I Finished Fantasy Life

This week on my 3DS, I've been playing a lot of Fantasy Life.

It's an odd game, an intriguing and unique combination of light RPG and life sim. I distinctly remember starting the game for the first time and feeling somewhat lost, undirected in this world full of potential. Soon I came to fully understand and get on board with the 'life' system - the jobs you'll spend the game swapping between - and I knew that my duty was, broadly, to go crafting crazy, but initially I was thrown by the extremely soft approach to the RPG of it all.

Ultimately, this was bolstered by the game's ending, which is by far its most clear deviation from broad RPG structure. There is no final boss. There is no biblical adversary. You waft along into the space-y, small world to say hi to your butterfly friend's dad, and the credits lovingly roll. I wasn't expecting such a lack of fanfare, but it makes sense of the game in front of me. It's more of a Stardew Valley with a bit of a story about evil crystals than it is an RPG with a Cooking Mama element.

Anyway, I've played about fifty hours of it in total, and as much as I do want to continue with some of the post-game minutiae, it all feels kind of aimless. I do want to collect different woods from chopping down different trees so I can make it past the 'adept' woodcutter rank, but what for? To get to the next rank? To do more quests? There's not really much of a sense of reward or progression at this stage, despite there being a million more ranks to climb for each respective 'life'.

So, I don't know. It's an interesting game. It's addictive, it's cute, and it has a fun little sense of humour. Finishing its story may have been one of the most anti-climactic game ending moments of all time. And yet, I can't deny, I do love it. 

Christmas Tree Accident

big man, small body
gilded cage of his arms, biceps like soft-boiled eggs
straining against a string of sinew
looks like it might snap

but no, he pauses, lax
the bulb of his ability undistorted
a wizard’s orb in flesh
twine around a victorian christmas present

fresh pheasant, tiny legs
skittering around, mouse-ish
until he reaches up, greedy
top of the tree, glittering star

jesus wept, pines like glass
an egg has burst
yolk in a puddle, spreading
baubles jostled

The First Bugonia: Save the Green Planet! (2003)

I just watched Save the Green Planet! (2003), the Korean film serving as the base movie for 2025's Bugonia. It's an interesting, unique remake case as initially the director of the former, Jang Joon-hwan, was signed on to direct the latter, before he ultimately left the project for health reasons. He was reportedly thrilled that Lanthimos got the gig in his place, but I do wonder what Jang Joon-hwan himself would've personally done with the American remake of his own movie.

While it is much the same film, the feel is very different. There are a number of changes and subtleties that make each version of the story feel vastly separate despite following broadly the same plot. Both convey a deep hopelessness and a sense of unstoppable injustice, but Save the Green Planet! has this often cartoonish sense of grief and rage and misery, and a bizarrely convoluted backstory for its protagonist that is hard to fully take in given that it comes to us in the form of a rapid, confusing flashback.

What I do find particularly interesting in the original film is the focus on police (and other authority) brutality. The kidnapped CEO bloke here (not a woman, btw, in this case) more directly represents the world's networks of authority. He, like the protagonist's father and teachers, who abuse him, and the police officers who viciously attack him and other protestors, has unstoppable, unfathomable power to hurt and/or kill people. Our protagonist blubbers through an indelicate and unclear plan of seemingly unfocused, explosive retribution for the suffering he's had to endure, and accomplishes nothing. The way that this version of the story approaches death, human extinction, and indifference to suffering feels less subtle and more gory, more ruthless, than Bugonia's. There's even a sequence where we watch real holocaust (and other atrocity) footage. A real 'humans suck' moment.

Of course, the 'humans suck' moment is there in Bugonia, but Emma's version of the big boss is so much more complicated, so much more attuned to the pain of her subjects. Where her lip quivers extinguishing and stilling human life on Earth, her Green Planet equivalent slams the big alien button that will eradicate the entire planet in a blaze, his steely glare unbroken. Where she is a foreign creature neither right or wrong, he is the pure undistilled essence of authority's total indifference.

I like both for different reasons, and although I would say I prefer Bugonia for its subtler approach, its grounded elements, and its exemplary performances overall, I love the sheer inventiveness and style of Save the Green Planet! There are so many beautifully designed and shot journal pages, saved photographs, annotated clippings, etc. There is so much incredible visual flair.

Jang Joon-hwan saw Misery, and wanted to see a more complicated, weirder Annie. He read about some crackpot theory online claiming Leonardo DiCaprio was an alien. And bam, he had his movie. And what a movie it is.

Four bloodied men out of five.

★★★★☆

Donkey Kong Bananza Rocks

I finished Donkey Kong Bananza's exciting banana-finding plot and ventured into the post-game bananas and I just love it a lot. At the beginning of the game I felt mildly afraid of its smashing mechanic. I thought perhaps the smashing was too much, I felt an unease as the camera struggled to follow me through self-made tunnels. This game has gone too far, I thought. We were never meant to smash this much.

And then, oh God, a poison level attacked me. A world of hideous poisons eating away at me at every opportunity. It felt hostile, this sick world, towards my innocent Kong. And the Bananza transformations, too, seemed grotesque and freaky. I couldn't face this world confidently. I had a skittish fear about me that my powerful fists did nothing to assuage. 

But as I pressed on, as my hand-slapping sonar improved (don't ask me about my technologies), and as my animal transformations formed a gaggle of increasingly farcical beings, culminating in the acquisition of perhaps the worst animal of all: the snake (his power is to bounce very unpleasantly - I try to avoid using him), and I soon became extremely into it.

There's a world themed around burgers and fries and stuff in this game. By the time I'd reached it I had fully succumbed to its magic. There's a level where you can punch huge fruits and they explode in a fabulous simulation of the world's juiciest exploded watermelon. It's really good. I like to do that sort of thing.

There is an unbridled mechanical thrill to Donkey Kong Bananza. It's a taste of pure, unadulterated big monkey power. I want to play it forever and smash every inch of combustable environment.

I want the cute little rocks with eyes to flutter their eyelashes at me.  

Banana.

Remembering So Little Time

A memory appeared fully formed inside my head recently, a little sparkling pearl. And that pearl, dear reader, was So Little Time - Mary-Kate and Ashley's cute 2001 series about being teens. This thing was their last TV sitcom.

I used to watch this all the time, and it was my only real Olsen twins media, the only one available to me via the after school BBC One programming slot that dictated my taste. Something about the show spoke to me despite its overall boring feel, and I had to indulge this flashback and watch a couple of episodes.

It feels like a sort of baby version of 8 Simple Rules, a sitcom far more ready to delve into the sexual complications of its teenage sisters' lives (and far more ready to label its protagonists nasty sluts, a major source of the show's humour). So Little Time also centres its sisters' boy crazy inner world, but with a much more squeaky clean sheen. It's certainly a worse show for its cutesy lack of complexity, but there is something compelling about the twins and their dazzling male nanny.

What I was always drawn to the most, though, were the outfits. Both Mary-Kate and Ashley have a fun, eclectic, sort of boho style that is very of its time, but so nonchalant and comfy. They wore a lot of very lengthy cardigans, colourful button-ups, and long, flowy skirts. And I loved that Mary-Kate would sometimes have more tomboyish elements to her outfits. Long, baggy California boy trousers and such.

It also had a truly impeccible theme tune, and something about that opening, where they walk along the beach as cast members appear atop the beach architecture (a series of strange blue structures), spoke to me. 

Fetch me a long stripy cardigan, stat. 

Stardust Family

I'm not a big manga reader. I occasionally remember it exists and read some volume of something, and then go back to forgetting all about it and only reading books with ZERO pictures. Like some kind of freak. 

But today, spurred on by having watched an anime movie (Your Name, and I don't want to talk about it, I despise it), I ended up perusing a list of recommended manga series, and I was immediately drawn to Stardust Family by Aki Poroyama.

What got me here was the premise, plain and simple. The story takes place in a future Japan, which has introduced a licencing system for parents, i.e. you have to pass an approval in order to have children. This means inspections are carried out on couples who want the right to have a child, and these inspections are carried out by a special class of 'inspector' children.

Wow. That's crazy.

It's a two-volume manga, so it's very short, and what I loved was the pacing here, which is really rapid and steady. It just goes. I also think the characterisation is really well done. Each member of the main trio has their own complex emotional world, and the way they interact and unravel is masterful. 

There's some twistiness within the story which is somewhat abrupt given the space it has to work with, but I felt these were weaved in adeptly and really kept that pace speeding along.

There's some really cool moments across the story, and the enticing dystopian premise held its weight throughout. And I love to see a sweet, nice boyfriend character. As all boyfriends should be.

Four stardust pieces out of five.

★★★★☆

Grandma Thoughts

It's been almost a year since my grandma, Norma, died, and I just realised recently that I haven't felt sad about it in a while. It's a weird thing to realise, but for about six months after it happened, I kept thinking about it and feeling stunned or sad. Suddenly, that thing isn't there anymore. I feel normal. This is just normal.

Here she is with a beautiful robot.

It's kind of an impossible to externalise feeling, and I think every time someone dies it's quite different for a huge amount of reasons, but I really did feel changed by it. I felt, for a while, like the world was really quite different before and after. There are ways in which I feel like I know her better post-death. Like there are things about her I didn't really notice or think about when she was alive. The fact that she tended to wear dark reds and purples and pinks. That's something I think about often, for some reason. Just 'her' colours.

And in a way it makes me happy, not that she's dead but that I know how it works. That I know that there can be a weird joy in whatever it is that a person has left behind. Ideas, memories, objects, colours. That maybe if someone else died it would, in some way, at some point, just be okay.

I feel like now I've had the training unit about your grandma dying and I can easily do stuff like "have a grandma die". I feel oddly emboldened. 

Death is really weird, and I hope it never happens to me.