasons.
For me it’s the combination of all these issues that are slowly draining away my enjoyment of Final Fantasy VIII. I can understand why people might like these systems, especially when they fully understand them, but as a new player it’s too much to take in, especially when streaming it once a week. Furthermore, this style of play isn’t really for me.
This Final Fantasy definitely has bold ideas, but the execution feels so very under-cooked. I’ll be real, if wasn’t for friends giving me pointers on how to play both privately and while I’m streaming, I probably would have shelved this game weeks ago. But hey, at least the story is interesting.
Joseph Daniels
So this week, I have a show I’d like to talk about and I’d especially like to draw attention to its tiger content, but there’s some spoilers involved so let’s do it like this.
Bungo Stray Dogs (2016)
Source: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 37 (+ movie; 4th season announced)
Tiger content: Unnamed tiger ravaging warehouses
Bungo Stray Dogs is about a group of supernaturally gifted people known as the Armed Detective Agency, who keep the peace in Yokohama. In the first episode, they meet a young orphan named Atsushi Nakajima, who has helped to stop the suicide of an Armed Detective Agency member. When Atsushi learns that the detectives are on the hunt for a tiger that’s been causing a problem for everyone, he’s suddenly very fearful because he knows that it’s all his fault: the tiger’s been pursuing him ever since he was kicked out of his orphanage. The solution seems obvious: use Atsushi as bait to draw the tiger out and subdue the beast. Fortunately, they do manage to subdue the beast, but if you want to know how, either watch the episode or scroll further down because the spoiler free zone ends…
Now.
Bungo Stray Dogs (2016)
Source: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 37 (+ movie; 4th season announced)
Tiger content: Atsushi Nakajima
Bungo Stray Dogs is about a group of supernaturally gifted people known as the Armed Detective Agency, who keep the peace in Yokohama. In the first episode, they meet a young orphan named Atsushi Nakajima, who has helped to stop the suicide of an Armed Detective Agency member. When Atsushi learns that the detectives are on the hunt for a tiger that’s been causing a problem for everyone, he’s suddenly very fearful because he knows that it’s all his fault: the tiger’s been pursuing him ever since he was kicked out of his orphanage. The solution seems obvious: use Atsushi as bait to draw the tiger out and subdue the beast. It turns out that the tiger is Atsushi himself, who has been gifted with the ability to become a tiger, but hasn’t been gifted with the ability to control it.
Over the course of the first season, a season that contains a lot of Cowboy Bebop energy, Atsushi begins to learn how to deal with the tiger and control its powers in order to help those around him. It feels like the first season exists to introduce a lot of characters with a varied assortment of powers, because the second season – which is counted as a second season, even though it was originally intended to be the second half of the first season, and broadcast very soon after the first season – feels more like a season of Bleach. The second season mostly consists of characters from several factions, all of which have powers, battling one another. It also feels like the original author was very reluctant to let anyone die, because beyond the flashback sequence at the start of the season (which includes the murder of several named children), I think the body count of named characters might actually be zero. No one sustains any casualties among the cast that we’ve come to know, and this is something that seems to be a pattern throughout the series. There’s one character whose ultimate power will kill him if ever he uses it, and he uses it many times due to having found a loophole that allows him to use his power but suffer no consequences.
Something you’ll likely notice if you’re familiar at all with Japanese literature is that most of the characters are named after authors, and their abilities are named for some of their most famous works. When the anime introduces an American faction, it’s full of characters whose names you’ll probably be more familiar with. For example, F. Scott Fitzgerald shows up, and his ability is known, of course, as “The Great Gatsby”. At the end of the second season, “Fyodor D.” is introduced, and his ability is called “Crime and Punishment”. In other words, Dostoevsky shows up, meaning the Russians get involved in the story. Or rather, a single Russian, because I guess it’s a lot easier to bring in a lot of famous American authors than it is to bring in a bunch of famous Russian authors.
As a bit of a PSA, the movie DEAD APPLE takes place between seasons two and three, so once you’re done with the second season, watch the movie before you watch anything else.
The third season also begins with a few flashback episodes, but admittedly, I came for the tiger, and Atsushi doesn’t factor into any of these flashbacks. That said, they’re good for exploring the history of the characters and of Yokohama, and they’re often some of the darkest and most serious episodes in the show, full of some of the best writing overall.
After returning to the present day again, the third season reverts back to Cowboy Bebop, but such a respite is only temporary. Also, keep in mind that there’s a fourth season in the works, so the adventure has definitely not ended for Atsushi and the Armed Detective Agency.
Atsushi gains a bit of control over his ability in the first season, but it’s not enough, and even in DEAD APPLE, he hasn’t achieved a full mastery of it, but through the course of the film, he confronts his past and achieves an understanding of himself and the tiger within, and this makes him a stronger character overall. I’m definitely looking forward to the fourth season, because I like having an anime to look forward to which stars a tiger. Beastars, unfortunately, made its tiger a supporting cast member.
That said, Atsushi fully transforms in the first few episodes, but has adopted a kind of a battle form since then, where he augments his body with tiger parts and remains mostly human. I can see why he does this, it’s easier to fight when you’re able to do so in a configuration you’re familiar with, but I do kind of wish he became a full tiger a bit more often. Still, that’s just a personal preference. I know it likely works better for Atsushi to remain human in shape, augmented with tiger bits.
Anyway, come back next week, because I’m not done with Atsushi and the Armed Detective Agency.
Hopefully you’re all finding ways to stay cool during this ridiculously hot streak. But there will be open questions regarding the extent to which we’ll be able to withstand the effects of climate change in the future, with evidence outside the excessive heat continuing to pile up.
About The Author
dcstaff
The collective will of the Damage Control staff combined into a single article.
