Recently, I booted up my original copy of Pokémon Black 2 to check back in with it. I knew that I loved it a lot growing up, but I was shocked when I saw just how many hours I had sunken into it. Over 500. The fifth generation of Pokémon was my introduction to the series and what hooked me into having Pokémon just be my life from the ages of like 7-13. This generation's games are also famous for being especially story focused, with a plot more complex than any other Pokémon title. Now that's objectively not saying much but is meaningful for me in that it almost certainly shaped my game tastes towards story focused single player titles and JRPGs for the years after I had grown out of Pokémon. Given the immense influence this game had on me, it was a little daunting to come back to it. What if my nostalgia had gotten the better of me? What if I'd outgrown this series? Well, given that I spent easily around 80 hours on this title it's safe to say I had a pleasant revisit.

Firstly I should comment on the way I ended up revisiting this game. I didn't play the original Black 2. Nor did I play on original hardware. I opted instead to play a ROM hack of the game and did so on a DS emulator for my laptop. Blaze Black 2 had been on my radar for years as something I needed to play - knowing about how high the praise for it was by fans. So when deciding to revisit the fifth generation I felt that I'd be able to kill 2 birds with one stone if I played the ROM hack instead. Sure, I wouldn't get the full original nostalgic experience but in hindsight I think that if I had only played this as a nostalgia trip, I wouldn't have stuck with it as long as I had (turns out I don't actually remember as much as I thought!). And honestly, the ROM hack itself is amazing. Coming from a playthrough of Pokémon Crystal this summer, a game plagued by awful Pokémon availability, awful move sets and weird balancing, Blaze Black 2 Redux (BB2R) was a breath of fresh air. Changes to move sets don't make Pokémon overpowered but more viable and leads to more interesting team compositions. Changes to types might seem controversial but I agreed with pretty much all the revisions and felt they made the respective Pokémon better as a result. The game wasn't necessarily hard but it was challenging to a point that it wasn't mindless - a problem with a lot of the main series of games. I've never been much for competitive battling but the teams here forced me to think harder about what strategies I needed to implement and the save state feature allowed me to retry battles much easier for quicker refinement in strategy. The fact that all Pokémon are accessible in a single player playthrough as well is fantastic, especially as I ended up going for regional Pokédex completion. I'm hard pressed to find a way in which the ROM hack fails as an improvement to the base game.

Enough of this though, how was the experience itself?? Well, as hinted at before I really did not end up remembering as much as I thought I would. Somehow those 500 odd hours didn't really add up to more than a lot of "ah yeah I think I remember this place" or "oh I remember a cool secret I used to try all the time when I was young". I see this as a blessing though because it allowed this playthrough to be especially fresh. It didn't feel like a re-tread of familiar ground and I think it allowed this experience to hold its own ground. I do worry though, that my original memories of the game will be erased by new memories formed through this game. When I remember Driftveil City, am I remembering the city I knew as a child or the city I revisited as an adult? I fear that I've allowed the gears of memory to pave over the old grounds, kept barely alive in glimpses and fleeting recollections. But I'm reminded that in its wake are more good memories, and specifically good memories that are fresher, and more directly impactful on the me of today than the ones from like 12 odd years ago are. Maybe it's fine to forget, and allow at least some of the past to the past. To not chain yourself so strongly to what made you but the experiences of the now and the expereinces that will be.

Apologies for not really talking much about the content but I really have nothing to say other than that it was a pretty standard Pokémon experience. I picked Tepig as he was my first ever Pokémon - it would have felt wrong to pick anyone else. I gave my Pokémon stupid nicknames like "bug", "old ahh mfer", "regiBIGASS" and so on which was very amusing. I used a lot more rock and bug types - a type I barely use. My main water type was Relincanth, who is part rock. And an overpowered Kricketune carried me through the early game before being replaced by a Dragon/Bug Flygon who ended up an MVP of my team. This is also the second time I completed the regional dex of a Pokémon game, the other funnily enough being the original Black 2. After finishing the main game I decided to catch all the legendaries since they were all available here. And once I'd finished that I thought I might go ahead and finish the Pokédex. My initial goal was to finish the entire living Pokédex (having a separate copy of every Pokémon) and got pretty far overall with about 550/650, though I ended up quitting since, without spoiling anything, the new rewards you get for finishing the regional dex were satisfying enough for me that I felt any more time spent on the game would pail in comparison. The fact I was motivated at all though to embark on such a journey should I think speak to how good the game still is - as with most other Pokémon games I've played in the past 4-5 years I usually just beat the main story and then move on, clocking about 30 hours. I cannot say how much time exactly I spent here since using the fast forward on my emulator means the in-game timer is not in line with real time but I apparently spent 200 hours of in-game time in the world of BB2R which if I'm being conservative here is 80 hours or so in real life. So yeah, still a big Pokémon fan.

This game thoroughly surprised me. Coming into it I definitely had my own ideas of what the game was going to be like; in my mind it lived in the same cultural space as Doki Doki Literature Club!. I enjoyed DDLC, but it's not a game that I've really thought about much after playing and in retrospect doesn't feel like it says much that I find personally interesting. NSO blew my expectations out of the water completely, and I'm glad it did.

NSO feels like it's a game best experienced blind so here I won't delve too deeply into specifics (essay on my deeper thoughts coming soon now!). Few games are able to both make me viscerally uncomfortable and yet strongly engaged simultaneously. I felt bad playing the game (this is a good thing, paradoxically). It's not a game for the faint of heart and you should look at content warnings before playing. In spite of this however, I haven't stopped thinking about NSO, and my thoughts and interpretations have radically shifted over time. To illustrate I've gone to thinking of this game as strongly misogynistic to flipping around to believing it to be somewhat feminist through constant re-examination of the narrative and meta-narrative. Any game that's capable of provoking this much active thought about it is doing something right.

I'm willing to say that this is probably the best game I played in 2023, which sounds impressive until you realise how few games I actually play nowadays haha.

I played this on a whim after seeing a tweet about it after its release in early December. I personally hadn't followed it's 8 year development cycle, so going into it there really wasn't much expectation other than "ah an Undertale fangame people are saying is good!". I should mention I was under no illusion that it would be any better than Undertale. Undertale is one of the only games I've played that I've continued to think about for years since I first played it 8 years ago (it's really been that long?) and was an incredibly formative artistic experience.

[Start of light spoilers]

Undertale Yellow fails to live up to this, but in its attempt makes a really good game! I find its main weakness is in its story. Put bluntly, the plot feels strained trying to force a narrative together with the wrong set of pieces. Character motivations seem either unjustified or out of place, and the pacing often doesn't flow evenly. Nothing really happens in the first 2/3rds and then the plot suddenly starts in the last 1/3rd. Undertale also had an explosion of activity near the end but the time before is all used to build strong foundations for which the plot and characters to rest upon. Undertale Yellow doesn't do this. It's a shame too since otherwise everything else is superb. The characters themselves are pretty fun! The gameplay feels like a natural evolution to Undertale - if it had another chapter. The art and music too are stellar and I was honestly taken aback by some of the set pieces. Like look at this!

[End of light spoilers]

I was overall very happy with my time playing Undertale Yellow. I should mention here I played it with a friend, streaming and chatting about my experiences in real time, which certainly made the game more memorable. Not that I wouldn't have finished the game or disliked it otherwise, but I wouldn't be surprised if I'd have been harsher on it if there wasn't someone to joke about it with when the less savoury bits were in play, and I almost certainly wouldn't have attempted a further No Mercy playthrough after finishing a Pacifist run (though the difficulty did turn me off from it in the end).

In the end if I can thank Undertale Yellow for one thing, it's that it's certainly made me rethink on the original Undertale and its successor Deltarune, and further confirmed my love for both of them. Potential blog post pending on that!

The text below is taken from my own steam review for the game, so if it reads a little funny, that's why lol. Pretty much spoiler free save very minor spoilers!

In the starting town, there is a spot in the ground where you can choose to plant some of your money, wherein a plant then grows after 10 minutes. I found this after having done most of what you can do in the town meaning that after planting I still had a decent bit of time left before it would be ready. In any other game I likely would have ignored it and trucked on with the game, coming back when the game called for it to collect my item. But I didn't. I waited. The town, like most the rest of the environments is beautifully crafted. The pixel art of the Momodora series reaches its apex here and taking in the sights becomes its own reward. Really, the game begs to be appreciated by the player and at times I couldn't help but stop and admire what the game was presenting me with. And really, is there any greater praise for a games visuals than that it tears me away from the gameplay?

Speaking of gameplay let me make it clear that this game is certainly not lacking in that department. Just like its predecessor, combat is fast, fun, and fluid. The arsenal of moves is quite concise, mostly filled with the standard affair for metroidvanias but this keeps the gameplay expereince concise. I didn't use half the combat upgrades given to me in Hollow Knight, but I used all the skills I was given constantly in Moonlit Farewell. Sigils (equip-able buffs) provide a decent amount of customisation to the standard move-set. Admittedly there were several sigils that I never ended up using, but there are enough useful ones (and others useful in certain combinations) that I found myself trying new strategies with different sigil combinations whenever faced with a hard boss (for example creating a bow-focused build to make bow-only viable for bosses who were a pain to fight melee). For all challenges the game threw at me, I felt like I had the tools to overcome it.

This game also possibly has my favourite map in the genre. While the map does take a step back compared to the previous Momodora in being much less interconnected, I found it to be much more well designed. I naturally got 111% completion during my run (yes, 100% is not full completion) because the game didn't hide secrets in stupid locations, breakable walls etc. The map clearly tells you when you've missed a secret - which I feel doesn't take any of the challenge away because the fun comes in finding out how to get the secret, not realising there's a secret to begin with. For other metroidvanias I've played, looking at guides for 100% ends up being a given. And I never feel like I could have found the items if I had tried harder. The fact that this was never the case in my experience speaks to how nicely laid out the game is.

Difficulty is an odd one, with the normal difficulty I imagine not giving a strong challenge to anyone familiar with the genre. Early in the game you can find a sigil called "The Fool" which reduces your HP to 1, effectively making the game a no hit run. For the latter 2/3rds of the game I played with this sigil nearly always on in order to make the game challenging - but this seem extreme to expect others to do. Besides this, upon beating the game you can unlock a "hardcore" mode where dying resets your save file. This again is quite an extreme way to play. The problem then is that there really is no middle ground and can leave many players stuck with either finding the game too easy or too challenging. I would also be remiss to mention that boss difficulty is also all over the place, with many bosses feeling almost unfinished with how simple they were, and quality being a little over the place (though still overall averaging to be quite good).

The game is certainly not without its faults mind. As mentioned above, difficulty and bosses are one. A common complaint is with the new controls, which while I personally never had an issue, I am very surprised configuring it to suit your playstyle isn't made into an option for accessibility. Most cut-scenes are not skippable which makes bosses with them, or repeat playthroughs, drag on more than needed. I won't harp on much about these though, because none of the issues I encountered personally brought down the experience for me, so I don't want to similarly drag down my review with them.

Overall I'm very happy with this game. As someone who fell in love with the previous Momodora game, played all the previous titles, and played the developer's other metroidvania Minoria, this title really does feel like the culmination of everything they strived to do. It ends up a fitting conclusion to this whole saga and I seriously cannot wait to see what rdien and Bombservice comes out with next in the future. Thank you.

Playing Yume Nikki was honestly a long time coming. As someone who spend a lot of her teenage years playing RPGmaker classics, downloaded straight from vgperson's website, the game was always in my periphery. I just never got around to it - until now. And wow, I really underestimated just how influential the title was! Even if we exclude the entire genre it spawned in its wake, its DNA was so clearly present in so many of the titles I find beloved. From the RPGmaker games I mentioned previously to Undertale, the influence was clear. It feels then like finding the missing essential piece to the cultural conversation that all these titles are engaged in, and really ends up enriching my understanding of those other titles!

It's a game I highly recommend to basically anyone. It's free, for one. But more importantly it really embodies an exemplary example of what can be called exploration-first games. There is no combat, dialogue, explicit loss condition, and no direct narrative to speak of. You kinda just,,, just walk around. Which could sound at first boring but Yume Nikki is a masterpiece in creating memorable and interesting set pieces - practically begging the player to search just for the sake of seeing what exists around the corner. If you do play please do also refrain from checking the wiki - oh and take your time with the game. The current climate's attitude to games is to run through them as fast as possible and move on but Yume Nikki is the opposite, and is best enjoyed slowly.

[Now for the stuff only those who have played will get!]

I will say I do feel as though I can never truly play the game 'as intended' or in their best possible way. Partially I feel this because of my semi-frequent use of the wiki in the last third of my playthrough, which certainly sucked a lot of the mystique and interest the game could have held for its last few secrets. I grew so impatient as the well of new content dried up that instead of slowing my own pace I ruined things for myself. But this really is due to the mass collectivisation of knowledge surrounding this game. This is where the other half comes in.

After finishing the game I was trawling through the wiki and looking at the silly names fans have given the nameless NPCs and ended up linked to a thread that named a specific character. I ended up reading the thread, one filled with people sharing the weird experiences they found, things they found when data-mining, theorising about how events were triggered (before they were fully understood) and cool tricks ppl invented. It was a space filled with passionate fans trying to best understand a piece of art they all collectively loved without the wealth of knowledge we now have about the game's systems. I already got the sense when playing that the game would be better played alongside others - sharing knowledge about things each person had individually found and honestly the loss of forum culture and decentralised pools of knowledge I feel has completely kneecapped the ability for something like this to exist online. Why bother theorising about how something works when the wiki exists? I mean I'm a prime example. Doesn't help either that I played the game in 2024, when basically no one cares anymore 😭.

Also unrelated but I honestly find myself not really caring too much to analyse what the game is about? At least in the ways that others do trying to tie the aspects of the dreamworld to what they say about the main character. Or how the Toriningens or Uboa link into all of it. I suppose said theorising strikes me the same way stuff like FNAF theorising or the general 'Game Theory' vibe do where they centre lore as the defining lens through which to understand works. I don't deny that there is merit to this approach, just that its never really interested me. I think what's coolest to me is exploring how Yume Nikki succeeds mechanically and stylistically as an exploration game, how it challenges artistic standards for games as a medium and how it slots into general game history. I think really it's just a sign of my shifting interests - neither good nor bad though certainly very pretentious.

The Scott Pilgrim franchise is one that has just sat in my general consciousness for a very long time. It's not really a piece of cultural fascination within my generation, my general understanding being that it's more an important part of millennial nerd culture, but I grew up watching millennial nerds on YouTube so names like Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers stuck around in my mind. So really it has been a long time coming to give the series a shot, and the new series on Netflix gave me the perfect opportunity!

And I loved it! After finishing it I thought "ah I see why the nerds of the 2000s loved this series so much". Then, I looked online at the movie and noticed "huh weird the plot is different here..." before realising the sneaky subversion Takes Off performed away from the obvious and less interesting story was, in fact, what the original Scott Pilgrim was about 💀. I'll be leaving off my thoughts on Scott Pilgrim Takes Off to another instalment of this 'series' when I've finally gotten around to watching the movie. Without spoiling anything too massively, it's so deeply in cultural conversation with its previous iterations that it seems incomplete to analyse as an art piece on its own.

Though what I can comment on is the visuals and damn this adaptation was just so charming. I feel like their redesign for characters feel fresh while also largely in line with how they look in the comic. The playfulness and general tone of the animation works well for the type of story Scott Pilgrim is, and reminds me of Studio Trigger productions such as Panty and Stocking, or Space Patrol Luluco (honestly makes sense since Trigger was likely influenced by the original Scott Pilgrim when they looked to the west for inspiration). I'm a little disappointed it wasn't a Trigger joint since it seemed such a perfect fit in their catalogue for Science Saru certainly delivered a strong final product. Any animated series who's visuals alone can leave a smile on my face is doing something very good.

So generally Ghibli films are pretty comprehensible when it comes to parsing their meaning. Like "yeah that one's anti-war" or "this one's about environmentalism" and so on. That of course isn't to diminish their prowess as films - often I feel people can mistake clarity about themes as simplicity when it can equally convey good messaging on the behalf of the creative team. I set all this up to say that leaving the cinema after watching The Boy and the Heron I was totally stumped about what the film was trying to say. But like, in a good way. The feeling you might get from being given a tough puzzle you know you have the right pieces and skill to solve. I'll later detail my own thoughts on what the film was trying to say but I urge you to watch the film. It's certainly an odd one in Ghibi's line-up often feeling at odds with its peers but stands out as a artistically rich and narratively dense piece that I'm sure will grow a strong cult audience. And liking cult shit is just cool.

Strictly speaking visually, the film is gorgeous. Obviously all Ghibli films are, but it feels like this one is trying to push at the bounds of what a Ghibli film is artistically exactly. Using mixed media styles, such as changing the style for certain backgrounds or for implementing 3D's strengths, it felt looser with its adherence to "classic Ghibli". As well as this certain animated flourishes, such as the lines physically deteriorating when the characters enter a fire to signify the immense heat sell scenes in a way live action would struggle to capture.

[Warning: My own interpretation ahead! Oh, and major spoilers.]

So, the story is just about Miyazaki telling his son to stop making his own films, right? I mean taking the main boy Mahito to be representative of Miyazaki's son and the great-granduncle to be Miyazaki himself the parallels seem to me quite clear. The great-granduncle is positioned as a creator of worlds, just as Miyazaki is a creator of worlds through his films. His empire is vast, and yet just like in real life, it isn't an empire that he can commandeer forever. As he grows older his empire starts to fall into decay - it isn't a place that is able to thrive without his guidance. In my view the worlds he creates represent the endeavours of the studio's own output, making sense since he helped to cofound the studio. The idea of losing it all clearly weighs on the man, since despite his frailty and old age he still puts in the work to keep his world afloat - perhaps an homage to his constant return to the studio to head new works well past retirement. The great-granduncle left everything behind to focus his will solely on being this master of worlds - leaving behind his family in the process. I believe Miyazaki has spoken about his regrets working so hard on productions to the determent of his familial connections, especially towards his children. The parallels are clear. But not all is lost for the project he built as the stone that granted his power (a stand in I assume for studio execs and the like) have told him that he can pass on his task to a descendant - and the perfect candidate presents itself in the boy, Mahito.

Mahito to me is probably one of the deepest and well characterised main characters of any Ghibli film, and I almost certainly won't do his full character justice here (for example I really don't factor his relationship with his mother and step-mother - I assume because it relates to different themes that I haven't fully formed thoughts on yet). Nonetheless, speaking on what is relevant to this reading, Mahito is a boy who has largely resigned himself from the life around him. He's very clearly meant to be coded to be depressive, including an explicit scene of self harm to further his seclusion from the rest of the world. He's also shown to be very resourceful and creative, being able to fashion a bow out of materials he finds around the home and it working surprisingly well. It's this ingenuity and reclusion that would in theory make him a perfect candidate to take over from his great-granduncle (helped as well by his blood relation tying him into the business - from my understanding a common theme in Japanese companies is ownership through blood relation). And so he's brought into his great-granduncle's world to eventually be asked to take over the task from him. Through his travels in this world he is face to face with its ruination, its a world begging to be fixed and returned to its glory. Along the way also though are friends. Connections with others that he makes with Kiriko, the Princess and the Heron that bring value to his life - and something that he'd otherwise turned away from in the outside world.

What may seem weird for this reading however is that Mahito never gets to make the decision of whether or not to take over from his great-granduncle. In fact - it seems as though he'd be more than ready to take the mantle if asked. Just as Miyazaki's son did when asked. But I in fact think its very important that he doesn't make this choice. The empire is crumbing - literally. It is not a ship he can steer back onto course. The destruction of the world seems like an inevitability rather than a tragedy and if Mahito would take over in reality it would just prolong the inevitable. This needed to happen. Its at this point that the final message is made clear. Live your own life - don't take on the burdens place on you from the failings of others. You need to live your story to the fullest. Mahito learns the value of connection from his time in this world and understands what he loses if he takes up his great-granduncle's mantle. He begs the Princess, the younger version of his own mother, to come with him to his world but as she states she needs to live out her own story and experience the joys of her own life (rather than live for the sake of enriching someone else's life). Here it is obvious to me what Miyazaki is trying to say to his son - a man forced to pick up the mantle of his father by the world around him. Don't do it. Live your own life. How do you live? Certainly not as I have.

I've been hard pressed to find an opinion on Steel Ball Run (SBR) online that matches my own. Looking at reviews on MyAnimeList (where SBR rates at 9.3/10), almost everyone has stupidly high praise for it, alongside the occasional contrarian shouting "mid". Now don't get me wrong - SBR is definitely a great manga. I'd even hazard to say it's my favourite JoJo part (it's certainly top 3 for me). The art is phenomenal, the characters are more developed than previous parts, the fights are tense, and the story is good. I ended up binging the last quarter of the story until 6am (breaking my self-imposed rule to only read a couple of chapters per day) just because it had ended up that engaging. And yet, I can't say I see what so many others see in SBR. In general I don't think I'm really as enraptured by JoJo as others seem to be, even if I still really enjoy the series. I can imagine if your primary media diet consists of other Shonen shows then JoJo definitely ranks above it. I, however, am really not a Shonen fan. I guess JoJo gets strong praise for being one of the few I've stuck with for this long (having dropped others such as Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, My Hero Academia, Bleach etc) but compared to other things I've seen it really doesn't shatter my world.

I admit I'm being quite harsh on SBR. If anything my thoughts are more a response to how everyone else seems to view the part. I went into SBR knowing that many in the fandom hailed SBR as the best JoJo part, and one of the best manga of all time. All throughout reading I was waiting for when exactly this God-tier story would manifest itself - which I think had an adverse affect on my enjoyment. If you end up reading SBR (which goes as a no-brainer recommendation if you like JoJo), my advice is to temper your expectation. It's great but don't go in expecting it to rock your world.

[Start of heavy spoilers]

Getting back to my disconnect between online opinions on SBR and my own is the interpretations of two characters, Johnny Joestar and Funny Valentine. In more than one instance I've seen comments arguing that Johnny could be seen as the villain of SBR and Valentine a hero. It seems to even be a running in-joke that "Valentine did nothing wrong". And I simply need to know how people come to this conclusion. Valentine represents the absolute worst of American exceptionalism ideology. His grand plan is literally to divert all suffering in the USA abroad to other countries (an obvious metaphor to how America's comfort, and most of the first world's comfort, comes at the expense of suffering in the rest of the world). He also subscribes to great man theory (a flawed conception of society) and places himself specifically at its helm. He's egotistical. Even when acting to his own conception of what would better his country, he still uses it as a way to also give himself the permission to rule over it all and be the one to guide society. The structure of the government and political class aren't ever mentioned and its clear that Valentine acts on his own accord. You tell me if that's how a democratic leader acts or a megalomanic wannabe dictator.

Johnny, in his opposition to Valentine, will then be understood by these people as not being especially heroic. They point to his motivations over the course of the part being self-centred, wanting the corpse parts so that he can regain his footing, literally, and support his own sense of self. This seemingly puts him in opposition to other JoJo protagonists who are often acting more so for the 'greater good'. It's here however that I have to wonder if people actually read and understood SBR. Johnny doesn't get the corpse parts for himself. He never in truth needed them. The entire story, in fact, is centred around his own growth in character which resolves without Johnny needing to rely on the corpse. Johnny certainly is a more morally complex JoJo but it's weird to mistake this for villainy.

I suspect that this understanding of the two characters is borne from those who agree with American exceptionalism as an ideology. But here I find something else interesting. Instead of realising that the media itself might actually be a critique of their worldview - which is why the villain holds the view - instead the conversation centres recontextualising the person with your view to be the good guy actually. To me, this is very telling on people's media literacy and relationship to media.

Surprising no one, once I finished Steel Ball Run, I almost immediately moved onto the next part, JoJolion (JJL). While certainly not as hyped broadly as SBR, the coverage I had seen online was almost all people saying that it was somehow better than SBR. While my expectations were certainly tempered with SBR, I still went into JJL with some excitement. And to be honest, they were all pretty much right. Right now, I'd probably say it's my favourite JoJo part. Adapting many elements from my previous favourite part, Diamond is Unbreakable, it is also set in the town of Morioh with the mystery elements of DiU cranked up to 10. The opening chapters had me hooked right from the start, which didn't happen with SBR, and time spent not reading was spent theorising about where exactly the plot was going with its open mysteries and clues. JJL I would say is a story best enjoyed in short chunks, maybe an arc at a time, spread across a long time. This gives you a lot of time to digest the story beats and internalise the new information and changes. I didn't really do this, reading about 10 chapters a day, and I definitely struggled because of it. I sometimes forgot plot threads and had to go back to refresh my mind on certain elements. In spite of this though, I still enjoyed this part a lot and recommend it to any JoJo fan to read now rather than wait for an anime adaptation.

[Spoilers about the direction the story takes]

That isn't to say I wasn't still somewhat let down by JJL (yipee, complaining!). Despite starting so strong in its opening with strongly engaging open mysteries, it feels as though it isn't able to return the same 'punch' to satisfy them. A good handful of plot points are just never resolved - assumedly because they're meant to be solved in a future JoJo part (a fact that severely harms JJL's ability to stand as a standalone story). Also, the fact that Araki was clearly figuring out the plot on the fly (effectively confirmed by retconning a few plot-points in later reprints) means that things are set up for the sake of set-up. It makes me yearn for the version of JJL that was better planned out - and that delivered on its amazing premise. Because as it stands what we actually have is an amazingly done opening with an alright delivery. In any case though, I will still be seeing you all in like 15 years when part 9, JoJoLands is finished!

[Heavy Spoilers]

Actually before I go, what's the deal with Toru? Say what you will about the strengths of other JoJo villains (God knows I have my own opinions) but Toru just seems so weak in comparison. Not in strength of course, in that category he certainly ranks at top but in terms of narrative weight, or interest as an antagonist he's such a boring person. I mean for one, he isn;t set up at all. He shows up in the last quarter of the story in a manner so obvious you see his villain reveal from miles away. It honestly feels like he was forced into the story because Araki realised he didn't yet have a big bad for our titular JoJo to fight. But like why do I care about Toru? I care insofar that he poses a threat to the characters I care about. But a natural disaster could provoke that as well. Point is, he really doesn't feel like he has much of an impact as his own character, or has motivations I care about. Honestly I think he might just be the worst JoJo villain.