Books: The Way You Make Me Feel by Maurene Goo

Photo of the front cover of ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ by Maurene Goo. Copyright goes to Maurene Goo and Ferrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers.

Hi! It’s Annie!

Happy Valentine’s Day, even though it’s late! Technically today is actually SAD (Singles Awareness Day), but I’m going to make myself sad and review a great romance-y novel that I loved reading recently. Reading and watching romantic content always makes me feel incredibly single, but despite the fact that I think the romance in this book is cute, it is by no means the most important part of the book. This book was amazing to read as a California native who lives by the LA area as well as great to read for the backstory that it gives the characters and the immense amount of personality that it gives it’s amazingly diverse cast. This book felt simultaneously important and like the absolute perfect read for Valentine’s Day because it celebrates all kinds of love. There’s also a character for pretty much anybody to relate to. Whether or not you relate to the main character, there’s something for everyone to connect to! MAJOR SPOILERS for this book coming up! It is definitely worth the read!

Summary: Clara is well known for being a troublemaker in school and doesn’t feel the need to focus on anything but her friends and the pranks she pulls. When she gets in over her head with a prank and is forced to work at her father’s food truck with her school rival to make up for it, she prepares herself for an absolutely awful summer. But she may learn more about herself than she thinks and make friends that she never expected, including a puppy like boy unfortunately named Hamlet.

The Good:

Clara- I thought I was going to absolutely hate Clara at the beginning of this book. It really doesn’t help that she is the type of kid that I hated in High School. She thinks she’s above everyone else in an effort to protect herself and shows this off by consistently making trouble for everyone else. She doesn’t seem to care about the consequences of her actions and she feels that she and her friends, and only she and her friends, are cool because they fight the system. In this she doesn’t see her own hypocrisy in looking down on other students. At the beginning of this book I did hate Clara, but I don’t think you’re really supposed to like her. The author has said that Clara is like the opposite of her in school and she wanted to make a story that examined the psyche of these types of students who she also didn’t understand while in High School. As the book goes on you fully understand how Clara is simply insecure and doesn’t exactly know how to deal with it. She’s not super close with her friends even though she would like to think that she is and she still deals with some trauma surrounding the divorce of her parents. Throughout the book she becomes more bearable to everyone including herself, learns more of what it is to be a decent human being, and changes her priorities. By the end of the book she’s gone on a huge journey of self love and self exploration that the reader has gone on with her. She makes mistakes along the way, but that only succeeds in making her humanly flawed. Reading her journey feels so rewarding by the end!

Rose- Rose is the school rival of Clara. She’s incredibly devoted to her grades and school events and stresses about what college she’ll go to. In fact, she’s been diagnosed with anxiety, which made her extremely relatable to me. Rose starts out a little whiny, but just like Clara’s Dad tells her when they’re first trying to work together, Rose is a really cool person. She’s the exact type of grounding force that Clara needs in her life while Clara is able to calm down Rose and be the protector that she needs. Watching them go from enemies to best friends is one of the most important parts of this novel. And I absolutely loved how blunt Rose was around Clara once she felt comfortable. While I never was interested in school events; I did relate to the importance on grades and anxiety so much. As well as the fact that Rose doesn’t feel like she’s had real friendships before she finds her small group here. I also loved that she completely backed off of Hamlet as soon as she realized that he wasn’t interested in her and that Clara also liked him. You see it way too often with rivalries in books with girls that they end up fighting over the guy. It was great that it didn’t happen here!

Hamlet- The adorable puppy of a guy who works at a coffee shop across from where they usually park the food truck. He has an immense amount of energy and always seems to be friendly to absolutely everyone. I think one of my favorite moments with him was how his reaction to Clara’s school friends messing around at the water park eventually also changed Clara’s response to what they were doing. He is absolutely concerned about the safety of everyone and his compassion always inspires other people to be just as compassionate. At the same time he stands up for what he believes in and is unafraid of calling out Clara when she needs it. He’s absolutely adorable and such a wholesome boyfriend character. I just wanted more of him in every chapter! And don’t get me started on how nervous he was to kiss her and how sweet he is to his grandparents. Also, his grandparents were hilarious and a highlight of the book!

The Food Truck- I just really liked the aesthetic that the food truck provided. Firstly, this book takes place in K-Town in Los Angeles. As someone who has done a fair amount of exploring K-Town in LA, I absolutely loved this inside depiction of it. The descriptions of the food and the different kinds of food trucks made my mouth water. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it right now! And I loved the small feeling of it because it felt like it drew the characters even closer together. There’s nothing like characters interacting often in a space where they’re always right over each other’s shoulders. This is not a common setting for a story, but I found it to be an extremely effective one! I genuinely want to see more books, shows, or movies, take place in food trucks!

Father and Daughter- One of the highlights of the book was the way we see how close these two are, and the way Clara realizes how important her Dad is to her as the book goes on. Her Dad has done so much more for her that she doesn’t see or fully appreciate and I loved seeing how her new knowledge made their relationship stronger. Also, I loved her Dad! He had to be one of my favorite characters, if not my favorite. He was hilarious and such a supportive character! Everyone needs someone like this in their life.

LA- Some of the details felt so familiar to me in such a great way. I never expected a book to bring up the California restaurant chain ‘Island’s’, or explain LA traffic in such a real way, or even talk so casually about the local attitude versus the tourist attitude. Such as how LA and California natives don’t at all care about the Hollywood sign but we’re all suckers for the view at night at Griffith Observatory. Little details like that really made this book for me. It felt like a love letter to LA while also being blunt about how much immigrants and their families for generations have done more for the culture of LA than truly any other group of people living there. This book made LA feel immersive too, which makes it a great book to slip into if you want to travel without going anywhere for a little while.

Friendships- I also have to talk about how healthy these takes on friendship were. How the friendships that last and were healthy for the main character were the ones where she didn’t feel that she had to perform. She just felt comfortable and was completely herself. We also got depictions of the friendships that don’t last. Clara’s friends from school expect her to be a certain way even as she starts changing rather than accepting the change. And when they accuse Clara of growing distant, she fully realizes both that she is and that it is the most healthy thing for her at the time. I know I’ve had realizations that I was better off without certain friends as I started to mature and I liked seeing that depiction here. It made me feel like it wasn’t just me!

The Bad:

Romance Development- I loved the romance in this story, don’t get me wrong. But I didn’t really feel like this romance developed in a way that made sense. Clara and Hamlet met maybe twice, barely spoke, and then suddenly they were an item. Clara didn’t even really seem to like him back for a good portion of this book and they only really felt like a couple toward the very end of the story. I honestly thought there was more chemistry between Rose and Clara or even Rose and Hamlet than there was between Hamlet and Clara. I understood why their relationship was beneficial for both of their character development, but I felt like we didn’t really get to see it happen. We didn’t really see them fall in love. The romance felt like a background thing in this novel compared to everything else because of it. I don’t think the plot would have happened much differently without the romance.

Clara- Though I liked her in the end, it was really difficult to like Clara. And I still don’t think I was completely sold on her by the end of the book. She was often cruel to other people and I don’t think she fully recovered from how absolutely mean she could be at the beginning of this book. I would have liked to see her repent for her actions a lot more, and I feel like we barely got to see her do that or even admit that she was extremely wrong for some of what she had done before. She does a really awful thing to her Dad towards the end of the book and though she kind of atones for it, I didn’t feel it fully made up for what she did.

Vegan- There’s a part in this book that a lot of people hated partly for good reason. Clara is cooking a vegan version of a meal and cooks it in the same pan that she cooks the meat in. When Rose scolds her for this, she claims that she doesn’t care and that cooking vegan is too hard. I don’t quite understand why people attacked this in the way that they did. Clara is supposed to be awful at this point of the book and she is absolutely supposed to be wrong. But I do think that the author may have underestimated just how much of an evil action that this was. I don’t think that this was completely forgivable at any point in the book. But I will at least say that this action was supposed to be cruel and the audience is supposed to dislike the main character for doing this.

Overall, I absolutely loved this book! I loved its depiction of LA and the aesthetic around it. While the main character wasn’t my favorite ever or personally relatable to me, I still loved a lot of the messages in this book that were told through the main character. And there were plenty of other things to relate to here as well! I highly recommend this book! If you want a wholesome read that makes you feel like you’re traveling to an awesome place, this is an exhilarating book to pick up!

See you across the pond!

Sincerely, Annie

Video Games: ‘The Last of Us’ Episode 4 and 5 Review

Screenshot of Keivonn Woodard as Sam in episode 5 of ‘The Last of Us’ on HBO Max. Copyright goes to Naughty Dog, Playstation Productions, and Sony Pictures Productions.

Hey! Hallie here!

I’m a little bit behind on my reviews for ‘The Last of Us’, mostly because of general busyness, but I’m definitely keeping up with this show and I’ve been loving it so far! The last few episodes have been a mostly connected story, so I’m going to review them both together. Regardless of the fact that we’ve been focusing on the same storyline for both episodes, each episode had a very different feel. One episode was surprisingly wholesome as it continued to develop the relationship between Joel and Ellie, while the most recent episode was heartbreaking and horrifying. There’s plenty to get into with both, including the ways each differ from the game. So let’s get into the review! SPOILERS AHEAD!

Episode 4:

The Immune:

Joel and Ellie: This episode is the first episode where we see the two really develop their relationship. It sticks pretty closely to the events of the game, but it even decides to differ the ways in which Joel and Ellie bond to help give their interactions a refreshing and more natural feel. I did love the throwbacks to the game here as well, though. I wasn’t expecting them to do the comedic scene where Ellie rifles through some of Bill’s things that she took, partly because I thought they were going to leave Bill and Frank completely behind in episode three. They matched it word for word in the show, and Bella Ramsey gave it completely new life. They also incorporated Ellie’s joke book into the show, which I was scared we weren’t going to get. Ellie’s completely confident way of delivering such bad jokes never fails to be hilarious. And it was brilliantly made into an even bigger part of Joel and Ellie’s developing relationship. The most heartwarming part of this entire episode was the scene where one of her bad jokes sends Joel into a giggling fit, prompting Ellie to laugh hysterically, partly out of surprise. The two traveling throughout the episode was given slightly more time here, which was nice. They were given a handful of extra moments where they could have deep, interesting conversations that highlighted the difference between the characters before everything went to shit.

Which, of course, happens when Joel and Ellie get run off the road by hunters. The shootout that happens afterwards took me right back to the gameplay in the video game, but I liked the added moment where Ellie was forced to rescue Joel. If I had to guess, I’d say this scene was placed here so that later on they don’t have to do the scene where Ellie saves Joel from being drowned by a hunter. That scene happens in the hotel, and considering they decided to already cover the hotel by putting it earlier in the story, I don’t think we’ll see it again later. Wherever it is, I always love the way Joel responds to Ellie saving him. He’s almost ashamed of himself for putting Ellie in a situation where she had to use her gun in any way. Although, I preferred that he immediately turned to comfort Ellie in the show over Joel yelling at Ellie because he can’t face his guilt in the game. And I much preferred Ellie’s reaction to it in the show, where she does seem a bit traumatized by it as opposed to not caring at all. Although, she did say she’s used a gun to harm before, and I can’t think of an instance from the video game that she could be referring to. In other words, I think this means more new content and I’ll be interested to see what she means in a later episode. Overall, Joel and Ellie were the entire point of the episode and they were the reason it worked. There were no side characters to steal the show here. It was all Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, and the excellent understanding they have of their characters.

The Infected:

Kathleen and Perry: Don’t get me wrong. I love Melanie Lynskey and I was ecstatic to see Jeffrey Pierce even though he isn’t playing Tommy this time around. But these villains didn’t make me sympathetic towards them at all. Perry is barely given any personality aside from his apparent love of tactical gear, and Kathleen comes across immediately as cruel and manipulative. Though she shows some concern for the hunters that work under her, it’s completely eclipsed by her hypocritical love of control whilst being part of a group that was initially resistance against a government organization. Considering that Joel was once a hunter, I really wanted to see some humanity in these hunters and a reason for why they act the way they do. But instead we got some regular, obviously evil, villains. The only ambiguousness came from the young hunter that Joel killed earlier in the episode, and he barely got any screen time. I really wanted more from these characters and the hunters as a whole.

Episode 5:

The Immune:

Henry and Sam: Anyone who’s played the game knew this wasn’t going to end well. But damn was it so much more brutal this time around. Henry and Sam aren’t separated from a larger group like they were in the game. They used to belong to Kathleen’s group, but now the two are very much on their own and in hiding from Kathleen. What makes this even harder on them is that Henry was responsible for the death of Kathleen’s brother, and neither of them have any experience with violence of any kind. Henry handed Kathleen’s brother over to FEDRA, essentially sentencing him to death, so he could save his brother. No guns or physical violence necessary. But that makes these two even more tragic of figures, because the fact that it’s essentially them against the world with very little means of protecting each other, makes them feel even closer than they were in the video game. I did love that they put in some disability representation here by hiring an actually deaf actor to play Sam, who is now a deaf character. It was so cool to see Henry and Sam signing, as well as the ways Ellie learned to interact with Sam despite not knowing ASL. I also liked seeing these two develop their relationship with Ellie and Joel. Ellie geeking out over her favorite comic book with Sam is still present here like it was in the game, and Sam even teaches her how to sign “endure and survive”, a quote often used in the comic. Meanwhile, Henry and Joel don’t start out trusting each other, but they develop a deep understanding of one another. While at first Joel calls Henry a “rat” for giving up Kathleen’s brother, he changes his tune when he learns it was for Sam, and the two bond over their protective nature. Henry even remarks that he knows Joel was a dad at one point based on the way he acts around Ellie.

My favorite result of these friendships has to be the impact Henry’s general pacifism has on Joel. For the first time, we see Joel plead with someone to put his gun down so he doesn’t have to kill him. Joel ends up needing to kill him anyways, but it was nice to see Joel finally decide that he’s tired of a life full of so much violence. But, as Henry and Sam fans know, these friendships don’t last long. Sam gets bitten in a huge fight with some Infected. Him telling Ellie that he’s infected was a nice change, though. The scene afterwards, where Sam turns, was made even more heartbreaking after seeing Ellie attempt to cure his bite with some of her blood in the hopes of passing on her immunity. And Henry’s pacifism made the scene where he has to shoot his brother and then turns the gun on himself, even more terrible than it was in the game. Ellie was understandably completely traumatized by these events in the show, much more than she was in the game, and the fact that Joel seems to find it easier to acknowledge their deaths than Ellie marks a major change that might make future episodes very interesting.

The Infected:

Kathleen and Perry: The problems I had with the previous episode didn’t go away. In fact, they were even worse. In this episode Perry does virtually nothing, meanwhile Kathleen orders an entire room full of innocent people to be killed because she sucks I guess. We hear a little bit more about her relationship with her brother, but it doesn’t matter. Because when you have a character who remorselessly kills innocent people left and right, puts her own people in danger for revenge, and out of nowhere decides she’s okay with killing kids, it’s hard to make that character sympathetic. And I don’t think they even put in that much effort to do so. In fact, the villains in this episode felt like they were only here to add to the carnage of the huge Infected attack late in the episode. The attack was frightening and probably gave horror fans everything they ever wanted from this type of series. I have nothing bad to say about this attack, partly because I was deliberately looking away for large portions of the scene (I’m a scaredy cat). But the scene seemed to be the only situation where the villains added anything interesting to the story. And it was because all of them were getting brutally killed. I’m glad we’re done with these villains and I hope that any other villains we see in the series will fare better.

And that’s it! Both episodes were really good, although the more I think about them, the more I deeply dislike the villains we got for this arc. It’s a shame, because I was so excited to see what Melanie Lynskey would be doing in this series. But the positives far outweighed the negatives. I think we’re in a really good place with Ellie and Joel’s relationship and I’m excited to see it progress. And I also think Henry and Sam’s story was done justice even though their episode is one I will likely not watch again any time soon for my own mental health. This series is doing some excellent work, and they still have several of my favorite segments of the game to cover. I’m excited to see what they’ll do with the future episodes and I’m completely ready to be devastated by them. That is what ‘The Last of Us’ does best, after all.

Don’t do anything fun until I get back!

Hallie

K-Pop: ONEUS DO IT

Screenshot of (from left) Kim Geonhak (Leedo), Lee Seoho, and Lee Keonhee. Copyright goes to RBW and ONEUS.

Hi! It’s Annie!

Some of my current favorite comfort watches are variety shows that are made for idols by the companies that those groups are with. I’ve talked before about how shows like this only become more common with the passing years and are beginning to completely surpass general variety shows. From ‘ATEEZ: FEVER Road’ to ‘Run BTS’ to ‘Monsta X Ray’, I’ve talked about a good amount of these types of variety shows. And, because I have neglected to before, I want to talk about my absolute favorite episodes of ONEUS’s ‘ONEUS DO IT’. As usual, my post concert depression caused me to want to watch as much ONEUS content as I possibly could in order to feel close to the experience, so I have now actually watched every episode of this show. And as usual, I wanted to put together a list of the must-watch episodes in chronological order. MAJOR SPOILERS for ‘ONEUS DO IT’ coming up!

MSC Freedom Pt 1 and 2:

This is a two part episode that features only Geonhak, Seoho, and Keonhee and is possibly one of the most wholesome of the episodes. This episode involves the three dressing in traditional hanbok and just exploring a cultural festival together. Unfortunately, it is pretty difficult to find these episodes with English subtitles. (Some of the episodes of this variety show come equipped with subtitles while some of them, particularly older ones, do not.) But I don’t think you need subtitles for all of the episodes of this show to still have fun with it. Through these episodes you see them explore the festival that takes place at a traditional Korean village. There was a small element of it that reminded me of Renaissance Faires that we have in the states. They ate plenty of food, explored shops specialized in hand-made trinkets, and even painted their own masks. The festival looked giant, at points they were crossing large bridges over water. The main draw here is just watching them have fun and laugh together while exploring this festival! They really seemed to have a lot of fun with it.

Grocery Shopping:

This episode is just Seoho and Keonhee and depicts them going grocery shopping for the rest of the members. That’s literally all it is, but I really enjoyed seeing something that felt so domestic. At the beginning of the episode they show a grocery list that Dongju had written for them and you follow them being hilarious as they go in to a grocery store to get everything on the list, like cases of water and paper towels. One of the best parts of this is watching them act crazy in an attempt to embarrass the other, but neither of them ever really get embarrassed so the other one usually just goes with it.

2 Slices of Pizza Please:

This is one of the most iconic episodes of ONEUS do it, so if you haven’t watched it I highly recommend that you do. The events of this episode are still brought up constantly by the members of ONEUS. This episode features Geonhak and Keonhee. The two have some free time during a stop in Milan in Italy where they have been filming. Both hungry, they wander the streets in search of some food with Keonhee on the hunt for pizzas because he really wants to try pizza in Italy. After seeing nothing they can really recognize, and Geonhak not wanting to wander for much longer, they decide to eat at McDonalds until Keonhee finally sees a potential pizza place with a menu that he can understand well. Geonhak relents and they go in in an attempt to order two slices of pizza and accidentally end up ordering two entire pizzas for just the two of them. They end up having a good laugh about it with their staff and eating a lot of pizza, and it’s just a short wholesome watch. It’s nice to watch them wander down streets together and have a good laugh at the pizza.

Xion Vlog in Chicago:

As usual, this only features a couple of the members; this time it is Dongju (it is his vlog after all) and Hwanwoong. One of the most common types of episodes for ‘ONEUS DO IT’ are actually Dongju’s vlogs. He is the most likely member to vlog what he does in a day, so it’s only right to give him a whole section of the variety show to himself. Like a lot of the other episodes that I like, this just features the two of them walking around Chicago for the most part. We see Dongju eating at a restaurant, which is a common sight in his vlogs, and then we just see the camaraderie between Dongju and Hwanwoong as they walk to a giant Disney Store. They look like they’re having a blast and you feel like you’re right there with them.

Xion Vlog- Come Back Home:

This is another casual vlog, but this time it’s a behind the scenes at one of their shoots! He has a few of these throughout, including one that features ONEWE, but this one might be my favorite. We see him eating at the beginning of the day with Geonhak and the adorable teasing. After that we get to see him in hair and makeup and then a lot of actual shots of the forest where they shot the video. My favorite is probably when Dongju goes through the set at night and shows all of the props that they’re using and does a small tour of their location. Overall, partly because they’re shooting in a forest, this is such a gorgeous vlog!

Chuseok Kitchen Battle:

This actually has all of the members of ONEUS in it, separated into two teams and cooking for Chuseok in order to win maknae Dongju’s favor. I think we all often forget that ONEUS is one of the groups where nearly every member is really good at cooking. The only member who doesn’t cook as much is Dongju, which is why he is the host and judge of this episode rather than on one of the teams. I won’t reveal who won, because that’s one of the reasons to watch it! I will say though that it’s absolutely hilarious to watch host Dongju terrorize the other teams while they’re attempting to cook. Also, the end products look delicious and now I’m hungry. I want them to cook for me, just once, please.

Halloween Mafia:

This is the version of the game where they play a drawing game and a mafia game at the same time. The costumes here are on point. I mean, Geonhak dressed as a vampire with his hair in a ponytail is just incredibly not fair. But what’s really not fair is that for the umpteenth time, Geonhak gets accused of being the mafia while a member dressed far more adorably (I won’t spoil who) is the real mafia. Don’t judge someone based on appearance, kids! The loser of the game has to give out candy to the producers while doing a sexy dance which, as you’ve probably guessed, ends up way more hilarious and chaotic than it does sexy. All in all, just some hilarious and wholesome Halloween fun.

Xion Vlog-Brothers:

For a ONEWE performance, the members of ONEUS stepped in and this meant an adorable collaboration performance that featured partly just Dongju and his fraternal twin brother Dongmyeong. Yay, fraternal twins! Hallie and I are also fraternal twins so it’s amazing to see them in the K-Pop industry! This vlog depicts the two practicing their choreography before the performance and also just sitting down laughing and talking. You really get to see the bond between the two of them and also how amazingly well they work together. In the end you get to see them actually film the project, and the end product is so good. I’ve watched this video several times because their collaboration work is just so damn good!

BBUSYEO:

This is an episode that features all of the members of ONEUS as they equip themselves with boxing gloves and challenge each other by remaining calm while the other says something that bugs them about that person. It’s all really hilarious and about mostly small stuff. After all, the stuff that most people argue about is the small stuff that honestly doesn’t really matter. But it’s hilarious to watch them do it. This features the Tom and Jerry duo, Geonhak and Seoho, challenging each other while the others watch in half laughter and half terror. They probably go the longest of everyone along with Dongju and Hwanwoong who are really nice about roasting each other. They all end on good terms though, so that’s what counts! But it’s funny to see the terror on the faces of those in the back who are unsure how this is going to go.

Bomb:

You know that if a video starts out with a warning about how chaotic it will be; it’s absolutely going to be good. This episode has all of the members passing around a balloon “bomb” that could go off at any point. They must pass it to each other and ask a question that must be answered before it is passed again. Those who are out have to put on angel halos and can help the others by grabbing a person and holding him in place in the hopes that the “bomb” will go off on him. The funniest parts of this for me were probably that everyone wanted to get Seoho out and couldn’t succeed even when they held him in place and that several people were too afraid to go after Geonhak, which made him feel left out though he was still laughing hysterically. It’s an adorable and chaotic episode and they looked like they were having so much fun.

Puppy:

This episode has only Geonhak, Dongju, and Hwanwoong and is the most adorable of all of the episodes of this variety show. They bring in this adorable tiny puppy and have the three boys take care of it and play with it for a good amount of time. At the end they have the puppy run towards them while they are all calling it, so that the puppy can choose who it likes best. Dongju is basically a human puppy, but gets really tired out with the puppy’s energy very quickly. The puppy also knocks Geonhak over, who is laughing, to try and lick his face. And jumps all over Hwanwoong who seems to have the same amount of energy as the puppy. When the puppy eventually chooses Hwanwoong in the end, Dongju jumps into Geonhak’s arms as his puppy instead. So really everyone is a winner!

Individuals:

Last year they had each of them do an individual episode all by themselves to release in rapid succession based off of their individual interests. Geonhak was the first to release his which was an instructional cooking video, Seoho came next with a video of him playing VR video games, then Keonhee doing an ASMR mukbang, then Hwanwoong working on some marker art, and finally Dongju building a gingerbread house. Each of these is adorable and lets you know a little more about the members considering these are all activities they chose to do themselves!

Chuseok Game:

All of them play a game for Chuseok. I’ve seen a lot of idols play this game, but this is the first time that I watched it where I felt like I could understand it! This game involves moving board pieces while also throwing these long plush sticks on the ground to see what word you’re given that will determine how you can move. But this time there are also forbidden words involved that can send you back to the beginning if you say them. Here, the parts that make it are the fact that the team that has Geonhak, Dongju, and Hwanwoong decide that one of the words for the other team will be a word that’s part of the game. The other team keeps rolling this word which always sends them back to the beginning, causing everyone to practically die laughing. At one point Keonhee tells Seoho to use a wish that he got as a reward in previous game to make them reveal the forbidden word. Seoho doesn’t understand so instead uses the wish to make them kneel to him, which causes the other team to practically die laughing while kneeling. I laughed so hard watching this episode that my stomach hurt by the end.

Sleepover:

All of the members dress in their pajamas and one person answers “most likely to” questions without the others knowing the question. So by knowing the member that is given as the answer, they have to guess what the question could have been. Chaos ensues. A lot of their opinions of each other are revealed through these questions and they end up having a few deep conversations as a result of things that come up because of them as well. So so many accidental compliments and insults! We also learn all about their sleeping habits here and see them hug plushies and toss them at each other. Watching Dongju step on all of them in order to turn off the lights at the end and the rest being so used to it that they don’t say anything is priceless. It just makes you want to get in your jammies and feel cozy watching it before bed.

Haunted House:

In this one they all go to a small amusement park in costume for Halloween and are just told that they will have to do a task. When they arrive they finally realize that this task is actually making it through a haunted house. Inside they will have to collect candy and whoever has the least amount of candy at the end has to ride one of the scarier rides at the park. Dongju and Seoho both seem completely unfazed by everything and nothing seems to scare them. Hwanwoong and Geonhak are both a little scared, but not so much that they can’t make it through. Keonhee however is a huge scaredy cat and gets scared by literally everything. It’s so much of a well known fact, that Seoho and a bunch of the staff also worked together to try and scare him. But he was inside for so long being scared that he collects the most amount of candy and wins. The losers don’t really feel like going on the ride so instead Keonhee, Geonhak, and Seoho go on and have an amazing time while Geonhak films. They laugh the entire time, it’s just so adorable!

Universal Japan:

This is the episode that I probably watch the most of all of them. In this one you see all of them visit Universal Studios in Tokyo on a particularly hot day. Keonhee, who must be crazy, is wearing a green sweater and thus declares himself to be Luigi in honor of Super Nintendo World. Hwanwoong, Keonhee, Dongju, and Seoho all absolutely geek out at Super Nintendo World. Which is great because for some reason Seoho isn’t in a lot of this episode. Dongju and Hwanwoong look like they’re having the time of their lives despite the heat. Geonhak, on the other hand, has couple dressed with Dongju and keeps saying that he wants to go home because of how hot he is. Throughout the video he blames Dongju for making them all go to Universal in several hilarious bits. The end of the video even gives us a sunset shot courtesy of Keonhee. It makes you feel like you’re at the theme park with them, which is one of the reasons why it’s a comfort watch for me.

Christmas:

This is one of their most recent ones and I have to say it’s probably the most hilarious of all of the episodes they’ve released. In this they do singing and dancing challenges as well as celebrity challenges while they are all dressed like either Santa or a reindeer. Cue a lot of Geonhak squinting while looking at pictures. I think my favorite part of this episode though is either Keonhee bending so far backwards it looks like he’s snapping in half or Seoho dancing to ‘Nude’ by (G)-IDLE because he’s dressed as a reindeer and reindeers are, well, nude. This has to be the funniest episode because of how genuine and hard their laughter is. They laugh so hard that all of them nearly cry at multiple points. I almost cried laughing watching this because of it. Almost no one is fully sitting up by the end of it.

These are all just a few examples of the variety that is actually in this variety show! And I absolutely love and recommend every single episode. But if you wanted a master list, this is probably what I would go with as my absolute favorites. I just love watching variety shows like this. It makes you feel like you’re with them in a way, because you’re often laughing with them or just as invested in what they’re doing as they are. Any of these episodes could be the absolute perfect comfort watch at the end of a bad day. These have been my most recent comfort watches! If you haven’t checked out this show yet, go do it! They’re all on Youtube and they are all so different. It never gets boring because they always switch it up between daily vlogs, theme parks, games, and exploration vlogs. You really see them do a bit of everything here!

See you across the pond!

Sincerely, Annie

Sci-Fi/Superheroes: Expectations for Season 3 of ‘Picard’

Screenshot of Jonathan Frakes as Will Riker and Sir Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard in promotional footage for season 3 of ‘Picard’. Copyright goes to CBS Television Studios, Roddenberry Entertainment, and Secret Hideout.

Hey! Hallie here!

I haven’t written about ‘Star Trek’ here in a while despite the fact that it’s one of my favorite franchises at the moment. That definitely doesn’t have anything to do with my love of ‘Star Trek’, but more because I haven’t really found much to talk about with the slowing down of ‘Star Trek’ content actively being released. But now the highly anticipated season 3 of ‘Picard’ is just a week away and there’s a lot to talk about. Between my theories for the season, my hopes for the story, and my interpretation of certain interviews given recently, I have a lot of opinions to give. To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about this season going into it. We’re being promised a lot, especially with the reuniting of ‘The Next Generation’ cast, but ‘Picard’ has promised a lot before and failed to deliver. There’s also some statements the creators have made that I feel are very misleading. But, just like every other fan of Trek, I want this season to be good. Very badly. So let’s get into the information we have and what I want to see.

Bringing in ‘The Next Generation’ Cast:

The main thing we know about this season is that the story will surround Picard reuniting with his crew. Given the darker and more dire feel of the trailers, we’re lead to believe that the crew of the Enterprise has become significantly edgier since they’ve parted ways. Will and Deanna aren’t as much of a concern where the edginess is involved, which I appreciate. The two have already been introduced in ‘Picard’ as pretty wholesome parents way back in the first season. I don’t doubt the two will be effected by the darker tone being struck here, but probably less so than their peers. Will is still taking on the role of a reasonable friend who can be counted on to break the tension, and Deanna is always the empathetic shoulder to cry on who often ends up being the voice of reason. Neither appear to be withholding some sort of dark side to go with those roles. On the other hand, Geordi appears to be an almost reluctant addition to the team. Given that he’s already been described as a family man, I think it’s clear that Geordi is going to resist rejoining Picard for the sake of his family. He might even resent that Picard needs him, which will be an interesting way to create tension. As for Worf, his appearance in every trailer usually comes with some sort of wisdom it sounds as though he’s sharing with Picard. It makes me think that Worf will be looking back on his life quite a bit in this season and learning from it, which really can’t hurt.

Then we have Beverly, who’s the most interesting character in all of the trailers so far. Not only is she the one cryptically warning Picard not to trust anyone, she’s also shown getting into crazy phaser battles and even getting cryogenically frozen. I think that we’re going to spend some time in this series searching for Beverly, who we know Picard will be trying to track down after being tipped off that she’s gotten herself into a dangerous situation. But I don’t think we’ll spend too much time without her. Gates McFadden has already been slighted enough when it comes to screen time and I can’t imagine them doing that to her again. I’m really not sure about Lore at this point. It’s hard to tell what role he’ll play, and I don’t trust them to make him as relevant as he deserves. Especially with the interesting addition of Moriarty who takes up much more trailer time, and the admittedly uninteresting villains that are set to be our main source of conflict for the season. Brent Spiner has often gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to writing in ‘Picard’, and with the sheer amount of villains I don’t see this season being any different. Overall I’m not so sure about the darker feel of this season, which is definitely meant to convince us that one or all of the characters might die. It is the final season after all and I do think we can expect a major character death. But I think it’s further cementing the hopeless, morally questionable universe and characters that fans have criticized in ‘Picard’ since day one. So far, I can’t see this season winning over die-hard fans of ‘The Next Generation’ that they’ve since alienated with ‘Picard’. People who like ‘Picard’ will probably enjoy it, though.

Bringing in the ‘Picard’ Regulars:

Seven of Nine and Raffi are our only returning characters of the regular ‘Picard’ cast aside from Jean-Luc himself. The trailers spend very little time on either of these characters, but I wouldn’t look too much into that yet. After all, season 2 of ‘Picard’ advertised mostly Q in their promotional materials and ended up putting him completely on the back burner for the sake of the series regulars. (No I’m totally not still bitter about that.) Seven of Nine is now taking up a command position, so I imagine we’ll get to see her learning how to be a leader. What makes that lesson even more interesting is the ultimately selfish way she’s been living recently. Everything has come down to finding her own revenge or rediscovering her own sense of right and wrong. There’s nothing completely wrong with that, but seeing her step out of that will be refreshing. Raffi, on the other hand, looks as though she’ll be taking a lot of personal instruction from Worf. The trailers paint her as a warrior who’s never gotten over the hurt and pain from her past. Remember when I said it looks like Worf will be doing some self reflection and healing? I think he’s probably going to relate a lot to Raffi and use that to lead her into healing as well. And though the trailers haven’t shown much, if any, of this, I really hope they further explore and develop the romantic relationship between Seven and Raffi. I love them as a couple and they deserve all the screen time for their adorable relationship.

Bringing in ‘Deep Space Nine’ or ‘Voyager’:

Recently one of the showrunners gave an interview claiming that this season of ‘Picard’ also carries on the stories of ‘Deep Space Nine’ and ‘Voyager’ in an effort to make fans of both those franchises feel heard. After the interview various Trek fans began freaking out over this huge news. But I don’t think this news is as big as everyone hopes. I love ‘Deep Space Nine’. I’ve been dying for a continuation of the story, so much so that I nearly cried when I saw Kira Nerys return in ‘Lower Decks’. But I think the showrunner is throwing out these titles just to get fans of all Trek series excited for the new ‘Picard’ season. I think the amount ‘Deep Space Nine’ will play a role in the story will begin and end with Worf’s past. He was a major character in ‘Deep Space Nine’ after all. It was in that very show that he lost his wife. Fans hoping for anything else are, in my opinion, likely to be disappointed. The same goes for ‘Voyager’. The inclusion of ‘Voyager’ will probably just be past instances Seven has to grapple with and nothing more. I really don’t want to say that fans emotions are being manipulated here, but once again, it wouldn’t be a first for ‘Picard’. I really do want to believe that they’ll bring in more characters from other franchises. I even want to believe that after ‘Picard’ is over they’ll move on to other characters whose stories may not be completely finished. But I don’t have high hopes.

I realize that a lot of this post is full of my hesitancy when it comes to the new season. I don’t even hate ‘Picard’! I thought the first season was better than many Trek fans gave it credit for, and the second season, while a complete mess, still gave us some of my favorite character interactions in all of ‘Star Trek’. I just feel that ‘Picard’ has let myself and other fans down many times when it comes to the lofty promises they’ve made, and we’ve gotten to the point where I don’t trust the showrunners anymore. Not completely, anyway. I really hope this season is good. I’ll be reviewing it here as it comes out and I’m excited to start watching it next week! But I think at this point, it’s smartest to go into ‘Picard’ with an open mind but low expectations.

Don’t do anything fun until I get back!

Hallie

K-Pop: ONEUS Before Stadiums

Photo of Lee Keonhee, Son Dongju (Xion), Lee Seoho, Yeo Hwanwoong, and Kim Geonhak (Leedo). Copyright goes to RBW, Billboard, and ONEUS.

Hi! It’s Annie!

I have seen ONEUS live from four rows back on an aisle and I will never be the same. When I got these tickets I knew this experience could very well be a once in a lifetime opportunity. Getting tickets that close in such an intimate venue already felt odd, but adding that it was for ONEUS made it feel impossible. I’m honestly shocked that ONEUS isn’t at the point where they can do stadium tours yet, but I am absolutely sure that stadium tours will be coming for them soon. Each release gets more and more popular and people are finally starting to recognize them for how talented they’ve always been. But personally, if they do eventually in the next couple years get their stadium tours, I’m going to miss concerts like this. I hope that this isn’t a once in a lifetime opportunity, but it did kind of feel like it could be. If you haven’t been to a concert for one of your favorite K-Pop groups before they got to stadium level; I sincerely hope that one day you’ll be able to experience it. I’m going to talk about my personal experience with ONEUS and why intimate concert venues are so much different than stadium tours!

Personal Feeling:

There’s a different level of experience at a concert when you can wave at an idol and have them see you and wave back. This type of experience definitely isn’t limited to just intimate and smaller venues. A lot of people who get floor seating on stadium tours also experience it. But there’s a difference in that with a smaller venue, it feels like everyone in the audience gets some part of that feeling. Not just the people sitting close. While every K-Pop concert that I’ve been to has had spaces in the middle of songs for interaction with the audience, this felt almost like everyone in the auditorium was having a conversation. Like we were sharing in the same inside joke or old friends catching up after too long of not seeing each other. I truly felt apart of something here and I definitely felt as though all of us in the audience were great supporters of the boys onstage. And also that the boys support us too! And though all of us were screaming, I think this was the clearest I was able to hear a concert from a mix of being close to the stage and having less people screaming in the auditorium. There was a wholesome almost family type of vibe at this event that made it feel more like an experience everyone was having together and less like a show. I was not prepared for how much the intimate setting and smaller auditorium would change the experience, and I am so glad that I was able to find that out for myself. I’m not saying that stadium touring is worse in any way! Stadium touring has a lot of pros that auditorium touring doesn’t have. There’s an entire aura of excitement around a stadium tour, a feeling like you’re there for something extremely important, and a completely different feeling of belonging when you’re singing along and dancing with so many other people. But it doesn’t have the heart-wrenchingly personal dream-like feeling that concerts like these have.

The Freedom:

I used to watch videos of BTS and ATEEZ from when they also performed at smaller venues and I wished for a long time that I could have also been with those groups when they were still performing at that level. They seemed to be having so much fun, they seemed free, and the audience interaction always felt closer. They were there with the people who had been supporting them forever and would continue to support them far into the future. I think that specifically is what gives it the family vibe that I was talking about before. I started stanning BTS seven years after their debut, and I started stanning both ATEEZ and ONEUS about two years after their debut. Which is so much lower of a number. But ATEEZ got to stadium level really quickly, so I wasn’t able to experience this with them. I saw that in past videos they would run around the aisles and interact with fans sitting in various seats. And now I’ve actually been part of that interaction for ONEUS! I made eye contact with Leedo ,which I am absolutely sure I will never recover from. He even squinted at me to see better (Geonhak is known for squinting because of his poor eyesight) and I just about passed out. I waved at Xion and watched Keonhee and Hwanwoong pass right by me. The only member of the group that I didn’t get as much interaction with was Seoho, but it was still so amazing to see him that close! Everyone in the audience agreed to stay in their seats to keep the boys safe in order for them to have some of those precious fan interactions. The more popular a group becomes, the less possible that becomes. With a smaller audience the artists are able to actually have more fan interactions and have the types of interactions that they want and enjoy.

Fan Connection:

I have never been the type of person to gate-keep in a fandom in any way. You don’t need to listen to the entire discography of an artist in order to be a fan. Just considering yourself a fan is enough, of course provided that you are engaging in healthy fan behavior. We don’t do solo stan behavior here and fans should absolutely acknowledge and respect the personal boundaries of the idols they stan. I also find that judging a fan based on how long they’ve been a fan of a group is just as pointless and over-all doesn’t make any sense. We want people to become fans of a group and to stan them because it means more support for the artists we love so much! Not only that, but many of us have been able to get through hard times because of a group and that’s not an experience we should take away from other people. But I will say that stanning a group early on gives you a sense of belonging with that group that everyone should experience at least once. You’re able to be with them from before they started getting really popular and go through the journey with them. It feels like you are personally part of that journey. From their first win to their first world tour; you’re there for all of it. And concerts like this also feel like a part of that journey. With ONEUS, as I expressed before, I feel confident that they will eventually get to stadium level. But there’s something so rewarding and intimate about being able to be there with them and for them before that moment. That’s why I call this once in a lifetime. Who knows if I’ll be able to see ONEUS like this next year. But either way, I’ll always have the experience of being with them for this concert.

I know it’s a little selfish, but I hope to see ONEUS again at least one more time like this. But I will also be really happy for them if next year they start stadium touring! I also want to point out that Hwanwoong said that they were planning a comeback soon! I still can’t believe it’s so soon now, but I’m so excited for them! I know that this tour was really difficult for them and I hope they’ll continue to get more support with each new comeback and tour. My sister mentioned in her post how they talked about their mental health for a behind video shown at the concert. Geonhak spoke about how he thinks too much, which is something I can really relate to. And all of them were free in talking about how they’ve been doing. I hope more idols feel free to talk about mental health now and feel supported when they do! I can’t put into words how much this concert meant to me. And I know I say stuff like that a lot, but really this felt like I was living out a dream or a fan fiction. I still haven’t wrapped my head around the fact that one of my biases now knows that I exist in some capacity. (How???) I wasn’t just in the crowd, he actually saw me! I’m never going to get the experience of first realizing that one of my biases saw me again. It’s only been a few days but I already can’t wait for next year so that I can see them again! And yes, I do consider Kim Geonhak my Valentine for this year.

See you across the pond!

Sincerely, Annie

K-Pop: ONEUS Concert Pasadena

Official promotional image for ONEUS’ ‘REACH FOR US’ tour featuring Kim Gunhak (Leedo), Son Dongju (Xion), Lee Keonhee, Lee Seoho, and Yeo Hwanwoong. Copyright goes to RBW.

Hey! Hallie here!

My sister and I finally got to the ONEUS concert we’ve been waiting for for almost four months now! This concert was amazing, and not just because ONEUS is a highly underrated group with excellent songs and impressive choreography. It left a major impression on me because this was the most intimate K-Pop concert I’ve ever been to. This was a fairly small venue and they really took advantage of how personal the size made the concert feel. During one song they walked up and down the aisles to interact with TOMOONs, and during every ment they turned on the lights in the house so they could see and make eye contact with TOMOONs as well. My sister and I were only a few rows back from the stage and we were also placed on the side of the aisle, so we were able to interact with them far more than any other K-Pop concert we’ve been to. (I got a wave from Hwanwoong as he walked beside me down the aisle!) There was so much to love about this concert that I can’t wait to discuss, so let’s get into the set list!

Beginning of Concert:

The concept of this concert was really interesting. In the opening videos we switched between an intense forest scene where a hand reached out towards the boys for help, and a really wholesome forest scene with bright colors and even a bunny (Which of course Keonhee was holding). In the wholesome scene a hand also reached out for the boys, and though the situation seemed less dire, Leedo’s eyes instantly turned red and morphed the scene back to the dark forest. The whole purpose of the video seemed to be to represent ONEUS’ duality as well as to portray a “monster within” theme. This could have easily been a full story, but it was kept to just the opening video. Still, it was definitely intense enough to run seamlessly into “Bring it on”, one of ONEUS’ more intense songs. I always think it’s a smart idea to start out a concert with a hype song to set the tone and energy, and “Bring it on” is definitely one of their more high energy songs. I especially like that the song starts with spoken dialogue from Leedo in his deep register, which was the perfect way to get fans to freak out before they had even started singing.

“COME BACK HOME” isn’t as much a hype song as it is just really intense, and with the high energy already established, I loved that they placed this one early in the concert as well. It’s one of my favorites and has some of their best choreography, which includes a few lifts and a running tackle. Having them be at peak energy for this song was essential. After this was “BLACK MIRROR” which was a little bit jarring considering its more fun, lighthearted sound and feel, but the choreo still utilized their beginning-of-concert energy really well. Their intro ment came next. As I said above, the intimacy of this venue made all of their ments feel like a genuine conversation with TOMOONs, particularly because lights in the theatre came up during their ments so they could see us. Their introductions weren’t long but they were all very adorable, particularly Keonhee’s who couldn’t stop referencing ‘La La Land’.

Middle of Concert:

The next section started with “Who Got the Joker?”. In my experience, most K-Pop groups don’t perform album introductions live very often, but I was really hoping ONEUS would be an exception because of how amazing their introductions usually are. Luckily, I got my wish. “Who Got The Joker?” has some of the best vocals in any of their songs and I was so happy to see it performed. From there they went into “FULL MOON”. “FULL MOON” is their sexy choreography song. So yeah, I think I blacked out for part of this song. Next we got into some of their still high energy, but more nostalgic, easy-listening songs. These were “STUPID LOVE” and “Skydivin'” which blended together seamlessly and weren’t too jarring of a transition from the more sultry “FULL MOON”. Plus, it was nice to have this break from the intense feel we had had so far in the concert. Here we had another ment that was memorable because it consisted mostly of Leedo terrorizing Xion by being a caring hyung. After this ment we got the specialty stages they’ve recently done on a few award shows.

Specialty Stages and End of Concert:

They started out with their cover of Blackpink’s “Pink Venom” which I personally believe is better than the original, partly because ONEUS absolutely kills girl group choreography. Then they went into “Sexy Back”. This was not a sung cover, but a dance cover of the Justin Timberlake song as performed by Leedo, Seoho, and Hwanwoong. Some people were comparing this stage, and the inclusion of chairs for it, to Magic Mike. I wouldn’t say that’s an unfair comparison. Next we went into their ‘Top Gun’ inspired dance medley. This dance medley is a spectacle. The group work here, from the fake fighting at the beginning to the entire airplane made up of members of ONEUS and their backup dancers, is incredible. I especially want to shout out Hwanwoong for leading major parts of this dance with impressive ease.

Unfortunately, the transition into the next songs was jarring again. The members all left the stage and we thought we were going into another break, but they walked back on stage a second later with microphone stands now set up. Which means slower songs! I love both “Red Thread” and “Youth”, and Seoho’s vocals here in particular were mind-blowing to hear in person, but I wished they would have found a better placement for the slow songs. They ended this section with “Incomplete”, which isn’t quite slow but does transition out of the slower songs well. In this section we also got a few VCRs. One VCR was an interview with the boys that almost purely dealt with their mental health and the pressure they feel constantly. I really liked that they were being upfront about this kind of serious topic, and especially that they covered how much both excitement and anxiety goes into preparing for a tour like this. Another VCR showed more behind the scenes of the tour that also addressed the serious amount of both physical and mental work that went into the tour, while still giving us some sillier moments. Though neither showed a story, I really did enjoy the honest look into how the boys are doing mentally.

The next section started with another intro! “Into: EDEN” is gorgeous, and the strong vocals there made for a nice pairing with “Same Scent”, one of ONEUS’ most popular song and probably the song that got the most cheers throughout the night. During the next ment Xion was slow to come out on stage. None of the members seemed to know what was going on, but they filled the space by casually talking about their anticipation for the next few songs. After the concert Xion revealed he wasn’t feeling well throughout the entire thing and apologized for his performance. Honestly, no one noticed. The fact that he was late coming out for this one ment was our only hint. I’m in awe of how well he did and I hope he’s getting rest now. After the ment they went into my favorite song, “LUNA”, complete with gorgeous fan choreography. They also did the Kingdom version of “Lit”, which is more intense than the original but carries the traditional sound of the song, which meant we got both of their most traditional-inspired songs placed perfectly back-to-back. They did another ment here to let us know that we only had two songs until the end of the concert, but that always means an encore’s coming afterwards. In the meantime they closed out with “To Be or Not to Be”, another dramatic song with amazing lifts in the choreo. Keonhee absolutely stole the show with his solo moments in this song as he was lifted above the other members. They closed out with “No Diggity”, another hype song. This song almost blew out my eardrums with how loud it was, but it was easy to see how badass they felt performing this one.

Encore:

Then we had an encore VCR where the boys had prerecorded messages for TOMOON from when they were practicing for the tour. They really focused on their nervousness surrounding the tour in this VCR. I was surprised at this point that all of the mid-concert VCRs were interviews or behind the scenes videos, but I actually wish more groups would do this. It helps the fans feel closer to them and come away from the concert with a better appreciation for the members. Their final set of songs began with “Life is Beautiful”, which is just a really adorable song to begin an encore with. They kept house lights on for the encore, and as usual, the boys were in comfier outfits for it to make the encore feel more casual. Especially with the personal feel of the venue, it felt like the boys were singing “Life is Beautiful” directly to us. They then did their ending ments where they thanked us for the energy, especially because this was their last US stop on their tour. Keonhee also took the time to thank their staff and praise them as much as possible, which I always appreciate. They then warned us to sit down and stay seated for the next song, because they would be walking the aisles!

They sang “Last Song” as they walked through the audience, another nostalgic, heartfelt song that they initially performed with their brother group, Onewe. During the song both Keonhee and Xion walked past me so I could hear up close how beautiful their voices are. Hwanwoong in particular was the member everyone was waiting for because he was the most involved in fan interaction. He took selfies with several people, posed for several more pictures, and either high fived or waved at everyone he could possibly reach. I was very happy to get a wave from him! Because this was their last stop on the US branch of their tour, they decided to give us another performance of “No Diggity” once they got back on stage. My eardrums were blown out again, but I’m very grateful I went on a night where I could see them perform an extra song! Seeing the members leave after a concert that felt so personal was heartbreaking. I do want to shout out Keonhee though, for asking the ASL interpreters how to sign “I love you” to the group of deaf fans just before leaving the stage. All the members were such sweethearts and I’m so glad I got to see them. I do hope they get enough recognition that they can book bigger venues in the future, but I’ll always be grateful that I went to see them at a time where direct contact with the audience was possible.

Don’t do anything fun until I get back!

Hallie

Comfort Entertainment: The Female Perspective

Screenshot of Usagi Tsukino from ‘Sailor Moon Crystal’. Copyright goes to Naoko Takeuchi, Toei Animation, Crunchyroll, Netflix, and VIZ Media.

Hi! It’s Annie!

Through my reviews of K-Dramas and books on this blog, I have often used the phrase “perfect boyfriend syndrome” to describe when a guy in a romance is written to have no flaws at all. It isn’t usually something that I like because it makes these guys feel completely un-relatable and when they are flawed, the narrative will never admit to it. Flawed characters are human characters! And while I was thinking about these perfect boyfriends often written from female perspectives, I was suddenly struck with the thought that perfect girlfriend syndrome is also a thing and is way more prevalent. Why, you ask? Because most media for years and years has been written by men, and because of that women have been seen largely from the male perspective in media. But more and more we’re seeing women written from the female perspective and the more content I watch, the more the difference between women written by men or other women becomes such a stark contrast for me. One of my favorite shows ever is Sailor Moon, which is a superhero show written about women by a woman, and is a great positive example to use here. So I’m going to compare some of the “perfect girlfriends” to the absolutely wonderful characters in Sailor Moon!

Perfect Girlfriend Syndrome:

I think some of the best characters to pull for this for me personally, are characters from video games. I’ve found quite a few that are more obvious, but I also don’t exactly want to use this post to talk about all of the problems that face female characters from video games. There’s a history of poor decisions when it comes to the way female characters in games act and specifically the way that they’re designed. But specifically, I want to talk about characters that are created to look relatable on the surface but in reality have little to no flaws. Characters that at first seem to be great before you realize that they are completely unattainable to either be with or be like. And because this is very specific, it means that we have to look for very specific kinds of characters. I know this might be controversial, but when I hear that I usually turn to ‘Final Fantasy’ games. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Square Enix. I grew up on ‘Kingdom Hearts’. But I always found the male characters to be better than the female characters. This was partially because, for a lot of the games, the female characters aren’t really allowed to fight. Or when they are it isn’t much and they don’t really know how to do it. (Ahem, Kairi.) But lately I’ve been really liking the characters of Aerith and Tifa specifically in the new ‘Final Fantasy VII Remake’ games. And while we have only gotten one of what is supposed to eventually be three games; it is already so much better than the original games at establishing the characters of Aerith and Tifa.

Aerith had almost no character development at all in the original game and what Tifa got seemed to be very little. But at the same time, these characters don’t seem to have any flaws whatsoever. Aerith is an adorable character, but I can’t think of one flaw that she has. And this is something that hit me while watching scenes from ‘Final Fantasy VII Remake’ recently after I had finished re-watching all of ‘Sailor Moon Crystal’ and ‘Sailor Moon Eternal’. Aerith is just the right amount of everything. She’s gorgeous, extremely sweet, never clumsy, innocent but not naive, and just the right amount of flirtatious but also a little shy. The more I thought about all of these things together, the more I wondered how much I really relate to this character. She’s too perfect. She’s lovely and likable but the more I found myself comparing myself to her, as a lot of people do with fictional characters, the more I found myself to be lacking in comparison. And then I remembered that I’m a human being and that’s a character rewritten primarily by men. I still like her, but despite sharing a love for the same colors and flowers, I couldn’t find much else we had in common. Tifa isn’t much better off with her badass nature, mothering qualities, and complete lack of any sort of rage that many of the other people in the resistance have. The game will also sometimes suffer from the use of performative feminism. This is when a female character says something feminist in order for the work to seem feminist, but will then land herself in one or several situations that are decidedly not. For example, Aerith telling Cloud she can take care of herself right before Cloud has to save her. Maybe we’ll get some better development in upcoming games, but right now they strike me as being “perfect girlfriends” for Cloud, or the player.

Flawed Characters:

From the moment we are introduced to the character of Usagi Tsukino, we know that she’s flawed. She struggles with schoolwork, often because she can’t find the motivation to study. She is known for letting her emotions run away with her, often to the point that she bursts into tears. On top of this, she can be really clumsy and is often teased for it. Despite this, Usagi is a badass on the battle field, able to take care of herself, and often self sacrificial. But she still has insecurities and has a ways to go, which also makes sense because of her age. As someone who is also overly emotional at times and definitely clumsy, I found her relatable from the get go. Also add in the hopeless romanticism and she’s basically me. All of the Inner Senshi are written to be relatable so that young girls can find themselves in them. Ami is extremely smart but isn’t very confident in herself, Minako has a lot of confidence but can sometimes be egotistical, Makoto is very laid back but she constantly compares herself to other people, and Rei is extremely competent and badass but can often have a short temper. When the Outer Senshi are introduced, they are also flawed. While they have more of a sense of self, they are still unsure of their methods and don’t always go about things compassionately. And these flaws add to their characters and by making them relatable made them even more likable to the audience.

This is largely because the creator, Naoko Takeuchi, created these characters to be like women for women. She didn’t like that there was a serious lack of female superheroes from the female perspective, so she created her own. She wanted them to feel real. And she completely succeeded! Naoko Takeuchi was extremely progressive in her portrayal of women with flaws, just as she was extremely progressive in her unabashed portrayal of queerness without ever fetishizing it. The show even gets as relatable as showing many characters questioning their sexuality. Something that a lot of young people go through despite shows being discouraged by parents from presenting these ideas. In fact, the original international dubs for ‘Sailor Moon’ are well known for having this queer exploration taken out. Thankfully, with the new international dubs that have been needed for a while, it has been rightfully restored. This is what we get when a woman writes women specifically for representation and for the sake of women being able to find themselves in a heroic story. It’s not difficult to find flaws in these characters, but it’s also not difficult to find characteristics and personality traits to relate to. The women are progressive, badass, and relatable at the same time. This is what female representation should look like!

I’ve made a post before about the difference between female writers and directors and male writers and directors in movies. But I’ve never looked at the faults with portraying women as too perfect and pure to the point that they must be protected at all costs. Women do not get anything from being portrayed as absolutely perfect delicate flowers either. And this is made even more clear when you look at the difference between characters written with the male perspective in mind versus characters written with the female perspective in mind. Women written by women are allowed to be human and beautiful because of it. They are allowed to be messy, and muscular, and beautiful no matter how they define being feminine. I can’t stress how important this is. And being human also means being flawed. Just like I’ve talked about how writing perfect boyfriends isn’t good, it’s also problematic to write perfect girlfriends. Humans need to be allowed to be humans, we can’t keep telling people that there’s something inherently wrong with them when they’re flawed. People are flawed. And the most precious kind of love, is loving someone exactly the way they are and accepting them with their flaws and all. Personally, I wouldn’t want a perfect boyfriend. How would I relate to him? The same can be said for representation in media. Women need to be able to see themselves in media. And that means flawed characters. I’m so excited to be seeing ONEUS tomorrow so look out for our next posts about that!

See you across the pond!

Sincerely, Annie

Video Games: ‘The Last of Us’ Episode 3 Review

Screenshot of Murray Bartlett as Frank and Nick Offerman as Bill in episode three of ‘The Last of Us’ on HBO Max. Copyright goes to Naughty Dog, Playstation Productions, and Sony Pictures Productions.

Hey! Hallie here!

It’s been way too many days since this episode came out and I’ve been dying to talk about it. This episode has been widely praised since its release. Some critics have even gone as far as to call it one of the best episodes of television ever made. And really, who am I to disagree? Episode three was the first episode we’ve gotten that completely took fans of the video game by surprise, and it only improved on the story. Despite not involving the main characters much, no episode has captured the reality of the apocalypse situation or the theme of love as well as this one. I only have praise for this episode, so this review’s going to be a bit different. Instead of going over what I liked and disliked, I’m going to spend a little bit of time on the Joel and Ellie storyline, and the rest of the post on the changes made between the game and the series. Let’s get into it! SPOILERS AHEAD!

Joel and Ellie:

While their part of the story was short, I don’t think it was any less important than what we saw in the previous episodes. First off, Ellie getting excited about finding a box of tampons meant more to me than I anticipated. We don’t usually normalize women’s hygiene in shows that take place in modern day, let alone in shows taking place during the apocalypse where resources are scarce. I also really enjoyed Ellie’s lack of knowledge surrounding things we consider normal, like planes. She grew up in the apocalypse where those things were no longer part of everyday life, so the fact that humans used to fly in the sky is a completely new and fascinating idea to her. But moving on from her wholesome moments in this episode, it seems the show is setting her up to appear just as dangerous as Joel. The scene where she’s inspecting that Infected was unsettling, but her lack of compassion for it was possibly the most unsettling part of it. As for Joel, I really liked the impact Bill and Frank’s story had on Joel and Ellie’s relationship. Joel, just as he is in the game, is unwilling to cope with his grief. He warns Ellie multiple times not to talk about Tess anymore, and you can easily tell that one of the reasons why he does this is because he’d rather push Tess from his mind than process his grief over her death. Bill’s letter to Joel, in which he tells him to protect Tess, pours salt in that wound. But it also makes him realize that his role as a protector of the people around him is about more than just being a grizzled, suspicious man. It’s about finding people you care for who are worth protecting. By the end of the episode that idea starts to warm him to Ellie, and it’s definitely laying the groundwork for the strong father/daughter relationship that will come along later.

Bill and Frank:

The Game: Bill and Frank are both side characters that appear in one way or another in the video game. Bill is the much more prominent character. When Joel goes to Bill for help, preferably to find a car, Bill is very much alive. Bill’s town isn’t as safe of a haven in the game, though. Instead, Bill’s town is large and maze-like. While most of his traps take care of the Infected that wander into the area, the Infected still often slip through the cracks. Meaning Bill has to venture out to take care of some problems himself, and the further away from his house, the more Infected can be found wandering around. It takes a lot of work for Bill, Joel, and Ellie to navigate his town, find the car Joel needs, and escape in it with the Infected only moments behind them. While Joel and Ellie travel this dangerous area with Bill, Bill’s sexuality is only hinted at. One hint ends up being the inappropriate magazines in his house containing men who aren’t wearing much, or any, clothing. You as the player don’t see the magazines, but in a memorable gag we aren’t likely to see in the show, Ellie teases Joel with her opinions on them. Your next hint is Bill’s relationship with Frank. When you meet Bill in the game he’s bitter, suspicious of Ellie, and determined to convince Joel that caring about someone else is a hazard more than a help. Later you manage to pry out of him that he had “a partner” named Frank, who recently abandoned him due to a large fight between them. He never confirms his relationship with Frank, but the way he gets teary eyed and defensive when he speaks about him says a lot. Towards the end of the level you find Frank’s body. He was bitten and hung himself before he could turn, but not before he left a scalding letter for Bill to find. Bill doesn’t really recover from the reveal, but he forcefully brushes it off, leaving Joel to decide he doesn’t want to be like Bill rather than being inspired by him.

The Show: If you’ve watched this episode, like I’m assuming you have, you know Bill and Frank’s story is nothing like the game. First, we get more insight to Bill’s character and his story begins way before he meets Joel. Bill is shown to be, as many of those who played the game suspected, an anti-social survivalist whose crazy ideas became less crazy on the day of the apocalypse. Unlike all the other characters we’ve seen so far in the show, he thrived during doomsday, taking his neighbors supplies and raiding Home Depot for enough trap parts to set him up in his small town for a lifetime. He also doesn’t really have to worry about Infected at all. His town being more contained and his traps being more full-proof gives him the opportunity to kick back and enjoy a home cooked meal and some wine. One day a man who isn’t Infected falls into one of his traps, and when Bill goes to potentially kill him, the man manages to convince him to let him go and give him some food. Here we start seeing the softness of Bill. Bill isn’t the rude, bitter man from the game. While he’s suspicious of others, he has a decency that causes him to be almost unbearably soft around Frank, even when he’s first suspicious of him. And Frank, being the extremely kind man he is, almost instantly (and correctly) interprets this softness as a need for company and decides that he would very much like to be the one to keep him company. Which leads to an adorable first kiss, and an entire episode about their life together as a gay couple. I don’t think I have to tell you how important it is that such a huge episode of such a huge franchise was dedicated to a queer couple. I could have cried over the representation alone. But their story in itself is just gorgeous.

The show brilliantly shows us their relationship alongside the way the apocalypse effects that relationship. We see the two fight over their opinions on letting other people into their town. Frank believes in the importance of human interaction, that’s one of the reasons why he stayed with Bill, and it’s so interesting to see Bill’s untrusting nature be challenged with that point of view. I especially loved when Frank invited Joel and Tess over. It was nice to see how Joel and Bill’s overprotectiveness turned into mutual respect and almost friendship. We then see Bill and Frank thriving off of the new connections they’ve made in perhaps the most adorable scene in the entire episode, where Frank reveals he traded a gun for strawberry seeds and the two giggle happily as they eat strawberries. Then we watch their home get attacked by looters, as Joel warned would eventually happen. Bill is injured and, due to his nature, is fully prepared to be the first one of them to die. He even planned out everything for Frank should he be killed. That alone nearly made me cry. But the thing that actually made me cry was their somewhat happy ending. Frank, as he gets old, falls ill and decides he wants to go via assisted suicide. Bill cries about it at first, which is about where the waterworks started for me. He then takes Frank through the last day he wants, including a wedding ceremony for the two of them and a final dinner that’s actually the first meal Bill ever served Frank. After all that Bill reveals that he plans to die alongside Frank because the show wants me to drown in buckets of my own tears. While their deaths are still tragic, they’re undeniably happy. Especially for people living in an apocalyptic universe. Bill and Frank peacefully fall asleep in each other’s arms. You really can’t expect anything better. And in the end, Bill’s relationship with Frank leads him to tell Joel to hold on to the people he cares about. That’s much more impactful to a grieving Joel than Bill’s bitterness.

I will never get over this episode. It expertly took me through a rollercoaster of emotions, and despite the fact that I ended the episode crying, I will go back to it many more times in the future. The imagery of the open window, leading to a closed off room where Bill and Frank lie together, isn’t something I’ll forget anytime soon. It’s haunting, but it’s breathtakingly beautiful. The fact that this episode barely had anything to do with the plot so far and still might end up being my favorite episode of the entire series blows my mind. Maybe “filler episodes” shouldn’t be as heavily critiqued as they are. If this is what a major series can do with an episode that could be considered filler, I’d like to know what other series could do with the stigma taken off episodes that don’t strictly follow the main plot.

Don’t do anything fun until I get back!

Hallie

Books: ‘The Stand-In’ by Lily Chu

Promotional photo of the book ‘The Stand-In’. Copyright goes to Lily Chu and Sourcebooks.

Hi! It’s Annie!

Yay, another book review! I got a bookstore gift card as a gift for Christmas and I’ve finally gotten the opportunity to actually go and buy more books. This one was on the top of my list and has been for a while. When I go out to buy books I usually keep myself at a three book limit and I actually saw this one months ago when I was book shopping on vacation. But I had already chosen three books, so I just kind of hoped that I would eventually find this book sometime closer to home. Finally, the bookstore closest to my house got this in stock and I just want to say that this book was absolutely worth the wait. I tore through this book in only a few days after I bought it and it has to be one of my favorite books that I’ve read in a while. The romance is adorable and the book says some absolutely amazing things about mental health that I hope will become more of the norm for all types of media. This post will contain MAJOR SPOILERS, so if you want to read this first and then come back, absolutely do that! ‘The Stand-In’ is so good!

Summary: Gracie Reed is a struggling corporate worker in a job she hates with a disgustingly misogynistic boss. On top of this, Gracie is also attempting to get her Mother in better care due to her Mother’s dementia. When Gracie suddenly gets fired from her job, an unexpected opportunity comes in the form of a mysterious limo pulling alongside her on the street. Inside is the ultra-famous Chinese celebrity couple Fangli and Sam, who have discovered that Gracie looks exactly like Fangli. Fangli offers Gracie money enough to solve her problems and then some to pretend to be her at certain events as a full time job. The catch; she would need to be escorted by Sam, who seems to hate her from the moment she steps into the limo. Would she be insane to say yes?

The Good:

Gracie- I always love when the main female character is not only a badass but also very relatable. Gracie is just trying to do her best and through the course of the story learns to love and trust herself more. Gracie does suffer from some anxiety and other mental health issues which translates, for her, in a love of being organized and planning out her day. This character aspect becomes important to the point that at the end of the novel she creates her own successful app for organization specifically. I loved that the novel explored that creative side of her, but was also very vulnerable in how it went about showing her personality to the reader. You really did feel like Gracie was a close personal friend. It was nice to see a character who was strong, but would still cry after facing something difficult and had moments where all she wanted to do was pull the covers over her head and hide away. But she would still get up and continue on anyways. She wasn’t demure; she was strong and self aware.

Sam- I knew I was going to like this character from his introduction. His opinion against the plan to have Gracie replace Fangli is often the loudest in the room, but his care for Fangli trumps any of those feelings. And when Sam pretends to have feelings for Gracie, I melted every time. Though I did also find hilarious how blunt he was about celebrities staging certain instances so that they’ll get some amount of publicity. Like Fangli staging a trip and fall so that he could catch her. I don’t think we address how often this is probably true for celebrity interactions in general, and it was nice how much the author really wanted Sam and Fangli to feel human to the reader. Sam is also very sweet and sometimes misguided, again we love a flawed character. He starts out being reluctantly helpful but can’t help himself from actually caring. It was a fun dichotomy.

Fangli- This is the character that we spend the most time on when it comes to mental health. It’s revealed that Fangli wanted Gracie to take over for her because she was having a pretty rough time with her mental health. Gracie, who has had mental health problems before and reveals herself to be on medication, tells Fangli that she should get help. Eventually, with the help of Sam, Fangli agrees to see a therapist and begins to heal. Not only is Fangli incredibly sweet and I love her relationship with Gracie, I also think that she’s one of the best examples of portraying struggles with mental health that I’ve ever seen in media. I love watching female friendships in media as well and I love how important that was here. And to top it all off, we also get male-female friendships here too! When it’s revealed that Sam and Fangli have been friends this entire time and have more of a brother-sister dynamic, it feels natural. Fangli was quite possibly my favorite character for being so progressive in her depiction.

The Romance- I really like a good hate to love, emphasis on “good”. This trope usually has to be done pretty well for me to like it, and it was done beautifully here. Sam dislikes Gracie right off the bat because he believes she’s in it for the fame and money and will eventually take advantage of Fangli, while Gracie dislikes Sam because of how immediately he starts treating her like an enemy. When they eventually learn to trust each other within the job is when they decide they probably got off on the wrong foot. I always love a relationship that’s built on trust, and it makes the faster pace of their relationship from then on make more sense. Both of them are so cute with each other, and Sam is always so eager to support any of Gracie’s efforts. Seriously wholesome. And the tension between the two of them as well as his protective nature of her during the job that helps establish their trust, makes the romance so much fun to read! You just want to know what’s going to happen next between the two of them!

Adult Female Friendships- This is so important. Gracie does become really close to Fangli and that relationship feels almost as important to the novel as her relationship with Sam. Not only that, but it doesn’t involve anything dramatic. Their relationship is formed through spending time with each other when they need it and just talking. And these scenes are always wholesome and never boring. Gracie also has another friend who she texts all the time. And they don’t have to be together all the time for the friendship to remain strong. This is something that even Gracie realizes throughout the novel; that this relationship is important regardless of how much time they can actually spend together. It really made the friendship feel more adult; because I find that friendships like this are more common with adults. I don’t get the time to hang out with my friends all the time, but when I do it still feels very meaningful to me. I like that representation here.

Health Representation- As I said before, the exploration of mental health and depression through Fangli was one of my favorite parts of this novel. And I loved how the novel made her getting help for it such a win for every character involved. Not to mention that Gracie herself is our main character and is on medication. As someone who has gone through mental health struggles, this was incredibly important for me to see in a novel. And normalizing having mental health struggles every once in a while is more important now than ever. On a different side of health I also like how this normalized having someone with dementia in your life and the struggles of dealing with that. I have someone with dementia in my life and this was also so incredible for me to see. This novel made my experiences not only feel normal, but also common. I can’t stress how important that is.

Assault- I also loved the way this author dealt with sexual assault in the workplace. There was no sugar coating it; it was described to be as messed up as it is. Having a scene where she was able to confront her abuser and succeed in tearing him down was incredible. Not many women are able to do that, so having scenes like this in media are so cathartic. It was handled so well!

The Glamor- The movie premieres, the gorgeous dresses, the romance with the escort; it all completely took you into an entirely different world. I love my escapist fiction! But it also made it real by allowing the celebrities to be human beings and acknowledging some of the falsities that are played up for the public. So well played!

The Bad:

Character Development- There were some issues I had with the character development for a few of the characters. For example; we learned a lot about Sam’s backstory but we didn’t necessarily get too much about how he felt about it. We were told about some of his reactions, but in a lot of instances we didn’t get to see it for ourselves. Just like we didn’t actually get to see Fangli when she wasn’t completely stable, we saw her only when she felt stable enough to talk to Gracie. I liked seeing the story from Gracie’s perspective, but I feel like we only saw the best of other characters on multiple occasions. I also would have liked to get more about Mei considering that she was the answer to the major plot twist at the end of the book. I really felt like I didn’t know anything about her. I just wish we would have gotten a little more!

Pacing- The pacing, specifically of the romance, went a little too fast for me. While I liked that the relationship had a good base, it felt like Sam and Gracie went from a truce to romantically involved in seconds. It was difficult to tell when their feelings grew to that level because it seemed like they just appeared right after the truce. I would have liked a little more of a slow burn with this, especially with the hate to love dynamic. I also had a bit of an issue with the pacing of the ending. We very suddenly find out that Fangli is Gracie’s sister very very close to the end of the novel. Fangli barely gets any time to react to this information and the reader barely has any time to cope with this new information before the novel just ends. I would have liked to see this reveal a little earlier in the novel.

Sudden Breakup- I’m usually not a fan of the sudden breakup trope. It’s usually not needed. As an example; the 90s anime of Sailor Moon incorporated a sudden breakup that didn’t need to happen and did not actually happen in the manga or Crystal. It’s one of the reasons why I like the relationship between Usagi and Mamoru better in Crystal and the manga. Sometimes it’s done well, but I usually don’t like it even then. And I really wasn’t the biggest fan of it here. It happens very suddenly for a really odd reason. Gracie suddenly asks Sam to pretend to be her Mother’s lost brother because her Mother thinks that he is her brother and is having a really difficult day. Sam refuses, for a reason I didn’t quite understand, to the point where they almost start arguing and then Gracie misinterprets a conversation and just leaves. All of it felt a little out of nowhere with not a whole lot of build up. It felt like a really immature move from Gracie too. I wasn’t exactly sure why Sam was so eager to take her back when she was so eager to drop him and in the end they don’t even really talk about the situation with each other before getting back together. It just felt very odd to me.

I did have a couple of issues with this book, but overall it was beautiful! I loved the romance and the emphasis on mental health. I really hope to see more books tackle mental health in this way in the future. And it’s a good wholesome read! It isn’t my new favorite book, but I can see myself returning to it eventually.

See you across the pond!

Sincerely, Annie

Netflix Shows: Reasons to Watch ‘The Sea Beast’

Screenshot of Jacob as voiced by Karl Urban, and Maisie as voiced by Zaris-Angel Hator. Copyright goes to Netflix.

Hey! Hallie here!

Recently the nominees for the 2023 Oscar’s were announced, including the nominees for Best Animated Feature Film. The movies up for the Oscar were all easily predicted by most people, all aside from one entry. ‘The Sea Beast’ making it onto the list of nominees was a surprise to most and effectively shot this movie back into audience’s radar. When it first came out on Netflix it wasn’t extremely well advertised, but the people who saw it seemed to only have positive things to say about it. Still, after some reviewers claimed the movie was just a redo of ‘How to Train Your Dragon’, a good amount of people wrote it off. I was one of those people. But now that I’ve actually given this movie a chance I can confidently say I don’t know what those reviewers were talking about. This movie was wonderfully whimsical and extremely unique. So if you’re still on the fence, here are all the things you’re sure to love if you give ‘The Sea Beast’ a chance.

The Main Characters: First off, our leading lady is a young Black girl named Maisie. It’s so nice to see a movie center the power of a little Black girl. And Maisie is a particularly badass little girl. From the first moment we see her we know she’s rebellious and intelligent, with her heart set on adventure. She’s fearless both in her attempts to escape from her orphanage and in her first attempts to join the group of pirates she idolizes. But she’s also sweet. She’s the catalyst for all of the characters in the movie coming to understand sea monsters, purely because of her immediate willingness to empathize with them. And the wisdom her kindness gives her sometimes makes her seem more capable than the adult characters in the film. It’s really impossible not to fall in love with Maisie. Then there’s Jacob, who happens to be both a handsome pirate and voiced by Karl Urban. Which means he’s a very attractive animated character. He’s also surprisingly gentle for the kind of character you think he’s going to be. He’s roguish but proud, showing an immense amount of self confidence in his abilities to the point of seeming self-centered. But pretty early on the film makes a point of balancing out his pompous nature with his natural care and concern for others. And all of that is only made more obvious when he meets Maisie. Though he initially doesn’t like her and doesn’t see himself as the kind of person who would be good with children, he’s also the first to warm up to her and takes caring for her very seriously. Even when he doesn’t fully believe Maisie’s ideas about sea monsters, he’s still willing to hear her out and wastes no time questioning his biases. I would gladly watch several more movies about these two.

The Ensemble Cast: Though Maisie and Jacob are the real highlights here, the entire cast is irresistibly likable. My favorite of the ensemble cast is Sarah Sharpe, the apparent first mate of Captain Crow. She’s blunt and no-nonsense, never letting anyone waste her time. She’s also very clearly the entirety of the brains on the ship. Literally all of them. Just like Jacob, she initially doesn’t know what to do with Maisie and isn’t certain she likes her very much. But. because she’s awesome, she still gives Maisie her first knife and is technically the first person to welcome her into the pirate crew. The way she warms up to Maisie as the movie goes on is almost just as endearing as Maisie’s storyline with Jacob. Captain Crow is also an interesting character. He’s an understandable character who you respect, but he’s simultaneously very dangerous and the movie does a good job of making sure you remember that. Along with that he has an interesting father/son relationship with Jacob that complicates much of the movie in an almost heart-wrenching way. Though the rest of the crew aren’t as well developed, I still appreciated all of them. The diversity in the crew is incredible, with Fen, who seems purposefully gender ambiguous and has been referred to by they/them pronouns in promotional content, being the standout for me. Also amongst the crew is a surgeon, which regardless of his small amount of screen time, made me unreasonably happy. We don’t often see surgeon characters in pirate media, but I love when we do. Though the main villainous characters aren’t all that interesting, I’d say the rest of the cast more than makes up for them.

The Sea Beasts: Though I wouldn’t say you explore any of the personalities of these creatures to the extent that you explore the personality of say Toothless in ‘How to Train Your Dragon’, I still really adored the sea beasts. Red is, of course, one of the most eye catching. While her design is simple, staying to mostly one color, it’s very clever. Her fins and tail make her resemble a whale, which gives an air of familiarity for the audience, but her horn and snake-like neck add something whimsical to her design. And she isn’t the only sea beast with a great design. From the giant purple crab with a mouth resembling the Kraken from ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, to the yellow walrus-like creature with tusks, to the armored alligator-like beast at the beginning of the movie. There’s a clever amount of aquatic designs, bright colors, and scary features to make any lover of creature design happy. I especially loved Blue, the squishy creature with frog eyes who always stole each scene he was in with his adorableness. Though none of the sea beasts have full personalities, I did enjoy how Red’s storyline mirrored Jacob’s. While Red often only attacked when provoked, there were situations where that wasn’t the case. Jacob, similarly, was quick to judge or attack the sea beasts he initially came across because of how little he trusted them. I loved the understanding Maisie fostered between them both as they both attempted to move past their violent tendencies. This connection between all three characters was shockingly deep for what I expected from this movie.

The Pirate Theming: I just have to throw this in here because I’m a huge lover of pirates and pirate theming. There’s a reason why the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ films are some of my favorite films of all time. ‘The Sea Beast’ offers the perfect amount of pirate theming. There’s a crew with a satisfying sense of camaraderie, sea monsters, beautifully designed pirate ships, and even conflict with the crown. It has everything you want out of a pirate story and more. I’m really picky about pirate media because I often find that shows don’t properly capture the love for adventure and fantastical ideas about the sea that draw people to the pirate genre in the first place. ‘The Sea Beast’ has no problem with capturing either of these. I’ll definitely be returning to this movie to get my pirate fix.

I personally loved this movie. Though I’m pretty certain it won’t be able to beat out some of the other animated films in the Best Animated Feature Film category at the Oscar’s, I definitely think it’s good enough to win an Oscar and it at least deserves recognition. Though it does portray a child who befriends a monster-like creature in a world that dislikes those kinds of creatures, it isn’t similar to ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ at all. Beyond the basics, this movie comes with a completely different plot and completely different stakes, as well as themes about found family and overcoming past trauma to make way for a new future. It’s such a well done film and if you haven’t watched it yet, I really hope I convinced you to watch this immediately. Right now. Do it.

Don’t do anything fun until I get back!

Hallie