Amatuer Analysis: Bioshock Infinite

Warning: spoilers for the game Bioshock Infinite. If you haven’t played it and still care about playing the game fresh, then stop reading.

When we first start Bioshock Infinite we see an epitaph which gives away one of the key plot points that was meant to be a big reveal. The epitaph also warns us that all the assumptions our protagonist will be operating on are completely wrong. Even so, Booker DeWitt believes that in order to clear a debt to very dangerous people he has to infiltrate the floating city of Columbia, retrieve a VIP, and bring her to “the men in New York.” For a large chunk of the game Booker is very belligerent about clearing his debt, yet in spite of his mixed up brains it’s a bizarre motivation.

We can safely assume Booker owes a large sum of money which he could probably never repay through regular work on a deadline satisfactory to his creditors. We can also assume they’re also very scary people in Booker’s mind, but so what? Here’s the problem, there’s nothing to stop Booker from reneging on the debt. Booker’s wife: Dead. Booker’s child: No longer in this world. Booker’s work: Hired muscle when you get to the heart of it. Booker’s home: Apparently his rundown office. His life really sucks and there’s nothing beside the moral need to repay what one owes. However, when he finally meets Elizabeth and witnesses her powers whatever obligation he has to repay the debt should have been overwhelmed by the spine chilling horror born of imagination. Elizabeth demonstrates a power which makes mockery of all our ideas of time and space, and handing her off to violent gangsters is a recipe for disaster. For her to stay in Columbia can only end badly for the world, but for her to be under the thumb of the men in New York is hardly better.

As Booker and Elizabeth took over the First Lady for the first time, there were likely more than a few players who got mad at Booker for insisting on going to New York and the flimsy ruse he employed to get Elizabeth on the vessel. Instead of the condescending bullcrap which only got him smashed with a wrench, he should have been direct with her. He did mention he racked up a debt with bad men who are eager to get her, but he should have elaborated that even if Booker failed or betrayed them that they wouldn’t stop. This persistence, and the vicious means the men in New York are willing to employ, are the reasons that Elizabeth must come with him to New York. She’ll be the bait which draws them in, and Booker will kill them.

Maybe deep down I’m a bad person, but killing the men in New York is a practical option which Booker should have contemplated the second he saw what Elizabeth could do. There’s no reason for him to be squeamish about it, his biography has demonstrated he is really good at making lots of people die. The term ludonarrative dissonance gets bandied about carelessly, but there is something curious about Booker shying from the most obvious solution. Why is he afraid of his creditors when regular gameplay has him bring death to his enemies like a Horseman of the Apocalypse? Hell, by the time Booker and Elizabeth get to the First Lady on top of his proficiency in murder he has: a shield which deflects bullets, the power of Geass, fireballs, and goddamn lightning! There are also the gears, but those are randomized with various degrees of usefulness. It’s not even a set of talents he loses by stepping out of the TV world; he can use them in New York and can sustain his powers through soda and chain smoking.

What makes Booker’s motivations especially frustrating is that a slight adjustment could have put his actions in a completely different light. “Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt” is what Booker is told and he misinterprets that as instructions to get Elizabeth… but what if he was told “If you want your daughter back, go to Columbia?” Booker, and players who aren’t expecting the rug to be pulled out from under them, instead operates on the belief that the men in New York are holding his infant daughter as collateral and as before he clears his debt by getting Elizabeth. That could work to put Booker in a more sympathetic light, create tension in Booker (and hopefully by extension the player) as they waver between the drive to save the baby girl and guilt at the thought of selling Elizabeth out, and possibly show a little character development in Elizabeth.

In the game, Elizabeth is eventually resigned to teaming up with Booker as her best shot at getting out of Columbia, but with a Booker motivated to save his daughter perhaps Elizabeth might consciously make herself an ally in Booker’s quest. She still wants her freedom, but the idea of a father wading through great adversity to rescue his child might appeal to a young woman who had less than ideal parental figures in her life. Thus she resolves to help Booker find a way to get wee baby Anna back without not subjecting herself to new prison same as the old prison. At the very least, this should get the player amped from the sensation of the tide turning and the roaring fighting spirit against all who stand in the way of a happy ending.

If played with well, awareness of Booker’s daughter and the overarching goal of rescuing her could make the big reveal hit harder. Bioshock Infinite’s ending show that Booker had already paid his debt by handing over his infant daughter. Booker’s insurmountable debt was a ploy by Comstock because he needed a blood relation to take over after he died, but was sterile and couldn’t produce an heir naturally. Still a little hazy on how this plan was intended to work, as it seems everything that went wrong for Comstock could be traced back to crimes he committed to conceal the truth about Elizabeth.

Anyway, I know it’ll probably make the plot twist that Elizabeth is Booker’s kid even more obvious than it already was (Seriously, was up with that woman addressing Elizabeth by her real name other than to give away that plot point?), but if there were alterations in the dialogue for Booker and Elizabeth to gradually convey a sense of parent and child in the dynamic between them it could pay off big in the ending. The time spent with Elizabeth gives a glimpse of what Booker could have had is he didn’t give up, and the idea that in spite of himself he might not have been a terrible father. Perhaps the game should have made the reveal about Elizabeth’s origins and Booker’s failure as a man earlier in the story. The ending threw too many twists at the player in too small a frame of time to absorb it all. Pretty sure the audience would appreciate seeing a universe where Booker grabbed a brick and knocked Robert out rather than hand over his daughter.

Think about it, that moment would have been a perfectly good time to exercise the murder option since the men in New York were comprised of a very mortal Robert Lutece and Comstock without his army of zealous followers is just a fanatical old man.

All said, I still enjoyed Bioshock Infinite and in spite of the shakier parts of the story it’s nice to see a shooter attempt a narrative and themes of some complexity in a market where the single player side is a flimsy excuse to sell an updated version of multiplayer every year. But what the hell was going on in Friendly Patriot World? Those robots were programmed to ruin your day, but there was the option to summon them in some intense battles. It follows that in at least one universe, there were circumstances which lead to Patriots being programmed to fight on Booker’s behalf. Did nobody at Irrational stop and think the players might be curious to get even a glimpse of that world?

Say What? Championship Edition

By Boogie Knight

Dead Space 3 x Resident Evil 6 Double Review

Originally posted by Boogie Knight:

The horror genre has suffered for want of games, but for some time a fan could get by on action games which made nods to horror. Dead Space and Resident Evil games from RE4 onward fit the bill as pretty good action with a little horror for flavor. However, there is concern that to appeal to “broader” audiences the suits are trying to extricate the niche nature of horror games and use brand recognition to sell generic shooters. I think it’s more than fitting to have a review which compares and contrasts the most recent installments, Dead Space 3 and Resident Evil 6, as well as assess how well founded those concerns are.

Dead Space 3 continues the story of one man who survives encounter after encounter with alien artifacts and the deranged humans who worship the unholy things. In the first couple games, Isaac unwittingly ended up in dangerous places which started going to hell, but this time Isaac gets conscripted into saving his girlfriend (the new one who apparently he had a relationship with which fell apart between DS2 and DS3). To pander to the conventions of the genre, co-op was added and rather than using an established character we get a new guy named Carver who just reminds me of the sucky brother from Dragon Age II. We also get Simon Templeman voicing the human main antagonist, which in and of itself would be awesome, but it gets a tad silly how often the heroes live to fight another day because the badguy would rather talk them to death instead of shoot them.

As the game progresses, we get to learn more about the history of the Markers, the slow dying gasps of the human race, and even get to learn about an alien civilization. The characters have always had only the faintest characterization, so it’s easy to forgive how paper thin the personalities of the cast is. Yet, the mythology itself if pretty engaging and fun to learn about. Though as more facts are learned about the Markers it can get confusing and perhaps contradictory, but this is evil alien voodoo we’re talking about that turns people insane and/or twisted monstrosities which mock the victims with the semblance of humanity that remains.

Resident Evil Giraffe Felatio I mean 6, is about Capcom making crap up as it goes along to get around the big finale which Resident Evil 5 was billed as. The universe allows for plenty of intrigue and plotting with nasty viruses at the center, but this installment goes about it in the clumsiest way possible. To be fair, Ada’s entire story flashes with big neon letters that while Umbrella got all the attention there was another group discretely making plays behind the scenes, but what we get is underwhelming.

And how come I never heard about anyone crying racism over killing all the Chinese mutants? I know I haven’t been paying attention, but the cast of player characters is the most lily white for no good reason. Leon could sorta be justified because he’s tied to Ada and ever since RE4 they’ve been stuck together. Chris’ arc was boring and frankly I thought he could have been another character and he would have made the same impact. Seriously, I spent the first chapter of his story wondering who the hell Finn was and if he was an established character before RE6, and why couldn’t he be teamed up with Claire instead for a little sibling banter between sessions of monster slaying (maybe one scene where they exchange apologies for mean stuff they did to each other as kids when everything looks bleak). It brings up a fundamental issue of the creators introducing red shirts and apparently expects the audience to give a damn when they meet the inevitable doom the protagonists could have seen a mile away.

Then there’s Jake, trying to have one player character who wasn’t a goody goody might have been a step in the right direction, but then there are scenes where apparently he is supposed to be a character instead of pure id and he isn’t as engaging. However, the saving grace is the introduction of a grown up Sherry from Resident Evil 2, which gives me hope that one day Capcom will totally steal my idea of a CG buddy flick teaming up Sherry with Ashley as they survive a skyscraper full of zombies in the spirit of House of the Dead: Overkill (Heck, Claire and Sherry would have made a good team as well with their history, and perhaps a master-pupil dynamic). Apparently, Jake is supposed to come off as a jerk for demanding 50 million dollars for “the cure,” and while he is a jerk considering how much the US federal government squanders on pork barrel projects his offer is fairly reasonable.

Gameplay is the easiest way to examine whether or not a survival horror franchise has totally lost its mind. Dead Space 3’s gameplay is fairly consistent with previous installments, but there are a few notable changes. The ability to roll out of danger by double tapping the run button is very welcome since killing enemies charging directly at me seems to be that one thing I could never get right and thus lose chunks of health or outright die. Making custom weapons with various combinations and attributes from scraps and spare parts is more fitting than the shop system of the older games, though once you make the combination pulse rifle-force gun with stasis coating a great deal of difficulty evaporates. Yes, there is a cover system now, but human enemies whom you use it to fight are a relatively small part of the game and are around almost entirely for plot reasons.

As for the new co-op feature, one could argue that DS3 simultaneously got it completely right and got it completely wrong. Co-op is entirely optional, and the story accommodates for not lugging around the new guy so you don’t have to worry about a retarded AI partner. Yet, there are a few optional objectives which can further characterize the new guy, get logs and collectibles for trophy hunters, but these are only available in co-op. It’s good that you can beat the game without co-op, but the co-op is online only so antisocial players or those with poor internet connections are locked out of a good deal of the content.

The microtransactions for resources have raised the ire of fans, but you can get by abusing the scavenger bots to farm resources… which includes ration seals which you can turn around and use to get resource packs for free which otherwise you might pay for. Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer had ingame currency to buy packs, but the time it took to farm could be taxing and the gear in the packs was essential to creating a decent build so it was understandable for a player wanting the coveted 5K EMS to break down in frustration and buy one or two packs with real money to speed the process along. In Dead Space 3 there is no reason to spend real money other than being a complete doofus who give in to peer pressure easily.

Let me first state that I loved the first Resident Evil, it was the reason I got an original Playstation in the first place. I found the second RE to be like a religious experience, but for some reason afterward my passion for the series waned. Probably because of a number of installments that were for other consoles so keeping up was hard. I hadn’t played RE4 until it got ported to the PS2, and was about 20 bucks, but I enjoyed the game very much and in spite of everything I didn’t hate RE5. Out of morbid curiosity I tried Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City and what a piece of crap. I heard bad things about it, but I wanted to be open minded. It was a poor experience, and a franchise is allowed to have ups and downs, but the worst part about ORC was that I felt like it was a taste of things to come with Resident Evil 6.

Okay, seriously, one would think that after ORC bombed more sensible people at Capcom would have argued for taking another look at RE6 to see what bad ideas the two games had in common which could be remedied. To be perfectly blunt, turning Resident Evil 6 into a stupid shooter with monsters could have been tolerated if at the very least it played well! While playing the different campaigns and the multiple personality disorder approach I couldn’t help thinking of other games I could be playing which could do what Capcom was trying and do it better. Leon’s campaign seemed to be making nods to the classic survival horror roots, and yet with the swarms of enemies and shitty lighting as well as constant explosions I don’t know what the hell they were going for.

Parts reminded me of Left 4 Dead, and there were parts in which the player was ganged up on by zombies in damn near total darkness… Dead Space had similar moments, but the monsters had red glowing eyes to be really scary as well as give the player an idea of where to shoot. Oh, and Dead Space had stasis to freeze enemies and the force gun for crowd control. Instead of fixing this, Capcom just accepted it was crap and gave the player the quickshot in which the player would spin around and shoot wild at the nearest foe. Strategic dismemberment and aiming? “Screw that!” seems to be Capcom’s reply.

That is probably one of the big problems of the game, figuring out what the hell you’re shooting at is way too frickin’ hard with the masses of enemies and crappy visuals. I’ve never seen a game look so expensive yet sloppy at the same time, finding a game with a worse pallet would require picking out something from the early 90s. It would have been so much better if the game was bright enough to see everything… or really bright and colorful… and instead of using ineffectual guns got a really sweet melee weapon… like a chainsaw. Wait, I just described Lollipop Chainsaw.

The prologue really sets the tone for the entire game, elaborate but boring scenes where stuff spontaneously combusts as bland music and bad acting assault the senses. For all the slings and arrows it took, Resident Evil 5 at least understood it should wait a few minutes with building tension before throwing swarms of zombies at the players. RE6 just throws us into crisis mode on the assumption that being loud and flashy will be enough to induce a sense of urgency. Oh and somehow, Capcom managed to make the inventory system even more unintuitive and sucky for real time access.

Whether a game will implement regenerating health or not is a big choice that determines how a game should be played. Resident Evil 6 decides to play it both ways by segmented health, but when a zombie grapples ya it seems like the whole damn health bar disappears like a platter of ribs at a refugee camp. Then you either use up a spray can to recover your health bar and risk losing it all again or recover one segment at a time gobbling tic tacs. A shooter with segmented health that you can restore with health items can work, it did for the original Resistance… but The Darkness II really shone as segments were restored by tearing out the hearts of enemies who were slain, or be performing vicious and satisfying executions of enemies you had at your mercy. What were we talking about again?

And then there are bugs and glitches… which come with the territory for games which are heavily scripted. On more than a few occasions I would see enemies milling about not doing anything even as I walked up to them. One amusing moment involved my AI sidekicks and enemies hanging around like they were having a casual chat, almost like a scene from Wreck-It-Ralph, then they notice me and go through the motions in the futile attempt at being exciting. That the game is heavily scripted with its sound and fury signifying nothing is bad enough, the scripted events are retarded as bosses just flat out refuse to die.

Many shooters have the option of firing blind, and while there is the quickshot it requires one more button and consumes stamina. Given that cover based shooting is a major component of Resident Evil 6, it would make sense to let a player fire blind from cover, or at least do so while running around, or let a player get behind cover by just pushing a single button rather than having to hold a button and press another button. And in Chris’ campaign, the player could be forced into situations where neither option will have positive consequences and slip further into a spiral of violence, stupidity, and death. Dammit, I’m now thinking of Spec Ops: The Line.

Okay, now Dead Space 3 is far from perfect. The sparse characterization in the single player experience makes some motives unclear. To be honest, a lot of the problems stem from the choice of changing Isaac from a silent protagonist to a talking one. For plot reasons, it made some sense for Isaac to interact verbally with other characters, but once he started being his own character rather than our avatar in this mixed up world; it became increasingly harder to relate to him. In Dead Space 3 he comes off as petulant and childish when he gets informed of the situation, and takes one hell of a carrot to get him off his ass.

As mentioned before, characterization has been a weakness for Dead Space, but one thing which strikes me about the perfunctory love interest is the squandered potential in connecting it to one of the core ideas of the series. In spite of losing his mind, though his madness often comes out through him insisting he is crazy like whiny teens so, Isaac still seeks out connection to other people, affection from another human being. The main temptation of the Marker is its offer of connection to everyone in their species; the Marker takes a human need and extrapolates it to a perverse extreme.

Yet, the deficiencies in Dead Space 3 are nowhere as glaring as spending time in Leon’s campaign saving people who were already dead and killing people who might have had a chance. How can a plot be so convoluted, yet can telegraph that the player is doing something stupid and not give a chance to advance the plot without being a dummy? On the other hand, introducing something like a choice system would result in a diminished game, as players would only choose the approaches that were not the retarded choices.

In conclusion, Dead Space 3 is more of the same, a perfectly serviceable game which doesn’t offend but doesn’t really offer more than a new plot to excuse shredding up monsters (though I did like one part near the end where one monster was using other little monsters as hand grenades, if there was more interspecies cooperation that might have been pretty scary, like Doom in reverse). Resident Evil 6 is a game I don’t hate, but it’s more like the simmering loathing of a couple that have been together for a long time. Then one morning one of them wakes up early and looks at the other, all the while thinking, “Look at this sorry motherfucker, breathing and shit.”

Some fans throw around the idea of Resident Evil “getting back to its roots” in the same way that unimaginative executives talk about “thinking outside the box,” but there’s no going back for a series where the end of the world might as well be called Tuesday. The only practical options for Resident Evil would be to either embrace the reality that the universe is just damn goofy and play it up for laughs, or do a soulless reboot to try to “go back” and recapture recalcitrant fans. Somehow, I imagine we’re gonna get a few more sucky games before we get the inevitable reboot.

Pertaining to the future of the horror genre itself, there are smaller developers and titles working hard to bring decent games to market. Heck, even the modest Slender game is getting a bigger and hopefully better sequel, and from what I read a spiritual remake of the very first Clock Tower game might be release for the WiiU… which leaved me wondering why Capcom is just sitting on the Clock Tower property along with Haunting Ground. The worst Clock Tower game was when Human tried to ape Capcom’s surprise success by shoe horning in zombies and viruses, as long as the game is playable there is damn near no way that anything Capcom makes will ever sink that low. Screw it, I’m gonna wrap up that Corpse Party sequel and hope that if I’m a good boy, Santa will get XSeed to localize more of that franchise for Christmas.

The Five Worst Anime I’ve Seen So Far

Original post by Boogie Knight

For many people, anime was a marvelous window into a whole new world with different aesthetics and narratives which provided a nice break from the tired and stale tropes used in the movies one grew up with. However, watch enough anime and over time one will learn that the medium is just as susceptible to the foibles and utter incompetence which make a creative business rather bland. Thankfully, I learned this early on when I first got into watching anime, and the experience saved me from turning into a stereotypical weeabo. So, with the end of the year upon us, I’d like to share the five worst anime I have seen thus far, and let us hope the new year provides more of the good stuff.

5. Tenchi Muyo! OAV 3

The original two OAVs where first introduced to many Western fans through the Toonami block. This also introduced fans to the harem anime genre, though it was probably best remembered for freely mixing genres of sci-fi, comedy, romance, and so on. Unfortunately, the Toonami airing seemed to have cut out an epilogue which introduced a rival for Tenchi with similar abilities and one of the powers that be warning the rival against fighting him. Between that and what we did see in the Toonami run, some very promising raising of the stakes were hinted at. Plenty of hardcore fans couldn’t wait for a continuation of the OAV series, eager to see what directions the story might take them.

But wait they did, for about seven years. What we got was the closest anime will ever get to The Phantom Menace. The third OAV was a failure on many levels, and not just for having a worse case of Venom Syndrome than even Spider-Man 3. Reducing “Z” to little more than a bookend was a bad call. He could have been a straightforward rival, he could have tried to recruit Tenchi into his cause of revolt against the powers, or he could have become buds with Tenchi and merely going through the motions of rivalry when the girls are looking. In the first episode there was hints at a potentially good episode with normal people finding out about Tenchi’s living situation, but this goes nowhere, not even as a way of showing how far Tenchi has been separated from the “real world.”

Problems not only arise from what was missing, but from what was put in. Adding a new girl in a new season of a harem anime is par for the course, but I can’t bring myself to like Noike. Heaven knows the creators tried their hardest to make us think she was awesome. She was partners with Mihoshi, adopted into the Jurai royal family, and even has that female half of Kagato rattling around in her head (long story, and even when explained it makes no sense). If they had to add a new girl, a girl who was partners with Mihoshi would be okay, if she was a normal person we could relate to, all the better. The only problem is that for years we already had such a girl called Kiyone Makibi. While talking about Noike, it’s worth bringing up that the most action we get throughout the entire OAV is the semi transparent nudes of Ryoko and Ayeka, while the actual anime shortchanges the viewer, not even relegating the perfunctory fanservice to a single episode where it might at least have the cover of context. And while there is a bathing scene, Noike never shows the goods because she’s so damn special she’s above getting naked like every other gals character in the previous OAVs.

Apparently, a good chunk of the OAV involved characters who were part of the GXP spin-off series, which I did not watch because it was a spin-off. And there was a sister who Tenchi never knew he had who appears, then vanishes, and doesn’t do a thing to advance anything which only leaves the question of what the whole point of the character was. Another reason why OAV 3 was a complete clusterfuck has to do with information that was never available within the anime, but in doujinshi that was a vanity project of one of the creators. You never make side stuff essential to knowing what the hell is going on! You can incorporate ideas, even copy and paste side stuff into the main series, but never make fucking doujinshi essential reading to knowing what the hell is going on. On the other hand, a comedy can be given a lot of latitude if a nonsensical plot at least connects on joke to another, but the crux of the problem is that the third OAV just isn’t funny in the slightest. Oh, and while it’s normal for fans to reflexively reject new VAs, turning Ryoko from femme fatale to wannabe Etna was very unbecoming.

Few experiences are as agonizing as hating something that one dearly wants to like. Squandered potential and bad ideas define an anime which had plenty to bring to the table. Whatever the future of the franchise may be, there’s not much hope for it. To be blunt I hope that everybody just walks away from the mess and develop new properties to build up and eventually botch.

4. Fencer of Minerva.

Criticizing an anime released in the 90s for having a bad dub is like complaining about silent movies not having recorded dialogue. Yet, Fencer of Minerva manages to have the single worst dub I have ever heard. The dialogue belongs with the speeches of mass murdering despots in the compendium of most horrid things ever uttered by the human mouth. The dub was literally physically painful to listen to.

And for good measure, the whole thing was creepy as hell. John Norman’s Gor novels are the fantasies of a bad writer venting frustrations at women who resemble old girlfriends. Someone in Japan apparently found a copy of his drivel and thought, “Gotta get me some of that!” Thus, we get the complete subjugation of the female sex which makes Analogue: A Hate Story the Disney version as the cherry on the sludge sundae which is Fencer of Minerva.

3. Ninja Resurrection

This was the anime which sobered me up to the reality that anime can suck just like anything else. Ninja Scroll was one of the most awesome action films of all time, anime or otherwise, and naturally anything connected to Ninja Scroll would benefit from the goodwill. While Ninja Resurrection takes inspiration from the same novels, and has a main character with some similarities, the two anime are as different as can be. Ninja Scroll has some dark subject matter, but Resurrection assaults the viewer with senseless violence and nobody to honestly root for. That the series was never finished only indicates that even the individuals involved in bringing the anime to life thought they were making a piece of crap.

Ninja Resurrection covers an interesting, if somewhat bleak point in history when the shogunate instituted harsh policies which persecuted Christians within Japan. However, as a number of these stories seem to do, they go off in this bizarre supernatural direction which leaves the viewer scratching their head wondering if the historical context is just an excuse for demons and such to pop up. A little sad when Samurai Champloo is the anime which comes to mind which tackled the subject best, but even as an action piece Ninja Resurrection fails to raise the pulse. One particular case of violence really turned my stomach and twice the anime rubbed it in my face to make sure I couldn’t selectively forget it. If anyone tries to get you to watch Ninja Resurrection, just watch Ninja Scroll again and save yourself the misery.

2. Elfen Lied

This anime gets plugged every so often, and I think the main reason is Elfen Lied being the initiation of many viewers to an ultraviolent anime which was one big downer. And since they were teenagers at the time, excessive violence and being an oppressive downer were signs of maturity. I’ve only seen it within the last year and have been able to look at it with more grown up eyes and found myself in horror.

Starts out simple enough, naked girl with weird high tech stuff on her slaughtering soldiers with her mind, but there was the apparent subplot with a secretary or assistant trying to get the coffee just right for a man. All hell breaking loose doesn’t trouble her one bit as she remains fixated on pleasing this guy. Soldiers ineffectively struggle to stop the mysterious mass murderer from escaping, and the assistant steps into harms way and naked girl doesn’t hesitate to add her to the body count. Her dying words about the coffee for the superior who looks on in horror, and I assume this scene was to make it clear to the audience that naked girl is a violent lunatic more than a wronged party unleashing vengeance on her captors. Coleman Francis can rest easy knowing that someone has carried on the tradition of making coffee an important plot point.

The bloodthirsty nudist escapes, but a blow to the head turns her into a drooling idiot with the mental age of a toddler. What transpires is one of the clumsiest narrative messes as one contrivance and unsettling scene is put before the audience in the saddest attempt to delay the inevitable and just deal with the obvious plot twist hinted at in the first episode. Two amnesiacs in one anime just might be the laziest device ever employed to keep the real plot from happening.

A bleak worldview doesn’t automatically make Elfen Lied bad, but goodness what we get seems to come more from a goal of creating maximum drama rather than a perspective shaped by getting kicked around by life. The brutality and excessive cruelty of various scenes results in an anime which is defined by bad taste.

1. Eiken

How much do I hate Eiken? The only way I could hate Eiken more is if it poisoned my stepfather in his sleep and married my mother. I’m not gonna lie and say I never enjoyed a stupid anime which existed solely for the purpose of shameless titillation. Still, it’s hard to think of another anime which has absolutely no redeeming qualities. Sad thing is, if the twisted mind behind it really tried, the damned thing could have been a brilliant parody, or even a satire addressing the excesses of media images or the external qualities which spark initial attraction and the bullshit people come up with after the fact to justify the attraction.

Then again, I might well be tormenting myself in the fruitless exercise of trying to turn something mind numbingly stupid into sublime genius. The horrendous proportions and atrocious depictions of the female form are like the scribbles of small children or primitive cultures who worship alien gods waiting for the stars to be right. Let this sink in for a moment: Eiken’s freakishly proportioned women make the Dead or Alive franchise’s inflated figures not so bad by comparison.

Adding insult to injury, this semi-pornographic peepshow parades as a romantic comedy while it presents the male and female leads with so little chemistry and no personalities to speak of… their lameness almost makes them perfect for each other in their War on Quality. While aping a few things that the creator of the original manga might have seen in better stuff, Eiken just goes through the motions without anything that could honestly be called romance. Two people being this stupid together isn’t true love, at best it’s the prologue of a Maury Povich babydaddy episode. Of course a lot of this could be forgiven if this piece of crap was at least funny, or at least presented an amusing diversion.

I did a bit of research, and apparently the original manga has at least fourteen volumes with over a hundred chapters total. Somehow there are enough people reading it for the unholy thing to have lasted as long as it has. Duke Nukem Forever you can chalk up to one little adventure in bad taste, but for the manga to have lasted so long a number of people had to have kept supporting. This might be the true horror: Eiken can be one of the worst anime ever, but there are enough people who just don’t care.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, these are the five worst anime I have ever seen thus far. Wait patiently, and I’ll come up with the five best anime I have seen in 2012. Feel free to comment below or email me: legacyoflaharl@yahoo.com

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Words In Her Mouth

By Boogie Knight

wordsinhermouth9-2-12