Final Fantasy VII Machinabridged Season 1

Final Fantasy VII Machinabridged Season 1

Final Fantasy VII was the game that single-handedly popularised JRPGs in the West, thanks to having 3D graphics that were hugely impressive in 1997 and a major marketing campaign behind it for the first time. The game’s impact can still be felt today, and the main hero and villain Cloud and Sephiroth are gaming royalty (the former was deemed iconic enough to be included in Super Smash Bros. despite being primarily a Playstation character whose Nintendo appearances are restricted to the occasional cameo in crossovers where he isn’t the focus.) 

This was enough...

 ... to make this happen.

 

(Silently crying in the corner intensifies.)

Naturally, when Team Four Star, creators of the popular Youtube series Dragonball Z Abridged and Hellsing Ultimate Abridged, announced that Final Fantasy VII would be the subject of their next series, there was excitement. Given that Dragonball Z Abridged has evolved from the basic but fun parody it started as to an unofficial alternative dub, and Hellsing was treated as an alternate dub from the start, Final Fantasy VII was looking to get a redo that wasn’t full of poorly translated Engrish. Unfortunately, the series got off to a rough start.

Then the PS4 remake was announced so we’re getting a redone script that isn’t full of poorly translated Engrish either way. Speaking of that, let’s watch Matthew McConaughey watch the trailer.

In a departure from the other Team Four Star series, this series has their contributions mainly on the technical side rather than the performance side. The series is written by members Takahata101 and Antfish and edited by MasakoX, while the cast consists mostly of a who’s who of E-celebrities and up-and-coming voice actors from anime dubbing house Funimation, with the notable exceptions being Taka as the voice of Red XIII and Antfish as Barret. Antfish was a replacement for another actor who pulled out at the last minute, and he does a good job, as Barret is one of the funnier characters on the show thanks to his intense-but-not-quite-shouting delivery which means most of his lines raise a chuckle even if the jokes themselves miss the mark. Other members of the team have currently minor roles as some of the Shinra executives, though Lanipator as Reeve is guaranteed a bigger role in Season 2 and beyond as Reeve becomes more prominent later. On one hand, it’s impressive to see how far Team Four Star have come to be able to get all of these other internet famous people to contribute, but on the other hand, it does feel like it’s less their show and more something that has their name on it for promotional purposes, even though that isn’t the case.

Disappointingly, many of the characters in the series aren’t particularly original or likeable. Cloud switches as needed for the scene between sarcastic audience surrogate straight man (like in every other Final Fantasy VII parody ever) to a whiny wimp that the universe conspires to screw over at every opportunity, yet remains unsympathetic despite this (like the protagonist of an Adam Sandler movie, minus the wish fulfilment on Adam Sandler’s part.) As entertaining as he can be, Barret is just the stock angry black guy turned up to 11 (he was already at about 9 in the game.) Red XIII’s portrayal as dumb but loveable is entertaining enough and a far cry from his usual portrayal of wise but with moments of naïvety and bitterness, but he suffers from not being introduced until near the end of episode 9 and therefore getting little screen time in comparison to everyone else. Aerith is the best of the group, as she is portrayed as naïve, air-headed and eccentric, but pleasant to be around nevertheless. Unlike Red, she also has the advantage of being introduced soon enough that she gets a decent amount of screen time, debuting in episode 4. The worst of the bunch is undoubtedly Tifa. She is an abusive, vulgar, violent woman who screams obscenities and loses her temper at the drop of a hat, blackmails Cloud into joining Avalanche and threatens to rape him several times. (Maybe the writers ship Cloud with Aerith, which is why they made Tifa look bad.) The end of episode 10 implies that she behaves this way due to severe psychological issues over traumatic memories, but after an entire season of superbitch Tifa, it’s too little too late. Minor characters range from hilarious (Palmer, the Church of Brodin, Don Corneo’s receptionist voiced by Kirito from Sword Art Online Abridged, which you should be watching right now if you’re not. Seriously, it’s brilliant, and I say this as someone who doesn’t particularly care for Sword Art Online. I’ll wait here for you to get back), funny for a bit but their joke gets old fast (Aerith’s pothead mum, Marlene) and not funny at all (Jessie, Hojo.)

Come to think of it, most of the characters are bad people in general. Aerith and Red XIII are the only characters that could be possibly described as good, and even they have a bitchy streak towards Tifa (both, although Tifa definitely deserves it) and casual racist moments (Red, who nicknames Barret Black. Barret gives him a pass because he’s always wanted a talking dog ever since he was a little boy.) The off-colour humour doesn’t work as well here as it does in Hellsing Abridged, where the source material is already pitch-black in tone, involving as it does a three-way rumble between British vampires, Zombie Nazis, and demon hunters in the employ of the Catholic Church. The more light-hearted, whimsical and less vulgar for the most part tone of Dragonball Z Abridged would have been a more appropriate fit for this series.

For an abridged series, Machinabridged doesn’t feel very abridged. The first season consists of ten 10-15 minute episodes, covering from the start of the game to the escape from the Shinra Building. This covers about a third of the game’s first disc out of three (though it should be noted the majority of the third disc is dedicated to optional content and exploration, with the only story content being the final dungeon.) This may not be so bad to a new viewer, and considering that a number of Team Four Star’s viewers watch Dragonball Z Abridged without familiarity of the source material, there could well be a number of viewers who haven’t played the game, but I have and I know that there is still a very long way to go, which makes me wonder how long the series will last before reaching the end of the game. It doesn’t help that the pacing slows down in places that seem unnecessary. Episode 2 is mostly Cloud’s trek back to base after the first mission, which could have been condensed to a single scene or removed entirely, while the infamous crossdressing arc gets two entire episodes dedicated to it. By comparison, CloudStrife8’s series, Final Fantasy VII Abridged, covered the same material as Machinabridged’s entire first season in four episodes. By episode 10, the series had reached Rocket Town, which is near the end of disc 1. The series finished upon reaching the end of the game at episode 19.

On the other hand, the slower pace does have some advantages to it. The first season covers the events in Midgar, the opening area of the game, with the rest of the world opening up for exploration once the party leaves Midgar. With that in mind, leaving Midgar is a good place for the season to leave off. This treatment is also very beneficial to the character of President Shinra. In the game, he’s the first antagonist, who is killed off a few hours into the game in favour of Sephiroth and then never mentioned again once his son Rufus takes over the Shinra Corporation immediately following the President’s death. Here, he’s the main antagonist of the first season as opposed to a starter villain who serves as a warm-up before the real villain is introduced, and leaves a lot more of an impact because of this. Credit also goes to his voice actor, Graham Stark, whose performance nails the sophisticated malice archetype. The scene where he gloats over the destruction of the Sector 7 slum at the end of episode 7 is particularly well done, as that event was glossed over very quickly in the game, but Team Four Star dwell on it a bit more, which helps convey the severity of Shinra’s crime.

The production values are very high for a free internet series, but that aside, this show is easily the weakest of Team Four Star’s three ongoing series, and I’m currently unsure whether or not I’ll be sticking around for Season 2. I don’t enjoy putting the boot in like this, because it’s clear that a lot of effort went into the show, and Team Four Star’s other two shows are great and come highly recommended, but this just did too many things I disliked for me to ignore them. For those interested, I would instead recommend Final Fantasy VII Abridged by CloudStrife8. The production values are lower, and you will hate how irritating and twee the opening theme is until it worms into your brain and becomes catchy and charming, but I prefer it to Machinabridged in almost every other respect.

6/10

Funny Quotes Collection Time! (In rough order of when they happen in the season.)

Cloud: Those are squalls. Nobody likes those.
 

Because Final Fantasy XIII was just too easy a target to fire shots at, and it’s been done a million times already. It’s almost as overdone as the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy.

  

             Cloud: You know anyone who wants to play pinball can get down here, right?
        Biggs: Yeah, that’s how Wedge joined.
        Wedge: I saw too much
    
        Tifa: Cloud, stop being a pussy and come blow up private property with us.
        Cloud: You say that so casually.
·        
              Cloud: Hey Tifa, could you do me a solid and GO FUCK YOURSELF!
 
·       Cloud: Aerith, it would appear that Tifa has been kidnapped by a mob boss who intends 
                 to give her the sex.
     Aerith: Oh no! She shouldn’t do that until she’s married!
 
     The Who’s On First? bit between Cloud and Barret when Cloud is trapped in a magic          pyramid spell.
 
·       All of the conservation on Palmer’s spending in the Division for Cool Space Stuff, and Heidegger’s assault charges.

Red XIII: Do not listen to the boob lady! She seems disrespectful.
Cloud: I like this guy.

 Red XIII: (Upon finding a room full of dead soldiers) Scouting report: Where do I begin?

 Tifa: Aerith, honey. Could you do me a solid and let the adult handle this?
Aerith: Okay. You do look much older than me anyway.
 

·         Rufus Shinra: I’m no son of a bitch, I’m the heir to a bastard!

·         Red XIII: I’m going to miss this place. I had an enormous amount of sex here.

·         Barret and Red XIII’s stunned reactions to Cloud finally standing up for himself against Tifa at the end of Episode 10.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, a film named Star Wars was released. It was a very big deal indeed, and spawned an enormous media franchise lasting decades. During that time, the franchise’s reputation fell to the Dark Side thanks to the infamous prequel trilogy.

After a decade away from cinema screens (the animated Clone Wars film doesn’t count), the series finally returned with much goodwill and anticipation being generated prior to the film’s release on December 17, 2015, and ecstatic reviews following the film’s release.

This writer is typically slow on the uptake with these things, yet was fortuitous enough to avoid that spoiler (you’ll know it when you see it). And so, a visit to the cinema was in order, a month after the rest of the world had seen it already…

As would be expected, the film definitely looks and sounds the part. New music by John Williams sits naturally alongside returning tracks from the previous films seamlessly, and the new outfits, ships and creatures look excellent thanks to a mix of practical sets and CG, creating a more balanced effect than the prequel trilogy’s overreliance on CG. The camera swipes between scenes remain in place, as does the opening text scroll accompanied by the booming theme song. All this combined means there’s an undeniable kick from watching the film, a real sense of “It’s freaking Star Wars!” One thing that doesn’t come back is the po-faced, clunky dialogue from past entries. On one hand, the dialogue is much more natural than before, and it’s possible to imagine people speaking this way in real life. On the other hand, the old dialogue style had a melodramatic charm to it, and the new film isn’t nearly as quotable as the old ones. Of course, it is still new, so that could change over time.

Likewise, the new characters fit into the setting naturally, almost as if they’ve always been there. One of the big advantages that Star Wars has is the huge universe that can be expanded forever and populated with numerous new characters and that shows here. The highlight of the new cast is Finn, because he offers a new perspective on the Star Wars universe as a former Stormtrooper defecting from the First Order. The film also makes the wise decision of having the older characters be mostly cameos, with the focus on the new characters. This way, the old characters manage to avoid overshadowing the new ones, allowing them to get their time in the spotlight.

On the flipside, the film does play things very safe. The plot is recycled almost entirely from A New Hope, with bits of The Empire Strikes Back filling up the rest, and another reason the new characters fit in so well is that they fill the same character archetypes as the old ones. For example, Rey is the new Luke Skywalker, Poe Dameron is the new Han Solo and BB8 is the new R2D2. The same is true of the villains, even more so in fact, with Kylo Ren as the new Darth Vader and Captain Phasma as the new Boba Fett, right down to being anticlimactically beaten like a chump. To be fair, it is justified in Kylo Ren’s case, as he is obsessed with Darth Vader and models himself after the OG Sith Lord, albeit with the composure of a conflicted, temperamental mood swinger prone to acting emotionally, which is no bad thing as it makes him unpredictable in a way that previous Sith Lords were not. This combined with his backstory brings to mind Expanded Universe villains Jacen and Anakin Solo, Han and Leia’s sons who went over to the Dark Side. Finn benefits from not being an obvious stand-in for an existing character, though you could make a somewhat tenuous connection between him and Lando, as disillusioned bad guys who switch sides, but their circumstances are very different.

It is worth noting however, that in my opinion, the insistence on sticking as close to the old films as possible is no accident. The prequel trilogy, Episode I in particular, shifted the focus towards the political machinations of the galaxy and lots of discussion on taxes, trade routes, sanctions and so on, and we all know how well that went down. The Force Awakens faced the unenviable task of having to win back the crowd, and it did this by distancing itself as far away from the prequels as it could. What better way of doing that is there than mimicking the films just about everyone liked? They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. I don’t know who they are, but if The Force Awakens were a picture, its thousand words would be “We’re sorry about the prequels” repeated 200 times. There is only one part in the film that really sticks out as a risk, and even then it’s a calculated risk 30 years in the making, with steps in place to stop it from being too damaging.

Yes, it’s true. Dexter of Dex’s Diner is no longer with us. Let us take a moment to think about the pivotal role he played in the Star Wars saga, as without him Obi Wan would have never been able to find out where Jango Fett’s poison dart came from, and without that, the Clone Army may never have come about, and galactic history would have taken a radically different course. In the arms of an angel…

The Force Awakens is well put together and certainly enjoyable enough to watch. Unfortunately however, the large amount of self-plagiarism going on is too noticeable to allow you to be fully immersed in the adventure, as you’ll be too busy playing “Spot the New Hope Reference”. I suspect and hope that this was just a one-off thing to get audiences back on side, and with that done, the next films can do something more original. The Force Awakens is good enough for now, but Episode VIII better not be a rehash of The Empire Strikes Back.

Episode 7/10 (See what I did there?)

TRAITOR! 

Followers of the First Order will prove themselves loyal by visiting this website and witnessing my slick spins! 

Misery

Misery

Author: Stephen King

Have you ever felt as if there’s a lot of pressure on you when you’re writing something? You probably have. I’m feeling that pressure right now as I hope not to write a load of rubbish here. With that said, I am at least doing this of my own free will, and there hopefully won’t be any severe consequences should I disappoint. Paul Sheldon, the protagonist of Misery, does not have that luxury.

Paul Sheldon is the author of the highly successful Misery Chastain books, which have developed a huge and obsessive fandom, though he thinks little of the quality of the books. As such, the latest book ended with Misery’s death, and Paul intends on using the funds to write some more ambitious novels. The new novel is finally ready to be published, but a combination of drunk driving and dangerous weather leads Paul to crash his car, destroying his legs. He is recovered from the wreck by Annie Wilkes, who identifies herself as Paul’s Number One Fan, but she has still yet to read the last Misery book. She does this while nursing Paul back to health, and needless to say, she isn’t happy at all when she finishes it, and demands Paul write a new Misery book bringing her back to life – or else.

For most of the book, there are only two characters, Paul and Annie, and the majority of the action takes place in Annie’s guest bedroom, where Paul is being kept prisoner. This makes the novel feel very claustrophobic, giving the reader a sense of what Paul is going through as his world has shrunk following the accident, and there’s little opportunity for the reader to get some reprieve. The solitude causes Paul to start gradually losing his mind, which is reflected in the repetition of several statements or words that Paul remembers vividly and starts to think about more often as his captivity goes on. This could be seen as either his attempt at clutching onto some semblance of familiarity in a surreal situation, or as a breakdown in his coherent thought depending on the situation or the reader’s interpretation of their use.

A big part of the reason why Paul’s situation is so tense is his jailer Annie. She is very temperamental, prone to severe mood swings and seems to suffer from every mental condition in the book, as well as a fair few that have yet to be discovered for good measure. Her unpredictability is her greatest asset, as she will be calm and sickeningly sweet to the point of inducing diabetes in the reader, yet switch to screaming in rage over the most mundane things at the drop of a hat. She acts very childish in some ways, such as losing her temper when her favourite tv show cheats by contradicting the cliffhanger at the end of the previous episode, and using words like cockadoodie as substitutes for swear words, which makes it easy for her to be underestimated when she does things that are more cunning than would be expected of her.

Annie’s behaviour tortures Paul mentally as well as physically. This also has an effect on the reader, as it’s hard to tell before it happens how she’ll respond to Paul’s acts of defiance. There’s no way of knowing whether she’ll laugh it off, not notice, punish Paul immediately or give him enough rope to hang himself with, which helps to crank up the tension further. It gets worse later once Paul discovers the skeletons in Annie’s closet and just how much danger he’s in. At this point, the reader is hooked, desperate to know what’ll happen next. Fittingly enough, the appeal behind cliffhangers and the idea of “How are they going to get out of this one?” is one of the recurring ideas of the book.

Despite having been written in 1987, the concept behind the book, that of the loony fan, is still relevant today. While there were cases at the time of obsessive fans, such as Mark David Chapman’s obsession with The Catcher in the Rye leading him to kill John Lennon, such things still happen today via internet fandoms, though they are generally less serious than these extreme cases. It seems as if some online fandoms are becoming more fanatical, becoming obsessed with the work they’re fans of and working themselves up into a state of mass hysteria and appearing off-putting to others outside their fandoms, with examples including My Little Pony, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Steven Universe, and the current flavour of the month, Undertale. This may be because people want to be noticed and become internet famous, which is harder to do now because everyone and their grandmother’s on the internet. For example, five or six years ago, 100,000 views on Youtube was huge. Today, it’s nothing, and even a million views is small potatoes, which means that being noticed requires drawing attention to oneself, and the more extreme you act, the more attention is drawn to you. There’s also the disconnect that something about the internet means people don’t stop to think about other people’s feelings or how they come across to others, making it easy to be an asshole online. Combine this with fandoms and “Notice Me Senpai” Syndrome, and you get ugliness like the Steven Universe fandom harassing a teenage girl to attempt suicide because she drew one of the show’s fat characters as being thin, which happened a few months ago. Then again, I could be completely wrong about all of this and it’s just me being old and not grasping how these things work because I’m too busy yelling at the youngins to get off my lawn. Anyway, I digress.

Fun fact, telling someone they’re gonna have a bad time is now more likely to be recognised as an Undertale reference than a South Park reference, even though South Park did it first and Undertale was referencing South Park when it used that line.

To conclude, Misery is a very tense book that draws the reader in and takes them prisoner alongside Paul. They will be unable to leave, much like Paul, and the tension is cranked up to the max until the delightfully cathartic climax, where Annie finally gets a taste of her own medicine.

This is where I'd put the Family Guy parody with Brian and Stewie as Paul and Annie, but unfortunately it's not on Youtube, so this picture will have to suffice.