It’s sad that Harley Quinn only got two episodes to herself in the Animated Series, since she’s one of the most vibrant and interesting characters the series produced. Part of that was the fact that most of the characters created for the series were far below her caliber, but she’s also been a strong support whenever she’s appeared. At the same time, she managed not to get overexposed since she only had these two episodes, and arguably “Harley’s Holiday” is even better than the first one. It’s also unusual for being not just funny (the screwball sensibility is back in spades), but actually rather optimistic about Harley’s future.
The episode actually opens with Harley’s psychologist, telling her that she’s passed her evaluations and will be able to leave Arkham with a clean bill of mental health. It’s a rare sign of competence at America’s Worst Mental Hospital, but it fits that Harley would have the best chance of getting out, since she was seduced by a bad relationship into crime. Batman manages to give her the worst congratulations possible short of just punching her preemptively, yet Harley sounds sincere in her protest that she plans to stick to the straight and narrow. Queue the next scene, where she’s rollerskating down the sidewalk, pulled by her pet hyenas as they scare everyone else.
It’s not a very smooth debut, and it quickly gets much worse, as the mere hint of illegal activity on her part causes her to panic, don the clown suit, and kidnap social prop Veronica Vreeland to steal her car. There’s some deliberate awkwardness in how this escalates, but at least it’s handled quickly, and that screwball tone is combined with the sad truth that Harley just isn’t ready to be a normal citizen. Her heart is in the right place now, and that’s still a huge improvement over anyone else in Arkham, but just because she knows what’s wrong doesn’t mean she understands the smaller social mores and norms yet. When Batman (having witnessed the whole thing as Bruce Wayne) goes to intervene, he can at least recognize there isn’t some master plan or real threat of violence. That doesn’t mean Harley isn’t dangerous, she’s just not trying to be a threat.
There’s a nice callback to the last Harley episode, where she goes to the owner of the club she ruined for a way out of town; he’s understandably angry about this, at least until she kisses him and he gets the idea she’s interested in more. Unfortunately, while the silliness works well for most of the episode and even parts of this scene, it doesn’t go well with Batman and Robin popping in to fight off Bugsy’s thugs. It’s only a minor flaw, but it’s still odd to see Robin knocking a gun out of someone’s hand with a whirling fish in his hand.
Probably the best proof that the episode is doing its best not to be taken seriously comes with the climax of the chase, where just after Veronica sees that Harley really isn’t trying to kidnap her, Veronica’s father starts trying to shoot the car with the main cannon of a tank. Things have really gone topsy-turvy when Harley Quinn turns into the voice of reason for the episode, even if it’s only for a moment or two. After nearly crushing his daughter to death, Veronica is saved by Harley, Bugsy is apprehended by Robin and Bullock (who got involved after Harley’s initial escape forced him into the side of a building), and Batman goes after Harley to try to salvage what he can of her day out. That only amounts to keeping her from accidentally killing herself, but there are worse outcomes.
The part that really hits home is the ending, though. Harley is despondent over being brought back to Arkham, even when her psychologist tries to encourage her by pointing out this isn’t a big setback, especially since Veronica lived up to what she said and didn’t press any charges. Of course, that’s conveniently ignoring the destruction of several roads, but then Veronica’s father was the one firing the gun that took out those chunks of asphalt. Harley turns to Batman, and asks what would motivate him to try to help her, instead of just bringing her in. His response? “I know what it’s like to rebuild a life.” And as he pulls out a copy of the dress she had tried to buy earlier: “I had a bad day too, once.” Two lines of dialogue that, thanks to Kevin Conroy’s delivery, manage to be sweet, appropriate, and gut wrenching all at the same time. Oh, and Harley gives him a very long kiss, because why not?
“Harley’s Holiday” is probably the best synthesis of a “serious” version of Batman and the goofy 60s camp you could ask for. The point isn’t to undermine the serious nature of Batman or what he’s fighting against, but to briefly lighten it, with humor and some hope. Sure, Harley isn’t really ready to be a normal citizen yet….but there’s a chance she could be, and instead of just locking her up and forgetting about her, Batman does his best to help salvage that chance. It makes him less dour and grim just by doing good, rather than an awkward attempt at lightening his overall character. And even if Harley doesn’t get to stay a law-abiding citizen, a tantrum that she then tries to fix is still a healthier response than, say, running to the Joker for help.
The silliness of the episode is greatly helped by the visuals as well. This is just a flat-out gorgeous episode of Batman. There’s bright colors, high levels of detail, and a general bounciness to everything, which both fits and enhances the mood. Watch as Veronica screams in shock at an oncoming truck they’re about to hit…and the fear that goes across the hyena’s faces as well. Completely unrealistic? Of course. A hoot to see? You’re damn right it is! Little touches like that abound in “Harley’s Holiday,” and they make for great (if subtle) visual gags.
“Harley’s Holiday” is an episode that everyone should see, more than once. It’s fun without being cheap, fits perfectly with Batman even with all the laughs, and is probably the best showcase for Harley as a character you could get. There’s literally no downside here, and any faults are very small. You won’t be disappointed, I promise.
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Tags: batman, Bullock, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Robin, The Animated Series, Vreeland
The recurring villain worst served by the Animated Series is by far the Penguin, but Two-face is the next in line. That’s a sad thing to say, since his origin two-parter was one of the finest hours for the show, and he’s always been well presented as a credible threat. But that amazing origin was, to be blunt, more than the show could handle. It was a dark and harrowing look into a man going insane and losing himself, even as it sped up the process in an attempt to get past the worst moments of Harvey Dent’s disassociation. Doing something like that every time he appeared simply wasn’t feasible, and probably would have gone into bad melodrama very quickly. It’s a wise move to downplay that aspect while focusing on how far he could go in his two/twin theme, but it means it was always something of a vague disappointment by comparison.
“Second Chance” is Two-face’s send off in the Fox series, and thankfully it’s the closest he’s had to his origin, both in theme and quality. For the first time since that two-parter, Harvey Dent’s mental state is front and center, and for more than needing to flip a coin to make decisions. It’s more hopeful than the last time, but the foreboding atmosphere is right there in the beginning, as Batman and Robin watch Dent get brought in for plastic surgery….and he’s kidnapped right under their noses. Thankfully, they’re foiled in a way that doesn’t make them look foolish, even if it does provide another visual where you’d assume one of them would have been killed.
Strictly speaking, the story isn’t that complicated. Dent’s kidnapping appears to have been orchestrated by either the Penguin or Rupert Thorne, both of whom have reason to want revenge on Two-face. Batman goes to confront the Penguin about it, who comes off better than normal, as he’s portrayed to be intelligent and dangerous…to a degree, at least. Robin, meanwhile, tries to investigate Thorne and manages to be caught red handed, so the initial impression of his competence disappears pretty quickly, even when he survives their attempt to kill him for spying. In the end, Batman realizes who the real culprit is, and goes to confront…Two-face, who decided he was not willing to sit back and let Harvey Dent become whole and erase the Two-face personality in the process.
The main reason this simple plot works so well is that it’s presented as a real mystery for most of the episode, and the fighting at the end is not the real climax. It’s the discovery that Harvey Dent, or at least a part of him, is sabotaging himself. Batman’s challenge at the end isn’t to punch Two-face, it’s to try and reach Harvey inside Two-face and regain some hope of his friend recovering. Really, Two-face is constantly sabotaging himself, but done well it makes for some compelling stories. It’s not so interesting when Batman just shows up and hits Two-face to beat him. On the other hand, when Two-face seems to hold all the cards until he can’t help but screw himself over….that’s a different kind of tension than you get from most of Batman’s villains.
It also works because the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent is contrasted with the relationship between Batman and Robin. Robin has no friendly history with Harvey like Batman does, but he can at least understand why Batman wants so much for Harvey to heal, where he’s more concerned with catching the Joker than giving him therapy. Batman isn’t alone, but Harvey was his best friend as Bruce Wayne, and he was a friend in ways Robin just can’t match. And while I mentioned how incompetent Robin appears at times in this episode, you also see some signs of him being a real partner to Batman instead of just a liability (and he’s not the reason they fail to stop Two-face from being kidnapped; for once, he and Batman are taken out by the same cause at the same time). While I’m not a fan of shoehorning Robin into Batman stories, at least here he feels like a natural fit, and someone who can provide another perspective on the Two-face and Batman struggle, especially since he wasn’t involved in the Animated Series origin of it. We also get to see him saving henchmen from a towering explosion, so for once the muscle doesn’t randomly survive what should kill them to fit S&P regulations.
The final word is that “Second Chance” is just a strong episode all around. It doesn’t stand out as a classic, but it’s firing on all cylinders, never talks down to its intended audience, and does a fine job balancing the grim material so that it’s weighty without smothering you. It’s also helped by some of the finer animation of the series-not the best of the best, but smoothly done, with the gathering storm of the climax so obvious a sign and yet so well deployed due to the visuals. Definitely give some time to this one.
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Tags: animated series, batman, Robin, Two-face
Most of the time, comic book villains don’t really need much of an explanation for how they get out of jail, the insane asylum, the grave, or all three. Some nod to their past state might be appropriate, considering where they last left off, but few fans would throw a tantrum about exactly how the Joker got out of some huge explosion without being killed. Still, when a character is left in a very unusual situation, it’s best to either technobabble them out of it, or just avoid discussing the matter. You don’t want to take the tack of “Riddler’s Reform,” where no one thinks to mention how he got out of being a withered husk at the end of “What Is Reality,” but they DO specifically reference that episode.
Still, this is a better send off for the Riddler than “Reality” was. “Reform,” at least, delves deep into his character and motivations, and makes his episodes so far into a rough origin trilogy. In his introduction in the Animated Series, the Riddler prepared to face Batman, but he had no desire to fight him; all he wanted was revenge against a short-sighted former employer. “Reality” saw him using a gimmick as a distraction, while trying to erase his identity from public record to keep from being caught. Here, he finally moves from simply dealing with Batman to obsessing with Batman as a worthy opponent. If there are gaps in that origin, at least the overall plot is entertaining enough. There is no grand scheme on the Riddler’s part to fool Batman, and his plan to sell puzzle toys seems legitimate on the surface, with robberies on the side to supplement a legitimate income and satisfy his criminal self-regard. It works better than creating some overarching plot to kill Batman at the same time he’s poised to make millions off his criminal persona.
Then, too, there’s the fact that the Riddler may be one of Batman’s most dangerous enemies, but he’s one of his least lethal. Of course, no one on the Animated Series actually succeeds in killing anyone. But where the Joker fails in blowing up a whole building or setting off a nuclear warhead, the Riddler only aims to kill 3 people: his former boss, Commissioner Gordon, and Batman. It makes the idea of the Riddler reforming much easier to swallow than, say, Poison Ivy (though “Home and Garden” did address that issue front and center). Sure, the Riddler turns out to be bad news here, but him selling puzzle games to kids doesn’t seem as terrible as Twoface endorsing something. Hell, if anything it’s the best move someone could make if they were going to introduce a line of puzzles. You might as well hire the guy who prides himself on trying to fool Batman, so he doesn’t take your products as a challenge or insult.
The first significant issue with “Reform” is something of an odd complaint: it’s too short. This isn’t a story that could play out over two episodes as a mystery, and for the running time it has, it’s a smart move that they don’t try to throw the viewer off about who’s behind the crimes. However, that feeling of missing information would fit well with more time. Another 10 minutes (with some cutting of unnecessary bits, like the Riddler getting all flustered when beautiful women talk to him) could have allowed for some idea of whether the Riddler thought of licensing his persona, or was approached with the idea…and if he agreed to it as a way to establish himself as a legitimate pitch man, or sought a cover for new crimes. With more time to tease things out, it could have been a more self-aware look into the Riddler’s mental illness and its ramifications. As it is, it seems like a jarring shift happens in the story, to force it from one story track to the other.
The second is that the latter half of the episode is very by the numbers. This isn’t just an issue of “And then Batman saves the day.” That’s pretty obvious, and railing against that would be pretty silly. But there’s no tension about the Riddler’s merchandising versus his compulsion to pit his intellect against Batman. He just does it, because he’s supposed to, and it’s not until Batman himself points it out to the Riddler that it becomes an issue late in the episode. He might as well have handed Riddler a note saying “Now I beat you” and called it a day.
Is this a bad episode? No. Like I said, it’s an improvement on “Reality,” and there are some good ideas in here. The real problem is that they don’t get fully developed, and it’s pretty disjointed because of that. It does at least end powerfully, with the Riddler screaming about how he has to know how Batman survived his death trap (an explanation that basically relies on Batman going “Look, over there! A previously unacknowledged object!”), something that turns the Riddler’s need to beat Batman into a real motivation. But while I wouldn’t say to stay away, it’s mostly notable for being the last Riddler episode of the Fox run, and in an unpleasant fight for a diminished first place of the three. Here, at least, the Riddler is a well done character that suffered from stories that didn’t love up to his potential.
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Tags: batman, Riddler, Robin, The Animated Series
This one is kind of a weird episode for the series. On the one hand, we get to see all the high points of a typical story: Batman (and to a lesser extent Robin) burst in on a crime in progress and do some fighting, confront the villain, and find out the truth. But these are in the two bookends to the real story, and that story makes it into a very interesting experiment, almost like a long-ago dry run for the Brave and the Bold TV series. After all, who would have expected Jonah Hex to show up in a kid’s cartoon in the early 90s?
As I said, the high points for Batman and Robin are at the beginning and end. It starts with the two interrupting Ra’s Al Ghul raiding a nursing home for one of the residents. Normally I’d wonder why he decided to do this with pseudo-ninjas and anesthetic gas in the middle of the night, but for once that’s not some failure on the villain’s part. Ra’s “hidden” plane reservation is outright named Lazarus, and Batman himself remarks that he wants to be found. Of course, you could ask why he would pump a building full of potentially lethal gas when it contains a lot of frail, elderly people, but Ra’s has never been interested in saving individual lives, so maybe he considers that a bonus rather than a potential hazard.
Completely disregarding the possibility of some kind of boobie trap in the tape Ra’s left them, Robin plugs it into the Batmobile (incidentally, I have no issue with the idea of Ra’s using a tape recorder in the modern day instead of a CD, but it’s funny that there’s no CD player in the Batmobile, yet there is a tape deck), and they get to hear about the time Jonah Hex completely, and almost as a side note, foiled a pretty hare-brained scheme to take over the US.
I actually like the fact that for the most part, Ra’s al Ghul’s plan to take over the US is pretty unlikely. Sure, the idea of using zeppelins to create a flying fortress in 1883 would make for a very potent military weapon. At the same time, it’s one flying fortress, and there is no magic technology that makes the carriage, or the balloons themselves, impervious to artillery. A fleet of these things could make for a terrifying threat to the US government, but just one? The fact that Hex is able to take it out with a few lucky sabotages is a good indication that this plan wasn’t going to get that far, even if Hex hadn’t spoiled it in the first hour. None of these points are dings against the episode. If anything, they underline the idea that for all of his resources, Ra’s has not always planned as well as he does in the present day, and his fanaticism blinds him to flaws in his ideas once he’s decided on a course of action. Whether he puts in those details in the story out of a sense of humility, or just couldn’t think of a good way to remove them without making the story incomprehensible, I don’t know. But even if it makes him seem less effective, I think he has a far better showing here than he did playing Belloq to Batman’s Indiana in “Avatar.”
Jonah Hex also makes for a nice change of pace in a protagonist. I wouldn’t say he could carry his own cartoon series; in fact, I will go out of my way to say he could not. Maybe an adult series, but this one episode has to work awfully hard to keep him in character without letting him clearly kill someone (though it’s hard to argue someone didn’t die when he threw a bomb into the ammo room). However, he makes for a nice contrast with Batman, especially presented as an older version of himself. Arkady, Ra’s al Ghul’s son, is also a nice change of pace. He’s certainly villainous (it’s a nice if nasty detail that what he did to “that girl back east” is never explained, but there’s no good ending in that phrase), but he’s an opportunistic and entitled form of evil, something that has rarely come up in the show so far. And as Ra’s himself puts it at the end, it made him too unbalanced and cruel to work as an heir to the Demon himself for saving humanity. The clear acknowledgement that Talia is not his own child, and also not his only failure in producing an acceptable heir, underlines why he’s pursued Batman as a potential adoptive son.
“Showdown” is an episode that works best if you’ve already watched both episodes of “The Demon’s Head” (which you really should do anyway), but it’s strong even without that knowledge. The bulk of the episode works well without any prior knowledge of Batman and Ra’s al Ghul’s interactions, or even of Jonah Hex at all; I thought it was a great watch as a kid, and I didn’t know who the white haired guy was at the time. Part of that strength comes from some lovely animation, which makes the zeppelin and all the proto-steampunk technology in it pop out beautifully; a less talented set of animators could have made it into an ugly mess. Still, the story is the best part here, and the coda of Batman letting Ra’s and his son go home in peace is an appropriate and powerful ending. I highly recommend watching this, even if you haven’t seen the Demon’s Head yet, for whatever bizarre reason.
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Tags: batman, Jonah Hex, Ra's Al Ghul, Robin, Western
Thanks to Chris Sims, I read an article on Giant Bomb today about some deplorable behavior from video game fans. What made it hit home for me wasn’t the fact that it featured a grown man being proudly sexist and claiming this was somehow essential to the fighting game community (a problematic term in and of itself, to be honest). Rather, it was the fact that fighting games were involved at all. Because if there’s any genre of video games that is proudly regressive, that’s the one.
My first response was that the regressive actions of the community came from the games themselves. After all, any series where you can play as a panty flashing 14 year old school girl, and have fans react in righteous fury when they hear hints that the panty flashing might be less obvious or “even” removed entirely, is not the most progressive. But as much as characters like Sakura or Mai are troubling, they’re also not entirely at fault, since you can have different readings on them that give them an empowering edge. Sometimes that’s detail inserted after the character was created and the company realizes they need to tone down the sex kitten aspects, but any refinement is welcome.
Really, the problem comes down to fighting game fans, and they alone. Because I was around in the hey-day of fighting games in arcades, the real source of the tribalism. You didn’t just play the games there. You competed in those places, because the point of any fighting game was, and is, competition against other players. Even the hardest fighting game AI of the time had a pattern that could be exploited, even if it used broken moves or unfair reaction times. Other people, though, they were truly unpredictable. And when some new guy came into the arcade and ripped through the regular crowd, he became the person to beat, either as a new shining star in the group, or the outsider to take down a peg.
I can only speak for the few arcades I was in, but none of them featured any female players that I remembered. This was the sport of young boys and adolescent males, who didn’t care about the dimly lit, sometimes grubby places they competed it. Whoever you were, you could briefly be an impossibly muscled martial arts god, proclaiming your dominance over every other guy clustered around your chosen machine. But you also had to observe certain rules. You couldn’t complain when you got trash talked, it happened to everyone. If you wanted to play again, you put a quarter on the lip of the machine, and God Help You if you tried to claim a quarter you hadn’t put up. If you were new, you were scum, until you learned not just how to play the game, but how to respect the rules; you had to do both, not one or the other. None of these were essential rites of passage into manhood, but the rituals mattered to us.
Obviously, most arcades are gone. In some cities the population density is high enough to support the business model, but the exclusivity that supported most arcades collapsed once home consoles started to match arcade machines in power. They didn’t have to surpass them, just do well enough to run the most popular games. And since most fighting game arcade machines only had a large screen size as their selling point (the “arcade joystick” ideal usually not lasting past a particular frenetic match damaging the controls for everyone else), it didn’t take much to convince people to stop dropping quarters when you could invite the same group of friends to your house and recreate the experience…sans the occasional unwelcome new player.
The point here isn’t that having a communal experience was a bad thing. But all of these things meant that the fighting game community didn’t start as some kind of vastly shared experience, such as you had with other landmark games like Super Mario Brothers or Sonic. Instead, they were deeply factional affairs. Everyone played them, but they played in their own individual communities, sharpening themselves against friends and only occasionally meeting other players from different areas in tournaments. They were fiercely local and disdainful of new people, lest someone lower their standards or embarrass them.
And that continues to the present day. Even with the loss of arcades, and the rise of online matchmaking (which is a great thing for fighting games), fighting game fans talk about being part of a community. However, they don’t have any enthusiasm for being part of a nationwide, or even global community of players. Their community started in those small, huddled groups, and if they could they’d have it remain that way. The sexist comments and abusive behavior that’s been put on public display is certainly shameful, but I don’t think it’s born from an overall sexist feeling in the group. Rather, it’s that tribal feeling taken to its logical extreme, as “tradition” is challenged by the sheer presence of someone who is “other.”
It’s also the reason why fighting game fans respond to being called on their bad behavior by saying they’re being “muzzled” or people are being “too sensitive.” They’re used to insulting each other regularly in their games, and it’s stunted the abilities of many to realize when they’re engaging in good-natured camaraderie, and when they’ve crossed the line into making others feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Most people can recognize that racial slurs cross that line, but if you grew up calling each other these names and laughing about it, you might not realize why someone would be offended regardless of your intent.
Ultimately, I’m not interested in defending the fighting game community. I’ve long since lost any interest in trying to compete with other players, and most of my interest in the genre is out of fondness for games I played when I was younger, or the batshit insane stories they create to spice up what should be the simplest plots in the world. But as someone who was a part of these groups, it’s fascinating to realize just how much the bad behavior of online players today comes from the vanished arcades of their youth.
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Tags: fighting games, Mai, racism, Sakura, sexism, video games
Two words: Killable fairies.
Having spent some time rebutting what one person online had to say about how to ‘save’ Zelda, I naturally started to think about how I would personally like to see the series improve. There wasn’t a good way to integrate that into the rebuttal itself, which is why I left it out. But the idea is still there, and why not indulge it a little?
The biggest suggestion I have for the series is for a change of pace in regards to the plot. The overall setting isn’t an issue; being in natural areas and underground dungeons is not a problem. But every time, the plot boils down to “an ancient evil is waking up, and you have to kill it.” Play that plot enough time with the same characters, and it starts to feel like a rotating desk job rather than an epic destiny. At some point, you’d think the names “Link” and “Zelda” would be considered bad luck in Hyrule. Yes, there’s almost always a long stretch of time between each game, but at some point the common wisdom is just going to remember that part, even if they don’t remember why.
Leaving aside the naming issue, what it boils down to is that while we’re willing to play the same basic plot in our video games over and over again, so long as we enjoy the actual gameplay, this is where plot detail shines. It’s part of that tentative first step forward from Skyward Sword, where there was some real emotional investment in Link’s quest to save Zelda. Not a lot, but still enough to stand out. I should note that Skyward Sword wasn’t the first game in the series-it goes all the way back to Link to the Past, and Ocarina of Time has it as well. Still, giving us more detail on what Zelda thinks beyond “save Hyrule/me!” is a good move, and more would help. With that in mind, here are some possible new directions future Zelda games could take.
More overtly political
This one probably sounds strange. Zelda games are pretty black and white in motivation. Zelda and Link defend the status quo, Ganon (or in rare cases, another villain) try to destroy it. But what if our villain had a more sophisticated approach? Maybe they want to take over Hyrule…but they want to preserve the kingdom they’re conquering. In that case, the antagonist (we’ll stick with Ganon for this example) could be someone who signs a treaty with the King (or Zelda herself, as the queen/last surviving royal heir), and tries to infiltrate the power structure and subvert it from within. Rather than being the last surviving person who could save the day, Link is chosen to fight against Ganon as a lone agent, able to move with more secrecy than a large group could. On the flip side, the limited enemy numbers and boss fights are a matter of Ganon trying to stop you without either using his own skills directly (and publicly), or sending out army units to face one man with a sword and shield, since those could expose his master plan just as much as Link’s activities. Obviously something like this wouldn’t change the player’s role, but it would make the story more complex, and could provide more natural gating mechanisms than a random magical barrier. You can’t enter a given area because you would be easily noticed at that time, and you need to keep your cover to work effectively. The final stages would not be a seemingly hopeless fight against a god-like figure, but trying to complete your plans as Ganon accelerated his takeover of Hyrule from within.
Steampunk
This one is thornier for me, as much of my mental associations with steampunk are about people sticking gears on top hats and talking about “aether powered devices.” Moving from the pastoral settings of Hyrule to electricity guns and zeppelins is a pretty jarring transition. But I think it could work, as long as it was not presented as the fantastic alternate Victorian England. In other words, light on the “steam,” heavy on the “punk.”
Picture a rapidly industrializing Hyrule, moving away from magic and ritual towards machinery and technology…and pollution. Toxic sludge comes from many factories, the sky is a sickly yellow above the cities, and there is constant fighting between the Hylians and their more elemental neighbors, such as the Zora and the Gorons, over Hyrule’s rapacious appetite for ore and other resources. While many Hylians benefit from the cheaper goods and devices, there’s also a real sense that something has gone wrong. The player finds some clue that there is more to the rise of industry than just a demand for goods, and rather than working to stop one great evil, you try to save the land itself and make people realize something more sinister is going on, whether it’s an organized effort or simply a vicious cycle of corruption. Rather than moving away from the focus on the natural in Zelda games, it would be doubling down on it, contrasting the unspoiled wilderness with the danger of a modern world that does not care about the damage it’s doing to its birthplace.
Then there’s my final idea, which has nothing at all to do with the setting…
Multiple controllable characters.
This was something hinted at with Spirit Tracks, but we only got a very pale shadow there through directing Princess Zelda. I’m not going to harp on that game for dropping the ball, though; portable games aren’t designed to have multiple players looking at the same screen. Still, I think it’s time to have a Zelda game where we can play as Zelda, with or without Link in sight.
Don’t get me wrong: I like Link. Mute as he is, I think he’s a pretty likable character, and I prefer his stoic demeanor to bad wisecracking or over the top “badass moments.” But since Wind Waker, the games have tended to bill Zelda not just as a passive object to be rescued in the story, but as an active story participant for at least part of the game. I think Nintendo should take that next step and make her someone you can play for most of, if not all of, the game. Let us change between Link and Zelda in some way, and make the play style differences significant enough to matter, but not enough to require it; I don’t want to have a gimmick where you only change to Zelda to get past specific sections, then Link is better for everything else. That would also allow them to make it a two player game, where both characters can be on screen to clear dungeons and explore the world. It wouldn’t be the first multiplayer Zelda game, but it would be the first that wasn’t just color coded Links.
I’ll close by saying that not only do I not expect Nintendo to go in the first two directions, but I don’t think they have to. The issues with Zelda as a series is more about useful traditions versus ossification, and how to come down on the side of the former without obstructing real innovation. However, I think all of these ideas could work well for a Zelda game, and all three could be used in the same game without destroying the essential essence of Zelda.
And finally, kill Tingle.
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Tags: co-op, cooperative play, Ganon, Hyrule, Legend of Zelda, Link, Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, political, politics, Skyward Sword, steampunk, Zelda
I have recently read an article heralding the need to rejuvenate Zelda as a series, to move it away from a degenerate direction that has made it into nothing more than a hollow shell. The stated way to do this can be boiled down into one sentence:
“Make Zelda hard, like it used to be.”
There are many arguments in the article about how to do this and why it would be the best way to go, but I think that is the basic point. I was tempted to mock that (much like the article itself mocks the most recent Zelda games and those who enjoy them), but making fun of an opinion you don’t agree with is one of the lowest forms of Internet discourse, akin to the elementary school gang of kids that snicker at the students they don’t like for some arbitrary reason. It does nothing to bolster your argument except to those who agree with it already, and allows those you disagree with to portray themselves as persecuted. Also, it’s usually not that funny.
And I will admit, I at first skimmed the article. But before I started writing this, I felt I owed it to Mr. Thompson to read his entire post, from top to bottom. After all, it might be more nuanced than I thought, and it wouldn’t hurt to make sure I didn’t misrepresent him in some way. Having done so, I saw no change in the article’s point. So be it, my skimmed version was largely right. But one new argument stuck with me: the appeal to “how it used to be.” Alongside it were arguments that newer Zelda players just didn’t know their favored games were in the wrong, because they hadn’t played it back in the mythical “the day.”
As someone who did play that golden NES cartridge from release day until the paint started to flake off, I actually existed in that far off past of yore. Moreover, I grew up playing console games, and remain a proud video game enthusiast. I have played and beaten most of the Zelda series at the time of their release, and what I have not beaten I have at least valiantly reached as far as I could (I’m looking at you, Thunderbird of Zelda II). Excepting the Philips CD-i installments, I have not beaten or largely completed Oracle of Ages and Majora’s Mask. None of this is some kind of special record, but the upshot is that I did not come to the series late, or skip large chunks of it. And with that knowledge, I can firmly say that I have no desire to return to the days of Zelda I.
Does that mean I think Mr. Thompson has no good points in his article? I will admit that he makes some good observations. Gating off all content until you are able to handle it is an artificial way to stretch out a game, and often glaringly obvious. It can be forgiven to an extent, depending on how it is implemented, but the natural human response to being told something is forbidden is wanting that much more to get it. He also has a good point that Zelda games can suffer from having too many items, with many being used to a very limited degree. good for one dungeon and then largely forgotten. But both of these points only get one response: make it harder.
The original Zelda was a wonderfully intricate game for its time. Many things were hidden, both important and unimportant, and it laid down some very new concepts as well. How many games would think to put an enemy sprite in the unfamiliar position of being an NPC to interact with, rather than an obstacle to kill or avoid? However, a rush to nostalgia for the first game risks stripping it of historical context. Every video game development process, and Zelda I was no exception, is a matter of balancing design desires with programming reality. The reason why Yoshi didn’t appear until Super Mario World was that he couldn’t work in the original Super Mario brothers with the limitations of the NES at the time, and even as NES games became more sophisticated, it wasn’t feasible to include him. With that in mind, why did the bombable walls in Zelda I appear exactly the same as every other wall? Maybe because the designers wanted to keep them a secret….or making a whole new sprite to indicate a wall was different was an extra space of memory, which wouldn’t be used enough to justify trying to squeeze it in. I can’t argue the latter is the true reason, but it’s just as valid a design choice as the former, and both can be true at the same time.
Similarly, the condensing of the Zelda inventory into “a few, deeper items” is a far easier solution to propose than to implement. What is the right balance? If one of those deeper items is a wand of fire, would you have to make sure half the world can be burned? I’m sure most people would not appreciate the idea that everything in Hyrule happened to be made of bone dry tinder, conveniently soaked in lighter fluid; even if you liked setting things on fire, it would get old after a while. There is also the fact that Zelda I had the briefly necessary then disposable item, so if this is an offense in the latest games, it is also an original sin.
My main riposte to Mr. Thompson’s thrust is simple: the fetishization of difficulty is not healthy, and will not inherently produce a better game in the present day. There is nothing wrong with a sense of personal pride in defeating a difficult game, whether you did so as a child in the past or as an adult now. There is also nothing wrong with someone creating a difficult game in the modern day; different levels of difficulty appeal to different people, even in the same game. But that point is important, because these are games. They are meant to act first as personal entertainment. They can stand for more than that, and can even make important observations on our life and culture. But their primary merit is that they are an experience you participate in, rather than something you passively watch, read, or listen to. In that light, the case for ‘saving’ Zelda by making it less inviting is a hope to exclude those that do not meet your personal standards. It is a more civilized veneer over the blunt “L2P” mentality of those who resent the presence of others in their entertainment, even when that entertainment is designed as a multiplayer game first and foremost. One cannot exclude others from playing a single player game, but you can decry the game itself, in an attempt to devalue their experience. Your own purchase and play through of the game is cast as a noble sacrifice to document the ruins of a once-great franchise, while others mistakenly hail it as a wonderful experience on its own merits.
The difficulty of the original Zelda game was as much a product of its design limitations as its creator’s intent. As those limitations decreased, they expanded the world of the games, and made them more accessible. This was surely in part a sales strategy, but Link to the Past was released when the original Zelda game was still a relatively fresh game for many Japanese gamers, their primary market at the time. These were the same people who had loved Zelda I. It would have been an equally valid sales strategy to keep the difficulty ramped up, and instead they lowered it so that more of their work could be seen. This is not caused by a fear of rejection, but by wanting to give their customers games that still rewarded exploration and adventure, but did not threaten the idea of a punishing slog that may prove fruitless. There is a trade-off there, I freely admit that; a lower difficulty can make a game feel less satisfying to complete. But presenting this as though nothing can be gained is willfully misrepresenting the possibilities. You risk losing a sense of satisfaction, but you also can drop feeling frustrated about missing that one jump with exasperating consistency, or having to search half a continent for the remaining door key, before finding that the door you unlocked gives you an identical key, and nothing else. If Zelda existed in a vacuum, such aggravations might be tolerated, but the video game market place is growing more crowded, not less. And the frequent modern stumbles of other game franchises show that having a well regarded name is not a reason to assume your customers will always follow you. A less inclusive Zelda game could easily drive its fans to play an easier game, rather than feeling some personal challenge to improve their Zelda skills
I can certainly agree that as things stand, Zelda as a series needs to change. Too much tradition has built up based specifically on Ocarina of Time, the best example being how subsequent games are too often designed around your mode of transportation. But the experimentation of Skyward Sword, however conservative, was a welcome first step, as were the attempts to give the story more depth than simply saving Zelda from Ganon. I enjoyed the first Zelda game, and even the second, long considered the unwanted stepchild of the series, holds a warm place in my heart. But none of that affection for Zelda’s past is enough to make the present and future of the series unwelcome to me. Declaring that the series needs to have less story, less character focus, and more unrelenting punishment does not strike me as a way to bring the series back to a Platonic ideal. Instead, it sounds like a vain hope to trap it in amber, and protect it from ever having to risk the perils of evolving.
Filed under: General Nerdity, Video Games | 1 Comment
Tags: Ganon, Link, Majora's Mask, NES, Nintendo, Ocarina of Time, Oracle of Ages, Response, Skyward Sword, video games, Zelda
Hey, it’s the return of Red Claw! That’s….something!
Ostensibly, this is an episode about Alfred and his past. On the one hand, that’s a fairly interesting concept. The average butler (which seems like a very small sample group) may not be all that interesting, but Alfred is hardly average. Most rich eccentrics restrict themselves to unfortunate purchases or harmless obsessions, not fighting crime in the dead of night. And yet Alfred rolls with it for both his former master’s son and Bruce Wayne’s adopted son. This can’t be the sort of man who turned to his current career just out of luck or a desire to make some money.
On the other hand, I have to wonder how much we really need to explain Alfred. It’s often the case that the story a fan clamors for ends up being very disappointing, because it’s not told the way they wanted it to be. That applies whether it’s a fabled character crossover (the recently announced Doctor Who/Star Trek comic feels me with apprehension for this very reason), or pushing an obscure character into the limelight to reveal their mysterious past. Was Alfred some amazing secret agent? Did he meet Thomas and/or Martha Wayne in a clandestine way and then call on them later to look for a job? Maybe he’s a college friend that needed a new position after being turned out of his old one, through some scandal or skullduggery. The point is, for all the variations we could think of for Alfred’s past, someone is going to be disappointed by the “official” one, since there are so many possibilities. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth exploring at all, though. There are some interesting ideas about Alfred’s past in this episode, but unfortunately it gets buried under the action pieces with Red Claw, much like Catwoman’s debut was squelched by pairing it with Red Claw’s own first appearance.
It would be easy to claim that Red Claw is the source of the problem for both episodes due to an inherent problem with the character, but that’s unfair. True, she wasn’t a compelling antagonist in her first appearance, and she isn’t here either. Plus, with the introduction of Ra’s Al Ghul, her role as a global terrorist is redundant; a stronger character with clearer goals has been introduced, and it makes her seem too small for Batman’s time. Having said that, the problem with Red Claw is simply a lack of goals. She wants to hold governments for ransom, but does she have an ideological agenda other than creating chaos, or is she a super villain masquerading as a guerrilla fighter? Either of those interpretations would work, but the most motivation we get from her is “she’s evil!” Something that vague can work for a villain if they tie themselves to a strong aesthetic, such as the Joker or the Penguin. Red Claw’s only visual is that she’s a tall, strong woman who’s willing to kill millions, and there’s far too much telling about how scary she is, instead of showing it. The core of the idea is strong enough for multiple interpretations, and if she’d ever gotten an episode just about her plans, maybe there would have been time for her to stand out. Being paired first with Catwoman and Alfred makes her an antagonist not just in the story, but to our attention. We thought we’d be learning about Selina Kyle and the mysterious past of Batman’s faithful servant, and both times we have to deal with an indeterminate Eastern European threat instead.
For the first third of the episode, at least, it’s a show about Alfred. He’s conveniently one of the two people who has the launch codes for a nuclear weapon facility in England, and Red Claw lures him to England through an old civil service friend. Here we at least get to see him holding his own for a while, handling an unusual situation well. But then Red Claw reveals herself, and it changes from “Alfred’s Adventures” to the standard plot of stopping the villain and saving the day.
For all I’ve complained about Red Claw, at least I can say the change of venue to England makes for an interesting departure. It’s a nice change of pace to have underlings who may be able to recognize Batman and Robin are trouble, but don’t have any knowledge of their reputation. The same holds true throughout the country, as we see when the pair interrupt a high level government meeting. Everyone’s shocked that they got in, but no one recognizes Batman, and they definitely aren’t sure if they should trust these weird Americans in costume.
In addition, the action pieces show more than just the two of them punching their way to the big boss. A quick but excellent scene is when the pair take out a 4 person patrol in complete silence, grabbing them one by one until only the leader is left, having no idea what happened to all the men behind him. And then they handle the last line of defenses by creating a huge amount of smoke, to neutralize the numbers advantage. I wouldn’t say it’s the best action done in the show, but it’s a fine example of the two as real partners, taking out a huge number of enemies with non-lethal force quickly and efficiently. Unfortunately, things fall apart some by the end. as Red Claw somehow manages to get into the Batplane, even though she has no clear way to break in, or even time to do it, so she and Batman can have a very brief fight before he just ejects her ass, so he can take out the nuke and save the day.
So what to say of Red Claw’s second and final appearance? It’s a problematic one. This is definitely a better story than “The Cat and the Claw.” I’m sure part of that is because it’s only one episode instead of two, so we don’t have to deal with too thin a plot for the running time. On the other hand, it has the same bait and switch issue from the first appearance, and nothing works perfectly, as almost all of it gets too little time. We don’t get enough of a sense for how Batman has to operate differently in England, not enough time with Alfred before he’s captured, and I definitely would have liked to see more of the castle assault, even though that was the best element. It’s worth watching once, as an interesting concept with one clearly winning element.
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Tags: Alfred, animated series, batman, England, Red Claw, Robin
For the most part, when I’ve come back to an episode I had negative opinions on before, I either find myself revising them upward or finding something to like about them. There are exceptions-”Moon of the Wolf” and “Batman in my Basement” remain particularly bad-but it’s nice to come back and see things in a better light. “Babydoll” is a whole other case. It’s not terrible, but an ending that seemed powerful when I was younger doesn’t hold up, because the story preceding it doesn’t earn the ending.
The villain is another original character for the series, and in concept she’s a perfect one-off villain. She has one motivation, one goal, and there’s no need to bring her back after this. She also makes for a very distinctive visual, since it’s not often that a 5 year old girl is the antagonist in a Batman story. Unfortunately, she doesn’t work because we get too much time watching her act like the “cute” character she’s pretending to be, and not enough seeing the damage that makes her go off the deep end. This is someone who decided that since she couldn’t find another career after her acting one sputtered out, she had to kidnap her old coworkers and force them to relive their roles just for her. Having this peddled as “Oh, I just miss the spotlight!” makes her sound awfully slight in motivation, since it’s too weak and too rational.
She also has the issue of plans that work because the plot said they will, until they don’t. When she sends her henchmen to collect the second to last hostage, they do so with a giant truck that can knock back police cars. There’s no explanation of where they got this, or how she can afford to pay for this kind of help. In the case of an established villain, we don’t need to see how they got their crazy devices…and obviously we don’t need full documentation on Babydoll’s credit rating before and after the episode. But it’s strange that she would be able to put something like this together, and couldn’t use that money or talent to other uses beforehand. It might even had made for a stronger episode if Babydoll had been going down a criminal path before she had started to gather her old “family.”
But the part that most sinks the ending is the final chase between Batman and Babydoll. This is an antagonist who has mostly gotten her way with the help of her subordinates. Sure, she has a doll that can shoot bullets, but she’s up against Batman, who regards disarming 3 thugs with submachine guns as a slow night. The image of Batman running after a 5 year old girl to haul her in, even one with a gun, is kind of sad. It’s even worse when the episode briefly makes it seem like she’s got him on the ropes by shooting tennis balls at him, or when Batman tries to reason with her, as though she wasn’t aware of what she had done.
So for all of those issues, why isn’t this a terrible episode? The first reason is the animation. It’s beautifully done, and it helps to sell a lot of the visual here. Batman being pelted with tennis balls might be a very goofy story moment, but it still looks great. They’re even good enough that you can pick up on the appearance of the non-speaking henchmen, who look a lot like Gilligan and the Skipper. Another is the fact that Robin is in the episode, and this is another one that uses him well, making him a real partner to Batman instead of just a sidekick. It also (perhaps inadvertently) makes the Gotham PD look good; Gordon calls Batman in to let them know about the pattern of disappearances they’ve spotted, their likely suspect, and that they’ve got police protection around the remaining target. So for once Batman doesn’t come in and make them all look like morons, especially since he isn’t able to keep the kidnapping from going down either.
In the end, the biggest disappointment about “Babydoll” isn’t the fact that it’s not a great episode. It’s the fact that the ending spells out all of the potential that got lost. The character is a little girl who literally can’t grow up, thanks to her rare medical condition; she wants to retreat into a fake childhood since her real one is hellish and never-ending. For a minute, the episode manages to touch on that point and turn her into a tragic figure, in the way Batman’s best villains are. But it couldn’t get the balance right beforehand, so it never works well as a whole, which is a shame.
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Tags: animated series, batman, Gordon, Robin
This wasn’t one of the episodes that I missed when I was a kid. But it was in the vague category of “later” episodes for the Animated series, when it had been rebranded as the Batman and Robin Adventures on Fox. Combined with the specific moment when the Bane character was introduced in the comics, it felt like a weird hybrid even as a kid, and it stuck out for that reason.
Before we get to the episode and Bane, I have to take a minute to talk about how the series rebranding was not important, yet felt like a wrong move, then and now. For one thing, Robin did not become a more important character after the name was changed, so the title was something of a lie. But the bigger issue was that they changed the opening sequence, from the masterful 30 seconds of silent crime fighting to a weird hybrid, containing snippets of episodes where Robin had appeared beforehand, and the original opening. It angered me as a kid, and even now it’s an irritation, even though the new opening is perfectly fine on its own. It only suffers in comparison.
Back to Bane himself, the episode aired near when Bane appeared in the comics. I have to admit, I never read the storyline that introduced him, only hearing about it on the margins. Partly this was because I was exclusively a Marvel reader at the time…and partly because I was too young to spend my own money on comics, so there was no way I could guarantee being able to collect the whole thing when it was current. Still, I was young enough to think that when Bane broke Batman’s back, it might actually be a permanent thing, and Bruce Wayne would never be Batman again. Obviously I was wrong, but that idea informed my viewing of the episode, and made it a tension nothing else had. Would this do the same thing to Batman? Would they actually end the series with this? If so, what would come next? All terribly naive questions, but I was of the right age to seriously consider it, instead of assuming it would all revert to normal at the end. Now that I’ve watched it again, that tension is gone, so that’s one obvious difference between seeing it as a child and an adult. So the question is, how well does it hold up without that metatextual fear?
The answer is decently. This is not an outstanding episode of the series, but it has a strong start and middle, and it manages to be true to the character of Bane while paring down the unnecessary details. The one thing that set Bane apart was the idea that he wasn’t just hopped up on super steroids, but was also very intelligent and strong willed. That hasn’t come through in all of his comic appearances since his introduction, but it does appear here, such as when he uses an unknowing Killer Croc to both scout out Batman and send a message that he’s hunting the Dark Knight. But the episode doesn’t hit us over the head with this fact, either. Bane is certainly stronger than Batman, but he’s not shown as being smarter, nor does the episode try to cram the whole Knightfall storyline into 22 minutes. He’s smart enough to use his strength intelligently and make good plans, and that’s enough to make him a real threat.
The reason why the episode is decent comes from the final third of the episode. The basic story starts with Rupert Thorne hiring Bane to kill Batman. Not as evocative as Bane wanting to break Batman just to prove himself, but again, we’ve got 22 minutes for the story instead of 12+ comic issues. The simpler motivation is best here. As part of this, Thorne gives Bane his female assistant, Candace, to help him out. She hints at Bane eliminating Thorne once Batman is dead, and even goes with Bane for the final confrontation with Batman, who shows up because Bane was able to kidnap Robin. So far, nothing here is a problem, and the fight between Batman and Bane is nice, at least the first half.
The problem comes up in the second. Batman knocks Bane off their chosen battleground, a boat, and rescues Robin from drowning. Then Bane returns and he and Batman fight some more…while at the same time, Candace is taunted by Robin, and dives into the water after him to fight Robin. I can accept that they wanted to keep Batman from getting Robin’s help while he’s fighting Bane, but it drains a lot of the tension of Bane slowly grinding Batman down when it’s being cut with Candace and Robin flailing around in the pool. And keep in mind, Robin doesn’t pull her in to start with. She willingly jumps in to wrestle him. I don’t know what she was thinking, but I can’t wrap my head around her behavior there. Batman wins, of course, but in a highly disturbing manner-he damages Bane’s Venom unit, and it ends up overloading the poor bastard, making it look like he’s about to explode before they pull the plug.
Is this an episode you should watch? Yes…with reservations. As I said, Bane is handled well here, adapted to fit the series without losing the essential point to the character. And I’ll admit, I liked how the character is essentially an upgrade on Killer Croc, and takes out his predecessor as part of his plan. But that third act remains rough, even if it’s not an utter train wreck. Seeing Bane get unmasked and looking like some jobber schlub was not really a triumphant Batman moment, but a cringe-inducing cut down of an otherwise impressive villain. This is a statement that comes from a great deal of hindsight because of how well he’s been used recently, but Bane deserves better, even an animated version.
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Tags: Bane, batman, Robin, rupert thorne
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