2025, Q2 - So Many Second Seasons

The first season of "Severance" is one in the long line of apple exclusives that in my mind is better than it has any right to be. It borrows the language of the corporate culture and strips away everything that would likely be brought to the office by the outside lives of the workers, non-diegetically by way of set design and diegetically through the Severance procedure. I find it heartening that it resonated so strongly, at least with media journalists and reviewing audiences, given its themes of workplace alienation. Seeing as I've never been part of a work-force outside of an economic recession and I've been exposed to counter-propaganda before the corpo-speak ever had the chance to take hold, I've never not been in agreement with the core messages of the show. It's perhaps not the subtlest show, whether it be in its messaging or it's methods of seeding future twists, but I've been growing to think that that's perhaps a good thing when making counter-hegemonic statements. The first season ends on an episode with many very interesting revelations, which while inevitable from the outset of the show, will likely make for a very second season, which at the point I started watching the show was already concluded.

I'm not sure where I first heard about the play "Waiting for Godot". It's been on my reading list for a while, but seeing as I don't read very many plays, it's always eluded me until I came across a used copy in French, German and English. It looks like it was a study copy, complete with earmarks and the occasional underline in pencil. Charming, in it's own way. The play itself is perhaps the most comical depiction of boredom I've read so far. Clearly, not many works focus primarily on boredom and what it does to those who are exposed to it beyond their resilience, so perhaps it doesn't have much competition. If I were forced to classify it, I'd file it under dark comedy, in the same way that many of Kafka's works fall under dark comedies in my mind, and yet while I understand how those same works of Kafka could be tragedies or dramas, or even thrillers, "Waiting for Godot" could really be nothing but a comedy. It is laced with uncomfortable cruelty and none of the characters depicted are consistent over the three days they convene and reconvene. It's not really a play where nothing happens, rather, the event that is expected to occur never comes around, which is perhaps even more telling than the odd behaviors that those waiting exhibit.

"Makeine" is a very cozy show. Slice of Life anime has changed since the days of Lucky Stars. It used to be a genre where structurally, very little happened, but now it's become kind of an excuse to side-step tropes that I'm often not fond of anyway. As such, I've started to grow fond of the genre, or perhaps it's better to say "the trappings" since the lines of genre have been failing very reliably as of late. "Makeine" starts with the template of what I'd call a "Rebound Romance", and it's nice that the questioning period of this genre is reduced. It's not cut short exactly, seeing as it runs over the entirety of the season. It rarely takes the focus for the main couple though, and whenever it does for other characters, it's resolved far more succinctly than it is usually. In a way, it solves a problem that doesn't really need to exist, I don't think in modern times many stories can justify stretching out a romance Fruits Basket style, and even with the relatively reduced standard 12-episode run-time, most stories could probably be told in about 4 standard-length episodes, if there's no outstanding features otherwise. The way "Makeine" approaches is problem is to actually fit those stories into 2-4 episodes and just having fun with the ones in between. Without wanting to make any statements on the writing, they easily circumvent those pacing problem and make watching it much easier.

"Very Important People Season 2" is a continuation of the improv comedy series, and I felt that it was an improvement over the first season. They kept the costumes more vague in comparison to the first run, and overall the guests had to lean into somewhat zanier characters. The haunted doll episode stands out as a personal favorite, I think because the narrative that emerged from it flowed very rapidly.

"Sasaki & Peeps" defies genre, but also adheres to it. It's perhaps spiritually related to "Re:Creators", in that almost all popular genres of the time factor heavily into plot points and aesthetics, and ultimately this gives it an odd sort of charm. It doesn't last terribly long, and perhaps it'd be good that it only had twelve episodes, as the many different plot threads didn't seem to be going anywhere. In a way, this series wrote itself into the exact opposite position as "Makeine" where it tried to adhere to all of the usual genre trappings, but for every genre. I don't mind the writing of experimental series becoming slightly schizophrenic, but it needs to keep its own pace. Case in point would probably be the "Marc" storyline, which feels the most like the standard Isekai plot wherein the protagonist finds a long and convoluted plan to avoid solving a problem with the obvious established methods. That is, to my mind the least interesting part of such series, especially if the premise of the series does not present any interesting challenges.

"Sakamoto Days" works for me, notably in ways that "One Punch Man" didn't. It's perhaps the setting that feels more coherent when the theme isn't all over the place in that way that superhero universes tend to become given enough time, and since the genre has a long history of one-upping itself "because I told you so"-style, "One Punch Man" lost me somewhere in the middle of it's second season. "Sakamoto Days" is the same series, if we're completely honest, just with a different coat of paint. It, too, is probably funnier in the manga. There's a lot of scenes that have somewhat distracting sound effects spliced into the audio, that are meant to indicate the chin-jiggles that the titular character experiences, but since this is an animation, and the director wisely decided against constant slow-motion to emphasis this admittedly not very funny joke, the joke doesn't even register as one, if one doesn't get annoyed by the sound-design. The manga probably has space for some bizarre face-shapes, which could land the joke significantly better. The story is comparable with its spiritual predecessors, which is to say: Nothing to write home about. Still, I was entertained fine, probably in the way that most viewers/readers of One Punch Man were entertained, if they didn't take issue with the setting it's found itself in.

"Zenshu" is one of those anime about anime - at least in a way. It's still the same flavour of heart-warming that such series usually are, especially because the execution is actually quite good. Not only is the animation quite beatiful the art direction distinguishes between elements of the "real" world and the drawn additions in a way that makes sense. Strikingly, it makes drawn scraggles appearing as an object in the world substantive enough to make sense in the moment, which is an indicator good animation direction. Apart from this, the themes of inspiration, artistic collaboration and the types of authorship are conveyed in the many visceral anxieties depicted in the latter scenes. There is something silly about the obsession that drives the process of creating something. It can come from things that aren't great, the artist in question might know they're not great, and list the flaws in loving detail and yet it tends to inspire to greater things. "Zenshu" takes exactly that aspect of the creation process and struggles with the authorship works that are created like that have, when fans of media start creating media.

It's probably clear why I even attempted watching "Reborn as a Vending Machine". It's such a silly premise, and I think these things make great second screen content. It features perhaps one of the worst animation I've seen in a while, with bland character designs. Considering I've been aware of the title for a while, I feel it could have gotten a bigger budget, but since the writing also became kind of lackluster as things went on, I'm guessing this might have been produced out of obligation. Japan of course has a special relationship to vending machines and with titles like these I'm usually most interested in the weird things they can showcase or odd methods to engineer themselves out of a problem. The fact that having the vending machine in question be generic vending machines most of the time sidesteps the interesting part quite effectively. If it had kept to the style of the oxygen vending machine, it might have kept my interested for longer.

"Arcane S2" is a continuation that I'm luke-warm about. I'm guessing it's better when the first season is more present in ones mind, but the depiction of power struggles following a power vacuum makes for a decently compelling story either way. The show is of course beautifully animated and there's several really breath-taking visuals that could easily be a desktop wallpaper. What it loses in comparison to the first season is the feeling of a living world that exists around the storylines we're supposed to follow. Some of this is down to taste, I suppose. The writing is arguably more efficient in this second season than in it was in the first, where not all characters had a real storyline to follow. This time around, each character has a very tight schedule of character development and revelations to check off before it culminates in a grand finale that wraps up most of these stories in an impressively satisfying manner. I'm entirely divorced from League of Legends (multiplayer games in general, actually. The idea makes me tired), so I'm enjoying this series entirely independently of its source material. Still, I'm finding myself ambivalent about the prospect of other Riot Games animation projects, because I suspect my interest will correlate directly with how much the central cast intrigues me.

"Axiom's End" is a book I picked up used, entirely out of curiosity, and because I was familiar with the author's other work. Lindsay Ellis is probably going to be one of those seminal figures in the history of the internet, if we give it time to settle and look past all the terrible billionaire-driven nonsense that we're stuck in at the minute. She's played with similar book concepts to "Axiom's End" earlier on in her career. I recall a series that showcased her developing a paranormal Cthulhu romance or somesuch, which I didn't quite get at the time. It's not the sort of literature I otherwise enjoy, and I found myself skimming through some parts of this book as well, I'm sure it's probably better than I found it, the concept just wasn't for me in the first place. There are two more installments in the series, which I'll likely pass on. If she decides to write another novel outside of the supernatural romance genre though, I'd be more than willing to try, seeing as the prose of the book was not the weakest part for me, a problem I otherwise find in many novels intended for a young-adult or even fantasy-reading audience.

I completed "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 1" in chunks, read on and off over several weeks. 40-odd chapters of manga really aren't too difficult to read, and I'm pretty accustomed to reading manga on my phone as well. It's probably not doing the work in its entirety justice to read it from the very beginning, seeing as most of the context is easily gathered from later installments when the series has found its identity, but I would like to not have to google reading orders, if it can be avoided at all. The first part of this series is almost unrecognizable as the thing it would become in its later, and more acclaimed years. The art is a little wonkier, and the influences feel more akin to "Fist of the North Star", rather than whatever weirdness contemporary volumes pull from. It was a fine read overall, a little tedious at points, and I question the author's decision to lean so heavily on this one single antagonist, rather than pacing things out a bit, but I'll be willing to read further volumes, just to get to the parts that are considered iconic, eventually. I expect it to take a while though, because I'm allergic to hype, which this series radiates like nobody's business.

"Hundreds of Beavers" is a Looney Toons cartoon come to life, but using entirely practical visuals. Every animal is a guy (I suspect the same guy) in a costume, the minute there's more than two or three of them on screen, the crowd in composited in the charming low-fi style of early movies, and not a single word is spoken. Sung, sure, but not spoken. It's only technically a musical, I promise. It's not terribly profound, but I love it all the same, for the love of film-making that is on display here. It feels like a labour of love for cinema and animation, and I think this might be one of those movies I could play on loop.

Most things I could say about "Invincible Season 1" have been said by other people before me. It's an engaging story told using the tropes and inversions of the comic superheroes. I'm not too well versed in the history of comic books, so I don't know whether the idea of an "evil superman" was already played out by the way the source material came around. I imagine so, it's perhaps one of the first ideas one might think of, when the sincerely of such a figure has worn off. The hype around Invincible seems to have died down, even as it's still ongoing, which somewhat allows me to enjoy it more than had I started on it earlier. It does seem like the first Season exists mostly as a setup for a more interesting story. The underworld seems to continue on its own story, while the overarching conflict between the protagonist and their father looms large, after the explosions of violence that Omniman's appearances have now started to exhibit regularly. I'm guessing that the next two seasons at least will have enough material to keep me interested, especially if they can balance some of the plots going on well against said overarching story.

"Cherry Magic" is the kind of tame that only things meant for TV broadcast can be these days. It's a cute story, surprisingly explicit at times (and I'm not entirely sure whether I really like that for this), and it affords all of its characters a lot of grace. It's a fairly regular feel-good romance, if it weren't for the BL aspect of it, which I imagine is meant to be its main selling point. I found myself watching it with half an eye for most of its runtime. Slowly, there are more BL and GL shows released in anime. I'm not sure why, but more released Yuri shows have settings offering something beyond the romance aspect. I'm hoping the BL department can catch up on that. What "Cherry Magic" does offer is that it's explicit in its same-sex romance, something few Yuri shows have managed to do. I remember it being a big deal that a Yuri protagonist explicitly described herself as gay. "Cherry Magic" includes a tasteful sex scene. If this is where we need to start to embrace romance and interpersonal relationships in a more adult and authentic way, sign me up.

"Lisa Frankenstein" could be a cult classic in the making, maybe in the same spirit as "The Cabin in the Woods", though for 80s teen movies and monster romances. It features many updates to the genre-specific tropes that I personally enjoy, mostly because I don't really have the nostalgia for the movies this is homaging, and find their tropes exhausting. The protagonist's father has remarried after the traumatic murder of her mother, and while her new stepmother genuinely dislikes her, her adoptive sister, while a little self-centered and proudly not too bright, is trying to support her in her own way. She makes her mistakes, one ultimately very traumatic for her as well, but even in the end, their relationship remains intact, in an odd, kind of intangible way, if only due to the circumstances of the final scenes. Even though I don't have the nostalgia for it, I really like the resurgence of genre fiction, even driven by small studios and creators from the independent sphere. It gives me the chance to develop said missing nostalgia on my own, somewhat by proxy, but seeing as most of them have their second, third or fourth chances to reconcile with their shortcomings and adapt to modern audiences, I expect fun things at least, if not great ones.

"Make Something Up" is a collection of short stories, that feels like a book collage, if you've read other stories by Chuck Palahniuk. It's very relieving to see great writers recycle ideas between formats. It's like getting a brief glance at their development process. I've found snippets of "Fight Club" and "Invisible Monsters" in there, and I'm sure had I read more of his work, I would have found those too. I also think I can see him experimenting and developing his style. It's mostly fixed at the point where those short stories were finalized, I guess, but his quirks are more glaring occasionally. I think it's okay to describe them this way, they feel designed that way on purpose. It also makes me feel vindicated for writing short stories for a very similar purpose.

"Ameku M.D." is the kind of show I have a particular weakness for, that is detective shows pretending that they're some other kind of other show. In this case, it's a medical drama. In a way, the two genres are already very closely related. Most medical dramas will approach the topic of an episode as a detective story. Having this group of medical professionals deal directly with murder cases makes things a little easier to grasp in my opinion. I don't have a cache of medical jargon ready to make accurate predictions, but having seen the series, I feel smart being able to make a vague guess at the nature of medical failure on screen. I did find the first of the two larger cases to be a little drab, though that might have been due to the repeating teaser of the mystery for the length of its runtime. The evolution of more personally involved cases and complex, cases within cases are quite well done though, so the format is at least future-proof. It's unfortunately not a very strong character showcase, but empirically, those are the easier aspects of a show to fix.

"The Silt Verses" has absolutely amazing world building. Not many podcasts will make it into this format, mostly because they have the tendency to not end, this however, felt like a limited series with three seasons that ended very definitively. Not everything is resolved from a plot perspective, but it feels like the end of the line for the cast. I can only recommend giving this a listen for people who like urban horror fantasy settings and character dramas. The production value is also nothing to scoff at, often feeling like movie foaly, and dispensing with the narrator that might recap the grander, difficult to vocalize scenes.

"Welcome Home Franklin" I watched mostly because I have a long-standing love of the Peanuts that I'm sure I won't shake with time. It's also nice to see the gang animated in the classic 2D style again. The previous 3D iteration was also fine, but I never quite got used to it. I'm vaguely aware of the progressive step that Franklin's inclusion in the gang was at the time, but I've never managed to track down those volumes of the comic, mostly because I heavily favour the dogs, and sometimes struggle to keep up with all the shenanigans that the rest of the cast are up to. As an animated show, I prefer the kids, mostly because they can form words, and I don't always have the energy for the "Hundreds of Beavers" treatment.

"Invincible: Atom Eve" is a standard spin-off treatment of a side character that will take up a larger part in upcoming segments of a story. It's at least interesting to watch a different kind of person go through a similar process as the principal protagonist went through, and I always liked how the specific way that people came up is bound into their civilian identity, so if the world building is solid and non-standard, I'm open to knowing a couple of backstories.

I did not expect to finish "Manufacturing Consent", as quickly as I did once I committed to reading it during a relatively busy three-week vacation, partially because I did not catch that in true Leftwing Lit fashion, about a third of my copy was Appendices and Sources, and partially because trying to parse Chomsky's dense run-on sentences consisting mostly of words I would have thesaurus'd in order to include them in any of my own sentences on the slim screen of a Sony Xperia 10 III is as reliable a way as any to tire oneself out on screen-time. However, once it got going, which it did around the part it tackled the media treatment of the South American Sandinista elections, I found it engaging enough to power through with increasing speed. It was recommended to me as one of the essential works to build an understanding around media and propaganda, and it does not make the mistake (which I have done) to attempt to fix the inherent entanglement of the two. Instead, its proposed propaganda model, I believe, will prove a useful tool to just about anyone when trying to check contemporary reporting of complicated issues, even before vetting sources on their own, which is frankly an unreasonable ask for a working population under capitalism anyway.

I picked up "Our Architecture" by Tajuddin Rasdi in a Kinokuniya while on vacation, where I my little designer-enthusiast heart was joyously overwhelmed to discover a design section that took up about half a floor. While this has started me on a journey to find a similar store in the city I live, so far without any luck, the books I took from there also gave me some minor insight into contemporary Malayan culture by way of architecture. The author seems to me, upon cursory online-searches, one of these intellectuals, who have graduated from an expert in one field into interdisciplinary cultural-political speaker. He is, however, a Doctor of Islamic Architecture, which means that at least in this, his understanding of the matter is greater than mine. While he doesn't state this directly in any of the essays featuring in this brief collection, there seems to be a lacking sense of cultural identity in designing space. The author underlines this lack as a characteristically Malayan problem, though I suspect this might be a generally non-American problem. At the same time, the solution of this problem doesn't seem to be "merely" preservation of traditional buildings and spaces, as this is the approach chosen by many central- and western European countries. Perhaps he sees the particular trappings of that approach as incompatible with the progress of rapidly developing nations. He instead advocates for mindful inclusion of the traditional solutions to architectural and spatial design problems, which will "automatically" retain some distinct aesthetic identity.

Where "Our Architecture" I bought, because it was light and small, "Librorum Ridiculorum" was just kinda weird. Reading it is a very different experience from reading theory of any kind, and it never meant to. It showcases some odd books along with the notes used to categorize them. It's light entertainment, and I can imagine the kind of person who will make it part of their mission to track down one or two of those titles out of morbid curiosity. I think the way it's structured, invites viewing this book as a catalogue, and as someone who was never too sure about whether they liked books like the Guiness Book of World Records, the appeal is somewhat lost on me, though I'm unsure whether more information on the books featured would help its case in a measureable capacity.