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I was invited onto a podcast to discuss the first season of My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU!, a rather unfortunate name for a series far more intelligent than its title would suggest. However, it is properly misleading since even some of the light novels are graced with a degree of cheesecake to lure unsuspecting viewers in. It is an unfortunate double-edged sword, where the audience that would likely find the greatest appeal might be dissuaded to watch due to the title, whereas those looking for something more average will be surprised to discover substance.

Some may recall that I had written about this show once already, just before the final two episodes had first aired. I’ve since watched it a second time, and viewed the first season a third time for the sake of my colleague’s podcast. I’ve learned a lot more about these characters during these viewings; what makes them tick, and what makes them interesting.

Despite a two hour conversation on just the first season, I have notes of character quirks, lines of dialogue, and potential themes that I was not able to thoroughly address during our recording. As such, I hope to address them now: in particular, Hachiman Hikigaya’s and Yukino Yukinoshita’s conflicting perspective on change, and how the former’s attitude gradually begins to shift.

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Ghostwire: Tokyo is a flawed game. Some of those flaws jump out quite obviously during gameplay, ripping the player out of the experience if even for a moment. Some are as elusive, immaterial, and yet ever present as the yokai that confound or trap a number of spirits throughout the game’s urban environment. Some of these are perceived flaws based on an open-world design philosophy that is becoming increasingly tiresome and outdated to many in the gaming audience.

It didn’t take long, then, for me to begin spitting out words of back-handed defense while playing on stream. “It’s not great, but it’s still pretty good!” It was as if I was more afraid of over-selling the game than I was under-selling it, or reflexively trying to explain why I was having such a good time playing a game with such middling reviews. I had forgotten that there’s a reason I do not trust most game reviewers these days, particularly if they rely on numbers to summarize and assess a game’s quality.

Instead of trying to defend Ghostwire: Tokyo, as if it does not have the right to be as enjoyable as it is, I should instead be digging into what makes the game so engaging for me. Not only could this provide proper feedback to the development team by acknowledging its strengths, but it would help us better understand why some games in this tiring open-world “genre” are still able to be fun. Or, perhaps, it can simply help us understand what it is we enjoy and appreciate the most.

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Every so often YouTube recommends the latest Film Courage video featuring Chris Gore, co-founder of Film Threat, to me. I have generally enjoyed his takes on movies on that channel, though this latest video on the popularity of villains felt limited to me. I think the topic of why people are drawn to both heroes and villains is a fascinating one, and often for different reasons or impulses.

Simultaneously, I’ve also felt that the obsession with villains has avalanched from the late eighties and into the nineties, culminating in massive corporations like Disney not only trying to reinvent many of their classic antagonists, but creating a young-adult dramedy franchise with the villainous progeny.

Perhaps the best way to perceive the obsessive counter-cultural identity of the early-to-mid 90’s was not through the rise and fall of Grunge Rock, nor the release of recontextualizing novels such as Wicked. Instead we need only look at the career of Tim Burton, a man whose entire filmography centers on the misunderstood misfit and the awful and imposing values of traditional Americana. While Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice would put him on the pop culture radar, it was Batman in 1989 that really captured Tim Burton’s fascination with the outcast by focusing more time on the villainous Joker, interpreted excellently by Jack Nicholson. Films such as Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks!, and The Nightmare Before Christmas would solidify not only Tim Burton’s trademark preference for villainous – or at least villainous looking – characters than what society considered pretty and prim, but it would also embody a lot of the tone of the 1990’s.

Which is why it is fitting the new Millennium begins with his awful and embarrassing take on The Planet of the Apes, but that is a digression for another day.

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