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TheDag  Per Aspera ad Astra  1yr ago (text post)   1668 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 11, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I recently watched Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and can concur with the other reports herein(I'm sure there were, if my memory's not playing tricks on me) that it's excellent and worth watching.

Strong recommend to everyone apart from

-people suffering from epilepsy due to flashing lights. I think there's even a warning.

-people who are likely to suffer unduly from a significant emotional event. (if you're depressed or always kinda fragile)

-people who are notably squeamish. The show really doesn't pull its punches when it comes to violence. It's not that frequent but it's there and it is very memorable.

The show's mostly a fairly straightforward tragedy/romance story set in a cyberpunk brazilified California which doesn't have as many homeless schizos as the real one but South African crime levels and also apparently in 2077 degens now use some cyber-fleshlights in public and cops don't care if it's not in a rich area.

The story is solid, the characters relatable, the environmental design & aesthetics excellent. The outcome is basically preordained from the start due to hubris

and setting. The ending is the subject of many memes which are really kinda true. I've a hard time imagining a person who could finish it and not shed at least a solitary tear.

It's also notable how on twitter people liked it and there is no seeming political category that doesn't have people liking it. If something is beloved both by trans they/them socialists and e.g. hard right Pinochet appreciators, it is kind of special.

EDIT:

Finally found someone who hates it. My dad refused to watch more than three episodes. Said something along the lines "it's too violent, the animation is bad and cyberpunk is cringe BS". I suspect it's partly bc he's notably squeamish about violence, and partly bc he's a pussy -he loses his nerve very easily in even mildly dramatic situations.

Mind you, he watches weird anime all the time and has watched entire series of such BS as e.g. Lucifer.

I watched it today without any prior context of the Cyberpunk games and yeah, it's a decent show.

The characters and visual aesthetics are clearly the strong point here for me - David as a main character is incredibly likeable and it's very hard not to root for him, which is a task that most modern writers seem to completely fail at. The plot is quite basic and exists almost solely to serve the world and characters, but it does that job well. It benefits from being fairly short and fast-paced for a TV show too. I do feel the soundtrack didn't fit well with the cyberpunk aesthetic, but that might just be my personal preference in music bleeding through.

I didn't shed tears at the end, maybe because I saw it coming a mile away considering all the foreshadowing beforehand, and/or maybe because it simply takes a lot to get an emotional reaction out of me compared to other people. I don't feel like this show was particularly gritty or dark either, I think that despite the fact that the show is portraying a dystopia they keep a streak of hope a mile wide going through it (though this might be because I'm extremely inured to bleakness in my entertainment).

Anyway, it was fun and a good way to spend my weekend.

Yeah. It was surprisingly decent. Maybe even good, but maybe I'm just impressionable.

I've a hard time imagining a person who could finish it and not shed at least a solitary tear.

I did not shed a tear because the ending is reminiscent of a famous anime which I'm not going to spoil. But the whole thing isn't bad.

Huh.

Looking back on it, this is the most waterworks I've done in the last 20 years with the exception of a couple days of a depressive episode.

I've cried a bit reading some books, a small bit when I figured grandpa is going to die soon, sometimes cried reading non-fiction (reading about military pilots flying off onto doomed missions,etc). I did cry when watching Atonement in cinema. Shed a few tears in True Detective seasons 2 too, I think.

Most of it now is just me trying to imagine how many times do I have to listen to “I Really Want to Stay At Your House” before it stops tearing me up at least a bit. So far I'm at number 12. and it's still there.

EDIT: number 22 cca. Still keeps going on, but not on every listening.

Crazy how the music associated with a strong emotion keeps bringing said emotion, or at least tears again and again. I've a rather hard time noticing other emotions than joy, tenderness, rage and excitement. I'm very much the 'feel nothing much but cry' type. No sobbing though, can't recall that happening last 25 years.

It's also notable how on twitter people liked it and there is no seeming political category that doesn't have people liking it. If something is beloved both by trans they/them socialists and e.g. hard right Pinochet appreciators, it is kind of special.

I think Cyberpunk is in kind of an ideal position to do this, actually. The sci-fi body modification technology allows for things like intersex characters, huge bruiser-brawler women, and so on without it seeming shoehorned in. The leftist may feel that it's vaguely empowering, the rightist that it's part of the dystopia, but neither feels like it doesn't belong or add to the story and setting.

Likewise the economic realities of Night City could be taken as an indictment of capitalism run amuck - and even have revolutionary figures like Johnny Silverhand fighting against the system - it also never really posits the Glorious Comrades' Revolution as a viable alternative, since Resistance Is Futile anyways and that's the point. Also, the sort of capitalism they depict is so far out there that I don't think rightists really identify with it anyways, however bullish they might be on markets. It's clearly the bad aspects of capitalism to the Nth degree, no-one's gonna argue it's a good look.

I have noticed a trend, though, for things that would trigger culture war in a Western show just...don't when it's Japanese. Popular recent examples - Jujutsu Kaisen is a progressive-trending show, and Demon Slayer is a quite conservative show, and I literally think that no one in America even notices. A combination of the exotic settings and stories, and of Japanese bromides not being ours, perhaps? Certainly the culture that Demon Slayer is conservative of is quite different from the Anglosphere.

Might write more about that later, I've had a proto-essay banging around in my head about it hah.

Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable,[1][2][3] typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authority, property or tradition.[4][5]: 693, 721 [6][7][8][9][10] Hierarchy and inequality may be seen as natural results of traditional social differences[11][12] or competition in market economies.[13][14][15]

Yeah, us RW doesn't have to stick to neolithic biology, I think.

Personally I'm fairly RW in that I believe hierarchies are inevitable, inequality unavoidable, competition indispensable and important and traditions ignored at one's peril, however, it's clear there's simply no winning in a future if you stick to traditional biology and eschew the easy kind of eugenics to boot. It's just losing like a noble idiot.

Letting psychologically aberrant women get biomods so they are physically competitive with fighting men doesn't strike me as dystopic if artificial wombs mean other women are less burdened by childbearing which would mean they'd probably do it slightly more so you don't have to exert psychotic iron age Greek levels of control over the population's means of reproduction.

But maybe there's a personal bias. I have a marked preference for man sized women. Found Dorio the most attractive female character.

Having a partner that's not much smaller than I am strikes me as being just right. Sad it didn't work out with one girl I met who was about my size, actually even slightly taller than me.

How would you rate it relative to Arcane?

Edit: 3 episodes in. Excellent so far except the very jarring soundtrack.

Personally, I found myself more drawn in to Arcane. That may well be because I vibe a lot with the younger-sibling and parenthood dynamics in that show (my family is great, but since I care for them it lets me really imagine what I would feel if they weren't ok I guess), and really like the way it hems to yet plays with classic dramatic structure. Also, the wonderful facial animation really binds you to the characters. Top-notch voice acting doesn't hurt.

That said, I was blown away by Edgerunners as well, and my sister's boyfriend is flipped relative to me - really liked Arcane, LOVED Edgerunners. In spite of both of them both being tragedies set in dystopias, they have very different vibes. Edgerunners is starker, grittier. It has less character warmth, more intrigue, a harsher world. It is more graphic, and plays less on...adolescent idealism? It feels less like warm-hearted characters learning the harsh realities of the world, more like jaded characters trying to find some hope in a God-forsaken world again.

Edgerunners animation is top-notch and unique aesthetically, but I think lacks the masterpiece-level visuals and composition of Arcane.

They are both quite lovely. I prefer Arcane personally, but def not mad at anyone who prefers Edgerunners.

Unlike most anime I'd watch in the English dub if you decide to see it; especially if you've played the Cyberpunk game. It's quite solid voice work, and uses a lot of slang and vernacular and accents that are missing in the subs, it really helps bring the city alive.

I feel like anime made in multiple languages isn't worth watching in Japanese.

The dubs and translations are usually flawless - e.g. talking about say,Jin Rô or Edgerunners.

It might well be the case that the dubbing is on par with regular American VA, it's just that the Japanese VA industry is more robust and better developed and consequently their VA is much better in general.

Dubs, much like CGI, used to be HORRIBLE in anime, haha. So we fans still need to reassure each other occasionally if a show has them.

But these weren't dubs made by the creators of the anime, but by importers.

That's the crucial difference. E.g. Edgerunners is excellently dubbed into English. Czech dub seems kinda shoddy, probably done by Netflix. Not sure how good Italian one is, I could ask. I started watching it with my dad who watches all anime in Italian.

Haven't seen it, so can't say. I like it more than Gits: SAC. Maybe on par with 2nd Gig except Cyberpunk has less fluff and is artistically better.

Gits was pretty well drawn but they had some odd aesthetic choices and the visual quality was lower.

Plus a bunch of meh fluff episodes. Nothing like that here. The visuals are just better.

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