@futuron-of-my-youth / futuron-of-my-youth.tumblr.com
Let us not speak of Sisyphus grown wise and gone, but now let us turn to the boulder once unmoved by daily suffering, now moved in its own stillness to become as one saddened with loss... they could have worked together, but the boulder and Sisyphus worked against each other daily, and now the boulder must crack a cold one in memory of the easy going roly poly oldy days when Sisyphus did all the work, and boulder kept the change.
「信義」The Garden of Lovers // AMV
I was just thinking about an old memory.
Back in my college days I was visiting home for some reason... Christmas probably, and we were at some activity where my parents current pastor was attending, and he and I chatted, and he asked me what I was watching, so I told him my new favorite movies were Garden of Sinners.
And I did not elaborate.
I may not be posting on tumblr for a while, usually I don't feel like I have anything to say, but I do irregularly get on here and perform my follower cleanse. One of these days I'll perhaps get a real new follower, but to do that I need to be interesting.
I'm the sort of Bot operator you can follow.
These are some of my Lego Robots
I got to see several movies the last few days, I've never seen any of these before
The Last Starfighter: The CG was very smooth and looked really good for being such an early example of the special effects. The inside of the alien base looked like it might have inspired some of the Lego Space panels that had an octagonal shape, I wonder if the design decisions made at Lego in the mid 80's were at all related. I wish the acting were better, it was a solid little video game sci fi movie. It was surprisingly short with one specific conflict that resolved in a rather smooth progression. I'm sure it would have been a great movie if I'd seen it as a kid, but alas, that's not when I saw it. My least favorite of the batch, but... I was not disappointed.
Gaslight: When my friend said, hey, that's Angela Lansbury, I almost didn't believe it, she's a saucy young house maid who dotes on a police officer in this movie; I guess she got her first role in this film. As for the movie itself; it's good, really good. There are lamps everywhere in this movie... if you like streetlamp imagery, and lamplighters, this movie is downright gorgeous. Easily my favorite of the batch.
AmbuLAnce: Michael Bay made a bank robbery movie about a getaway on an Ambulance in Los Angeles. I thought it would be about the day in the life of an Ambulance... well, it was that too. My friend started by asking me if I wanted to watch an entertaining review for it, and I said, no... but somehow he got me to give the review a few minutes of my time, and then I said... yes, I will watch Jake Gyllenhaal act like an angry bank robber having a bad day in an Ambulance for 2 hours. It was a very fun movie... my second favorite of the batch.
Outland: I've been on a bit of an 80's sci-fi movie viewing kick, so when Outland was brought to my attention I kept trying to get it into the rotation... and my friend kept asking if I wanted to see Galaxy Quest. Well, I prevailed... and we watched Outland on a really early, poor resolution dvd in pillarbox widescreen. It looked rough. Sean Connery's a police marshal for a small mining colony on the Jupiter moon of Io. Miners keep killing themselves, but Io's isolated, grey featurless mining facility just might make anyone go a bit mental... that's the official report anyway. It's got Sean Connery sleuthing his way around a grey and white metal rig trying to figure out why miners are killing themselves. I enjoyed it, I wish the resolution was good, (It looks like there's a much better bluray available, so I may revisit this film just to see a good printing of it.) The movie was a fine example of a cop movie with the pleasing industrial aesthetic of 80's sci fi. My 3rd favorite of the batch.
So that was quite a lot of movies for one weekend, there wasn't a bad one in the batch... although... Outland really should have never been released on dvd in such poor quality.
I finished the normal 428 ending and my vague suspicions about a character that were allayed by the setting came running back to show I'd been bluffed.
Since this is both anime and human actors it occurred to me that characters would look different from their drawn or real equivalent.
And sometimes that is true... but somebody looked like the anime equivalent of the opposite I'd expected... so I thought... well... I can't rely on the two different mediums to attempt to look the same, so I think this character is the character I guess they are, though they look like the other character, but since I've only seen one of them, who can really say.
I got lulled into a false sense of security despite having watched the anime first.
It was really fun when the story finally told me what was going on.
Oh, so, my preconceived notions were in part true, yet they led me to make assumptions that proved false. It was a fairly clever ruse, and I don't know if it was intended that way, or just the luck of the creators that it turned out this way.
I spent most of today tracking down all the bad endings and seeing the weird and funny little ways things can go wrong in the story.
I also unlocked one of the extra endings, alas, it's not the one I want... I've got to finish one chapter of bad ends and then I think that unlocks the super secret true ending... which is why I've journeyed so far... I want to see how they portray a certain character who has only shown up in the vague corners of the work, cloaked in shadows.
I've been mostly offline for a couple days... and there's been no Twitter, or 428, or internet for me... But I have been making good progress on Fate/Grand Order the phone game.
A few days before thanksgiving a friend asked me if I'd like to do a sleepover with my extra days off, so I headed over to hang out and play some video games.
and turns out he needed an extra set of hands for some chores around his house. Aha! So that's what this sleepover was all about, aye. I can't fuss, he paid for all the food while I was over visiting... We rebuilt his VR computer in a new box, strung Christmas lights on his house, rearranged his furniture, hung his poster (I saw it while moving his furniture, this one was my idea), and we cooked various made from scratch breakfast casseroles and stews from his Mom's old cookbooks.
In terms of Movies and tv shows we watched: I've now seen Star Trek: 'The Trouble with Tribbles', 'The Doomsday Machine',
Animated Star Trek 'More Tribbles, More Troubles',
A new movie: The Illusionist
Movies we came back to: Knives Out, Pacific Rim, Star Trek: The Motion Picture
We also played a bunch of video games, the primary focus being Horizon Zero Dawn. I brought it over and showed it to my friend on the suggestion that he shouldn't buy it sight unseen, because he might like it, or it might not interest him... turns out, after playing a few hours of the game from the 'Prologue through the Proving' of it he doesn't plan to get it. I watched him play a fair bit f it, and when I needed a minute away I'd look down at my phone and get some progress done in Fate/Grand Oder on my phone.
Somehow there came a point where I started watching HBomberGuy videos and when I see a new one I have to watch it...
I don't care about any of the topics he does videos for... Ok... I did pick up Pathologic because of him... but really, I only care about watching his videos because I get to watch Hbombergy pick a topic and just go with it.
Tell me about this thing HBOMBERGUY, I HAVE TO KNOW why it matters so much to you that you made a movie for me to watch.
I got started when my friend kept insisting I should watch his RWBY video... and I don't know why, to this day... why would I want to watch a video about RWBY... a franchise I stopped watching as soon as I heard the voice acting.
I was excited about RWBY once upon a time... back when it was just Anime style girls with big weapons dancing through the battlefield.
I discovered Monty Oum's choreographed fights way back when Youtube was young and I was in college and found Haloid (Halo and Metroid). When I was shown Dead Fantasy, a mashup of Dead or Alive and Final Fantasy, I watched all of it. I had a brief brief moment where I cared about what I thought RWBY would be... and it quickly became something I didn't want to watch... but... HBOMBERGUY was there to catch me up to speed on the RWBY show. My friend kept asking, have you watched his RWBY video yet until I did...
Now I always watch HBOMBERGUYS latest video even when it's about some meme sound effect called the ROBLOX "OOF", something I know absolutely nothing about. That video went places. It was only about the Roblox OOF sound for about the first 10 minutes of the 2 hour run time.
Several years ago I watched the anime Canaan, and at the time I knew it was somehow related to 428: Shibuya Scramble, but I had no access to the game.
I gotta be honest, I was really excited for Canaan ahead of its release, and it was a lot of fun to watch, but the grand arc of its story felt like I was in the dark about some context... which made me less than super enthusiastic about it.
I kind of assumed 428: Shibuya Scramble would never come stateside, so I had to content myself with Canaan as the least satisfying of the Typemoon anime shows (not that it is one, but I treat it as one due to Kinoko Nasu's involvement.) About 3 weeks ago I found out 428 had come out stateside 4 years ago!
So even though I usually drag my feet buying videogames, I took about 20 hours to go from finding out I could finally play 428 and trying out the demo, to buying it. I may or may not continue to bring it up on Tumblr as it strikes my mood.
So anyways, here's to Canaan, I always wanted to know the context of its story world, so now I'm playing the game and finding out.
Here's the trailer for 428 Shibuya Scramble, which has a tie in anime called Canaan.
Shibuya Scrambled is live action and photography... I did not expect that, but after being mentally thrown for a moment, I got into it and discovered that it's very engaging.
I figure I'll put my videogame thoughts here on Tumblr, so I can establish a pattern.
Anyways, I'm a couple hours into 428: Shibuya Scramble trying to grasp the larger context it provides for the short anime series called Canaan.
Much of the setup in this game is prior to Canaan's storyline. For the longest time the most salient connection to Canaan seemed to be the reporter Minorikawa. And despite the transition from anime to live action it's really him, and his mannerisms bring it across quite well that he's the same guy. In the anime he was working with his photographer Maria Osawa, but he doesn't mention her, so I get the feeling they haven't met yet.
Next closest connection to the Canaan anime is Maria Osawa... who's been a hostage offscreen in the starting scenario. She's been quite literally not in the game other than as a plot device. Maria is friends with Canaan... so far there's been no sign of Canaan... Gee, what's Canaan up to these days?
Instead we've been following Achi, a dude who's helping Hitomi Osawa; Maria's sister. They've been running in circles evading capture by the syndicate. Hitomi was told where to go find Maria and so far... the Syndicate has been trying to add her to the hostage situation; That's no good.
Meanwhile Mr. Osawa, the Bio researcher studying the Ua virus (AHA! a major backstory connection) is nervous at home because his daughter Maria is a hostage, and his other daughter Hitomi was taking the ransom money and now no one knows if Hitomi's okay (except Achi), and the bad guys have the ransom money. Mr. Osawa is a nervous wreck, but he likes to calm himself with this cool singers music...
I remember there was a taxi driver in Canaan who had this cool singer whose music he liked to jam with while driving high tension style off the ends of unfinished bridges... (He's not been in the game but it's a crazy fun and ridiculous anime partially due to his scenes. Anyways, I don't think it's the same singer, but the concept is close in terms of delivery.)
Then there's the syndicate, the closest I've seen the situation get to Alphard (Canaan's archnemesis from the Canaan anime) is a dark encounter with a shadowy figure who stabbed one of the protagonists- (Kano) during a bad end (You can try to change the story in this game... sometimes you get to keep going, sometimes you kill the protagonist) I think it's her, but I don't know so yet.
Right, I haven't brought up that guy, the protagonist shadowing members of the syndicate is Kano, the detective on the case to rescue Maria from the Hostage situation... his father in law to be is looking for every excuse to not be his father in law and just might find it because Kano keeps hanging up on his calls... which Kano is very sad about, because he does want to marry his girlfriend. It's never the right time to take a call from some father in law when Maria Osawa's life is on the line
And that brings me to Tama the mascot cat. Tama just wants to buy a necklace, so Tama got a shady part time job working for a guy trying to scam people so he can afford to pay off the very large bill for some scam merchandise he bought. Tama's storyline seems only vaguely adjacent to Canaan in that Tama has a mascot head on that seems like the headgear the unblooms were wearing in the anime. Tama has held a secret, who is Tama? Why is this storyline in the 428 game, what connection does Burning Hammer diet drink have to do with Canaan? Why can't Tama take the costume head off? Is Tama an unbloom?
I got to the part where Tama gets to buy the necklace, and... I just found out who Tama is.
Keep Out! (a cheeky reference to the games use of caution tape when a threshold of the storyline has been crossed and certain conditions haven't been met yet.)
I'm enjoying this game, the connections to Canaan the anime are still cloaked in mystery, but little by little the pieces are falling into place. It's not immediately apparent, but I'm slowly getting how Kinoko Nasu might have pulled his Canaan anime storyline out of 428: Shibuya Scramble.
A Futuron Spaceship I built with an emphasis on the Space station walls as a canopy. The tipped on their side approach made for some fussy design work with the left side and right side of the Spaceship being ostensibly top and bottom from a traditional approach to construction.
I had to come up with an alternative method of installing the minifigure, and the resulting interior is a bit clunky, if effective.
This is another one of my MOCs that hews to the Legoland Space ranges part selection, which I think helps make it look and feel like the original product range, even as I push against the boundaries of what can be done with the pieces.
I'd like to do more with my Tumblr than just Lego, but as I figure out how I want to use it I figure I'll show off MOCs, my pride and joy, My own MOC creations made with astonishing fidelity to the Classic Legoland Space part selections. Seeing as these are all parts taken from one each of the sets from 1987-1990 and including a few odd elements from the older and newer themes where I don't have the full lineup. If you were to tool around my blog you'll see I stopped reviewing after Blacktron and there's a few reasons for that.
Reason 1: I pushed hard from early 2013-2016 and collected a lot of Lego across four themes and wrote so much I had no time for actually relaxing and building with my Lego. I hit blogger burnout.
Reason 2: The Lego movie raised prices for the old Legoland Space stuff and changed the prices for the stuff I was trying to collect upward. I slowed down and haven't completed anything else to begin a write up. And coupled with my burnout, I don't yet know if I would, even if I could.
Reason 3: My last haul for this collection was January 2020... most of Unitron, Hence why I have any of it and why it appeared listed as parts in this MOC. After that the prospect of shipping myself objects that might make mailmen sick, or me sick, given what we knew about Covid at the time, seemed a poor idea, so I bunkered, and if I got Lego, I got it new in store... meanwhile prices for Old Space sets went even higher, and the prospect of collecting them continued to grow more daunting.
Reason 4: I play more video games, and watch a lot of anime these days... getting the Lego out to build in my 1 room studio demands full use of my space, and so, I just don't get it out very often, and when I do, I try to make something great. Typically I'll go hard for 1 or 2 afternoons, but usually If an idea doesn't come together in 1 sitting I abandon it, I'm impressed by folks who make grand MOCs spanning months, but my space and personality aren't amenable to such a task.
Reasons for my long slide into Ex-blogger obscurity aside... I discovered some Facebook groups that were active around my favorite Lego themes with discussion boards, and I've enjoyed communing with the other Space builders, as opposed to laboring on a niche blog in solitude, so I jumped ship and hang out with my fellow fans these days, posting Moc's and less intensive Blog posts once in a blue moon.
Testing my tumblr. But so you are aware, I'm the derelict blogger of Futuron of My Youth, I don't post much anymore, but I do check on it... occasionally.
Anyways, here's one of my favorite projects I completed for my blog back in my semi-active period.
