Let's Talk About "Zombie A**: Toilet of the Dead" (A Real Film)

                         Year: 2011

                         Directed by: Noburo Iguchi

                  

If the actual title didn’t already work as a not-so fair warning of horrible things to come, the piece in question can better be described as a “proud” member of the alien tentacle/zombie exploitation sub-genre (yes, there is one), a brand of Japanese hardcore trash gory b-movie finesse in which director Noburo Iguchi seems to specialize.

A Canceled "High School Anime" Game's Character Selection

An unspecified number of sun cycles ago (about two years), yours truly and fellow Internet weeby friendo Ross Faries attempted to construct a bizarre hybrid between a board game and a table-top RPG themed after anime with a high school setting. The basic premise of said game had a fun gimmick I concocted during a stormy night of unbridled inspiration - or, as the doctor called it, a psychotic episode. In essence: there are twenty available classes for players' selection, all of which based off the most well-known and obnoxiously omnipresent stereotypes in the history of the Japan-originated medium; each class is assigned to a number on the traditional twenty-sided die which the potential players would have to roll in order to randomly pick a character. As for the content of the game itself, that's where we hit the proverbial snag. The project didn't really move beyond the pre-pre-pre-alpha phase and, in the end, we just ended up playing a single throwaway session along our group of friends with made-up rules and story. According to my fellow weeby friendo Ross Faries, the various blurbs for the character selection of this hypothetical board/RPG abomination are some of my most funny and witty writing to date. In light of that, I've decided to share them publicly for your reading enjoyment. May this supposedly “hysterical” and “satirical” descriptions of thrashy, overused high school anime stereotypes elate your day.

Hetalia Axis Powers: An Italian Perspective

This rant in the guise of a review was originally written all the way back in 2012, on a dare. Some minor aspects of it have been modified ever so slightly to reflect my current feelings for this series.

Humour is a thoroughly subjective matter. Its functionality depends on several factors such as personal tastes, current mood, specific settings, styles, pay-offs and the charismatic endeavour of its igniting devices - which is to say, the comedians and/or props involved. There are shows, animated series to be exact, out there that are usually considered funny and entertaining by a general audience (like the first season of “Adventure Time!”, to give you a random example) but that, quite frankly, don’t really appeal to my tastes, mostly because they try too hard to be nonsensical and weird for the sake of being nonsensical and weird or maybe just because something about the main characters’ behavior annoys me to death.

The LEGO Movie: Corporate Stasis Versus Chaotic Freedom

This piece was originally written in 2013, just as the subject in question was being released in theatres.

“The Lego Movie” is a hurricane of no holds barred bombastic fun whirling in a canvas of creatively cohesive chaos. It begins as a clever parody of the classic Hollywood-branded Chosen One narrative (with a particular keen eye for "The Matrix") and it evolves into a multi-layered allegory for… well, many things, actually! It's a critique on corporate power killing off the individual's creativity, the dichotomy between childlike imagination and adult-minded, self-imposed rationale limiting the creative activity, a commentary about the necessary relationship between Art and a business model to give Art a direction without abusing its power and, almost by accident, the perennial conflict between Man and Fate. For the sake of brevity, this article will only focus on the first point.

Bite Size Review: "Happy Sugar Life"

This short review is the second half of the original transcript for the Master Presentations episode already mentioned in this article.

   Year: 2018  
   Original author (manga): Tomiyaki Kagisora

   Directed by: Keizō Kusakawa and Nobuyoshi Nagayama

   Animation by: Studio Ezo'la

"Happy Sugar Life" is what happens when somebody takes the premise of an especially disgusting, borderline illegal hentai pornography (without the actual sex), deconstructs it and repackages it as a straight-up horrific, intentionally disturbing, unapologetically gut-churning, psychological horror.

Brandish #1: Dissection of a Bad Hentai

Rusty Soul’s “Brandish” is a low-bar hardcore hentai fantasy manga starring a voluptuous succubus princess trying to have sex with a young hero, only to get usually raped, gang-banged, physically humiliated and/or blasted away in return. It’s a comedy, laugh with me.

Bite Size Review: "The VVitch"

The following text is part of the transcript from a longer video entry in Madhog's Master Presentations review series, currently available on his YouTube channel along with most of his works of criticism.

                         Year: 2015

                         Written and directed by: Robert Eggers

                         Distributed by: Universal Pictures