MAYvel Phase 3; Captain Marvel: "Oh boy, another movie no one can agree on and one where every opinion is hated!"

Because those are always fun to cover, and in no way at all nerve-racking, even if I cover media after they're done in the spotlight.

I was not looking forward to MAYvel Phase 3 this year purely because of this movie. Not because I hated it, I was honestly pretty impartial to it when I first saw it, but because it was another one of those movies that no one could agree on, where there was no middle ground in the discussion around the movie, you either loved everything about it or you hated it with everything you had because you're sexist. Yes, this movie is in the same camp as Ghostbusters 2016, in that it was held up as one of the greatest movies ever made because of female representation in the media and discussion surrounding the movie, and it was hard to discuss the positives and negatives of the movie without coming off as an apologist, or a sexist. Without going into details on the movie itself, I do think that kind of talk does a disservice to movies and media as a whole, as it not only brings to light the biases many people have about what they want in a movie, rather than the quality of a movie, and it also drags down positive representation of characters as people assume that it's bait for specific demographics, instead of being an interesting character and story to tell. That, combined with the increased pressure by automatic comparisons between this movie, the previous year's Black Panther and 2017's Wonder Woman, the release on International Woman's Day, and it felt like very little talk around Captain Marvel was actually about Captain Marvel. So, a year later, was it all worth it?

The Lego Movie 2; The Second Part: That feeling when you're outclassed by a 7-10 year old...

Going off of the logic of the movie, I swear the younger sister in this movie builds better than most AFOL's.

For all the positives and negatives that can be said about the four Lego Movies, one thing I've found interesting is the embracing of the meta context of the movies. From the first Lego movie being a reminder to kids and adult fans of Lego that Lego is still a toy, meant to be built up, played with, and then broken up to be rebuilt into something new, the Lego Batman movie making a mockery of the Live Action Batman movies and how depressing DC has gotten lately, the Ninjargo movie... being a Lego version of one of those cheesy, over the top kung fu movies including a giant monster (I'll admit the Ninjargo one is the one I've seen the least of the four), and now the direct sequel to Lego Movie being... a critique on making everything dark and edgy, and a stab at toxic masculinity in the form of showing how siblings don't get along due to how mean an older brother can be using the disguise of the younger sister distorting and brainwashing everything to be more girly... and ironically enough, my younger sister probably hasn't seen this movie, and will likely never see this review because all she knows about my sites is that they exist... anyway...

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore: I swear some of these concerts are using Black Magic.

And no, I don't mean the Blackmagic AV products (yes those are a thing).

Before getting started, I do have to make a quick announcement. Due to the state of the world right now, I've revived a Patreon account to try and ease the blow that is basically the world shutting down due to the Coronavirus. It has affected me pretty hard, due to my main work being Events Operations, so if you do enjoy the work that I do (which should be coming out more consistently due to all the extra free time I have), and you are in a position where you can help, please support me on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/mediaholics), and hopefully, the state of the world isn't like this for too long. If you start seeing an influx of older toys, older shows, movies, games, etc in the coming months from both sites, this is the reason why. Anyway...

Before the development of Fire Emblem Awakening, there have supposedly been talks over at Intelligent Systems on a potential Fire Emblem Game set in the modern world. Bringing the traditional combat system, but replacing swords, bows, and horses with more modern weapons and forms of combat. While some may argue that's what Advanced Wars is for, it turns out modern-day Fire Emblem would end up happening... by turning Fire Emblem into a Persona game. Not the most out-there crossover idea I've heard, as the combat systems between the two games, are similar enough to synergise well, but while this was originally pitched to the world as a crossover between Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei (of which Persona is a spin-off of), by the time people finally got to see the game, what we ended up seeing was... Persona 4 Lite guest staring Edgelord Chrom... The WiiU version of the game is something I purchased but didn't get much of a chance to play it as it was one of the few WiiU games that actually needed both the TV and the Gamepad screens, something that I found hard to explain to people who were used to me playing the WiiU by plugging in a set of headphones to the Gamepad and playing it like a giant Gameboy Advance. So when talk of a Switch port started circulating, I was interested, especially now that my knowledge and experience of Atlus games have grown to be more than just "What's a Persona?". Now that I can actually play it at my own pace, is it any good?

Disney Afternoon Marathon; Ducktales (2017): Season 3 Excluded

While a large part of the delay has been real-world stuff, it's hard to think with a phone going off every few minutes, the other reason for the delay has been to try and include the opening of Season 3 into the review as well. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened, so if you're wondering what my thoughts are on those episodes, you won't find them here. Around September 2017, I did a review of the opening few episodes of the reboot to Ducktales, something that I was really impressed with as it looked to encompass the feeling of the original show, while also modernizing it with some slice of life elements, a making some needed improvements to the cast (but to be fair, anything is an improvement over Scrooge, Launchpad, the red one, the blue one, the green one, the girl one, and the old lady). With the allure of the mystery of Della Duck, the promise of Magika DeSpell, and more including a third season that is taking as much of the Disney Afternoon as it can possibly fit (and didn't already use), this review is more of an addendum to the first. Did it keep up the momentum? Is it worth the watch now that more episodes are out and we're all killing time while we wait for the world to return to something resembling what it used to be?

Disney Afternoon Marathon; Goof Troop: Oh scrap, we're in peek 90's now!

Before getting started, I do have to make a quick announcement. Due to the state of the world right now, I've revived a Patreon account to try and ease the blow that is basically the world shutting down due to the Coronavirus. It has affected me pretty hard, due to my main work being Events Operations, so if you do enjoy the work that I do (which should be coming out more consistently due to all the extra free time I have), and you are in a position where you can help, please support me on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/mediaholics), and hopefully, the state of the world isn't like this for too long. If you start seeing an influx of older toys, older shows, movies, games, etc in the coming months from both sites, this is the reason why. Anyway...

 When things weren't all about dark, edgy, moody, and all the depressing tropes of the '90s, they were about "Kewl" (I cannot believe Grammarly didn't want to autocorrect that to Cool) kids and their dorky parents, with all the companies trying to stay relevant by catering to the kids wanting to be hip and radical. Disney, was no exception to this, and while there are other examples of the Disney Afternoon trying to do that (Quack Pack), there is only so much '90's I can take in one shot, so we're looking at Goof Troop.

Compared to the other shows reviewed for this marathon, Goof Troop is more of a slice of life comedy. No big villains, no saving the world, heck the first episode is just about Goofy and his son Max moving to a new house. The thing is though that taking Goofy and Pete, and giving them a supporting cast that is designed to play off of their personalities, it's going to lead to many comedic, borderline chaotic situations. Even something as mundane as studying for a test has a comedic edge to it, albeit in a cruel way, as Pete's aggressive parenting that takes all the tropes of what a child thinks of an overbearing parent and drastically amplifies it, combined with Max's drastic tutoring technique traumatizes Pete's oldest child P.J and makes him afraid of chocolate bars and eggs. It's just a delight to see and watch, similar to the Loony Toons when WB tried to put them into a more domesticated setting.

A part of what makes this work so well is the writing and the comedic timing. As much as a groan at the Slice of life shows made by Disney, focusing on the child while the parents are either embarrassing and overbearing, the jokes help sell this for me. One of the ones that sold the show for me was when Goofy was telling Max that he doesn't need to fish in the sink anymore, something I was confused about as their caravan looked to be near a lake. Turns out that was a fake background hung between two buildings. That's just amazing in terms of stupidity.

Visually, I'm not a fan of this. The backgrounds and character designs look really ugly when compared to almost every other cartoon I've seen (not Flash animation bad, but certainly bad by a lot of). But that being said, the character movements are great, and fun to watch, like all the budget, went into them, which I'm not against, but it's a shame that the backgrounds were this badly hit, at least early on in the season. Compared to the other Disney Afternoon shows I've watched though, the lack of quality in the backgrounds is really jarring, even if it's only a minor thing in the grand scheme of things in order to make the character animations better.

I guess my expectations were low for this one, due to previous experience with Disney's (or rather Disney Channel's) Slice of Life shows, but I really enjoyed this one. It's a SoL that still remembers it's a cartoon and mixes the comedy that comes with it into the stories. While we're all stuck inside anyway, it's worth a watch, and is a nice way to cap off the Disney Afternoon Marathon for the site... well, at least the shows that aired in the Disney Afternoon, because I have one more show to review.

Disney Afternoon Marathon; Talespin: Ok, who got into the Disney Coke supply again?

Honestly, that's the best way I can describe this show's pitch. Why? How else do you describe the logical thinking behind taking characters from The Jungle Book, and making a show all about the cargo delivery service? I know I haven't seen the animated Jungle Book in around 2 decades, but to my knowledge, Baloo wasn't a pilot.

I mean, in terms of execution, it's fine for a slice of life show, but aside from questioning how it came to be, that's unfortunatenly not the only issue the show has. With the exception of Shere Kahn and the new Sky Pirates, I wasn't a fan of the cast as a whole, especially Molly. Normally I base these reviews on early episodes, giving somewhere between 5 and 10 episodes to get a feel on how the show gets going. I won't lie, after the episode with Kit as Molly's babysitter, I started skipping over any episode that had Molly in the title. It's rare that I hate a character that much in that little time, but after that episode, she just constantly came off as "Ok, you're going to be the little, little kid stereotype. That's all you're going to be, moving on". What doesn't help at all is that after seeing Gossolin in Darkwing Duck, a kid character done right in my opinion, and the fact that the other kid character, Kit, doesn't really cancel out the problems I have with Molly, as he comes off more as someone who's just there for the ride.

Another issue I have is that it felt like a lot of the episode premises and gags rely on a lack of information, or just Baloo being a jerk to those around him. Though he has his moments when he's pulling off something clever, I don't get the same thrill from it compared to if I was watching something like Recess (better saved for another review as I don't recall reviewing it yet?). It makes the show hard to watch for me, because while the animation and score is nice (it's hard to find faults in the animation in a show made by a company founded on pushing animation as a cinematic art). It's just hard to find things in the show that I like, or feel like they're connected to the source. Everything feels like it was in a rush, to try and justify making a show about their (at the time, I'm not sure about nowadays) most financially successful movies. Hopefully fresh blood, and a new setting helps show the positives of the cast when the new season of Ducktales starts airing in April? This just makes me glad that I'm not coving some of the less favorable shows in this marathon. See you next week for Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers I guess....

Disney Afternoon Marathon; Darkwing Duck: Back when parodying superheroes was more unique

Computer: Functional again. Wi-Fi: About as stable as my network currently gets (hopefully being fixed soon?). Country: Looks like it's still on fire but it's back to being manageable. Ankle's healed, writer's block is gone, I think it's finally time to review content again!... About bloody time...

With the Ducktales Reboot teasing at the cast expanding greatly for the upcoming season, drawing more inspiration from the cartoons that ran in the same programming block that the original show aired in, I thought it might be fitting to review some of those older cartoons, especially now that it's very easy to view them. Yeah my first review of actual Disney+ content is a bunch of cartoons from the '80s-'90s and not The Mandalorian (maybe May 4th). While I could start off with something like Gummy Bears, I figure it would be fitting to start with the show refferenced the most in the Reboot, even bringing in the newest incarnation of the terror that flaps in the night, Darkwing Duck.

In a general sense, Darkwing Duck is a villain of the week superhero parody. Imagine if Will Arnet's Batman was in his own TV show basically, and you have Darkwing Duck in a nutshell. It works for a general set up, but if you're expecting something deeper then that, you're better off looking somewhere else.  Though the villains can be hit and miss at times, what works well in the show is the way the characters play off each other, something that helps bring out the best in Superhero parodies. The perfect example of this being DW and Gosalyn. Those two work off of each other perfectly, and are probably the best Parent/ Child relationship that I've seen when it comes to Disney... though considering most of my experience comes from their live-action tweenage girl shows that my sister was watching, that might not be saying much...

Due to Darkwing clearly drawing inspiration from Batman, I can't help but compare the show to Batman the Animated Series, and in terms of animation, I don't think DW matches it. Though it still looks nice, and actions have a clear weight to them in the animation and sound design, the darker colours of Batman TAS makes the action scenes look more exciting and interesting. Darkwing's animating gives off more of a Looney Toons vibe, which helps make it distinct, but again, I don't think it is a favourable comparison for DW, as the Loony Toons do it a lot better. Does this mean that I hate the animation in DW? No, I think it looks good and works for the show itself. But coming from someone who saw the show when he's 24? I can't help but compare it to works I've seen before it and works that I think do it better.

Is Darkwing Duck a bad show? No, not at all, I can see why it has it's fans, and it's something I'll probably revisit at some point. The biggest problem I have with it is my own personal baggage, the past experiences I have with shows like it. Is it a Disney+ seller? No, not a hope in hell mostly because the Darkwing Duck fans probably already have the DVD's of the show (if they even exist). But it's still a good show, one at least worth experiencing. Up next on the marathon, one of the more... out there pitches that got turned into a show, Tailspin.

Disney+: Not a review of Mandelorian

That will probably happen sometime in 2020.

It should come as no surprise that the Streaming wars have now well and truly started. Many large companies are either making their own services or partnering with other companies either with their own or working on their own, to try and give you everything you want at the minor cost of never actually owning any of their content again, data collection, and a small monthly fee on top of it. Though Australia has had Netflix for a while, and a collection of homegrown services like Stan to fill in the void created by other providers not bringing their content here, that does look to change thanks to the launch of platforms like Apple TV+, Disney+, and upcoming ones like Hulu and potentially HBO Max. Though reviews of these services may come in time, I can at least review this one, as it was staring me in the face every day I went to work for a few weeks around the launch. So while I'm housebound anyway, may as well take a look at something slightly different this time, with my review of Disney+... that was late compared to everyone else but let's be honest, when has that ever not been an issue with this site?

(Would love a Fox category... just saying...)

Starting with the launch lineup, and while it's a very strong selection of their content, even going so far back as to include the likes of Steamboat Willie, there are some noticeable gaps are depending on the series. I found it odd that The Proud Family show was not on the service, while the movie based on the show was. Same with the Muppets, the Muppet movies are here, but not the original show. At the same time though, there are many region-specific variations. By the looks of it, Australia was actually in a pretty good spot, as some movies being held up in licencing in the US are available here. As I couldn't find many sources very easily, I went through the CNet video on Youtube, going through the few placeholder spots they've found on the US version, and saw that all of them were available here. Something tells me that it's because of places like here in Australia that the placeholder icons are on the US platform, with messages like "Coming June 2021".At the same time, there were holes inside shows themselves, one glaring one to me being the two-part pilot of Ducktales 2017 when I went to do a quick check of it

There are however some issues on the more technical side of the platform. For the purpose of this review, I mostly focused on the web browser form of Disney+, as it allows me to get screenshots more easily. With this though, I noticed some performance issues, as the site appears to be very CPU and RAM dependent, at times burning through almost half of my computer's CPU when trying to play Avengers Endgame. Comparing this to Netflix, which has been an optimized service for me so far. Other Netflix comparisons are very easy to make, and none in favour of Disney+, with things like title sorting being a complete mess at times, thanks to being undecided about calling stuff Disney's *insert title here* or just *insert title here*. No option to marathon the Marvel Cinematic Universe in order, as going to the main Marvel subsection of the service, the first eight MCU movies displayed were Avengers Endgame, Captain Marvel, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Thor Ragnarok, Captain America Civil War, Avengers Age of Ultron and then The Avengers. A massive example of this is The Simpsons, which many of the services from their last streaming platform are currently missing, including things like the ability to watch all the Treehouse of Horrors episodes in a row. Even small things like the ability to press the space button to pause or resume playing something feels like a missing feature due to it not working consistently, and I can't help but wonder why.

Like with a lot of streaming services, a constant and reliable internet connection is required for an ideal experience, and during testing, my router decided to have some problems, bringing to light how the video player handles less than ideal situations regarding connections. To put it bluntly, not very well. I had to restart Endgame several times because of network dropouts either skipping sections of the video and not letting me rewind to play it properly, or just outright giving up trying to buffer. Though I could bring up minor issues, like the rather bland loading screen of videos and the Android App (I said I mostly focused on the web browser, not entirely), and the locking of pre-made avatars that no one else will see anyway so what was the point? The thing I keep coming back to time and time again is the question of "Is it worth it?"

For archives of content? While there is plenty here, sorting through it is a problem (I'm honestly surprised National Geographic got a dedicated sub-menu but Fox didn't), the content is, at least for the most part, there. Original exclusive content is lacking, but that's something that can be built on in time, and if the archive content was weaker, this would be more of a problem for me then it is now. In terms of the overall all experience though? There is still a lot of work to do, and I'm hoping that these issues get fixed sooner rather than later. Keyboard shortcuts, consistent sorting of titles, the content holes, even minor presentation touches that I'm surprised are missing from something made by a company that is normally proud of their attention to detail. It's why I can at least recommend it on a content level, if not a service level.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist; Link Evolution: It's time to constantly repeat this duel until you get the right draw!

As I mentioned in my Yu-Gi-Oh review, while the show was something I was interested in, when it was possible to keep up with it at least, the card game was not something I got very far in, simply due to no one at my school knowing how to play. While stuff like the life-sized Dual Disks was cool, the confusing rules of the Duelist Kingdom arc stuffed it for everyone (not to mention fake cards everywhere). Because of that, Yu-Gi-Oh didn't stick around for me like Pokemon did, it looked like it died, for the most part, tossed aside like other games that people called Pokemon Knock-Offs.

It wasn't until relatively recently when I looked into the series again that I found out that it was not only still going, but... let's just say the barrier for entry has gotten higher... I still knew how expensive of a hobby competitive card games like that could be, even with my reasonably cheap Psychic deck back during the Pokemon Generation 5 rule sets, and that price was nothing compared to what some decks cost in Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and even Magic the Gathering. So when I found out that a game for the Switch was coming out that had not only all the released cards at the time, but also allowed you to play iconic duels from all the shows? It had my interest, though it also came with its fair share of problems.

I'll start with the presentation, as mechanically, there's not much to talk about here, as it is the current rule set for the card game. Presentation sells these games based on collectable and competitive card games, and the presentation here is fine but very basic. The cards themselves look good, and UI implementations allowing for reading the card text makes it very easy (most of the time) to learn what a card does, at least when compared to the real cards, when some cards could have font smaller then this on a smaller then normal card for the sake of trying to explain it's paragraph long rules for its abilities. The presentation is lacking in many areas, with cutscenes represented by still portraits and dialogue boxes, with no voice acting to be seen (something I would have liked to have seen for the more important duelists, because I like hearing Kaiba going "You're a third rate duelist with a forth rate deck!"... It was in the mobile game...). On top of that, the duel fields look like basic JPG files with the duel mat put on top of it. Each image looks to change out based on what series you're playing, and what arc in that series it is, rather than the context of the show (either that or I'm misremembering the Shadow realm, last I checked it didn't have a nice happy meadow that looked exactly like the one I just fought Mai Vallentine in...). The music as well is completely forgettable, though grading when it came to hearing it repeat over and over again due to the fluctuating difficulty of the game.

Due to the nature of competitive card games, the difficulty of a match is all based on the luck of the draw. This carries over into Link Evolution as well, because if you get a bad draw, you may as well surrender and try again, because recovering is easier said then done (I wish I was kidding when I said I've been slaughtered by AI in 3 turns at times because I kept drawing cards I couldn't use yet). While it's nice to get a small number of prizes even if you lose, it gets tedious constantly repeating duels just to win a match and move on, it's the main reason why I haven't gone further then Yugi getting Slyther the Sky Dragon in Battle City (which, on a side note, going back to presentation, iconic monsters get a 3 second intro animation when they're summoned, but there are numerous monsters that you'd think would get the animation (like the Egyptian God cards), that don't for some reason.). While it is fun playing with both the story winner's deck and then having a reverse match where you can play with the other characters deck, some decks are hindered by the changed rules very heavily, to the point where it's better to use one of the premade structure decks based on different mechanics. A big example of this for me was Yugi vs Bandit Keith before Battle City, where Keith's deck was a complete pushover to fight as Yugi, and impossible to use when I was playing as Keith himself, due to the anime not having the tribute summon rules at the time. 

There are other parts to the presentation that I would have liked to see if they were in the game. An option to play using different rulesets would have been nice, and a good way to break up the gameplay a bit, while also giving a reason to make decks themed around rules like not needing to tribute summon monsters, or speed duelling like in the Mobile game. Going further, it would have been interesting to have other spin-off duelling styles like Team battles, Labyrinth battles and Dungeon Dice Monsters as options (can you tell I don't have much post GX experiences with Yu-Gi-Oh?). It would have helped with the presentation, as I'm happy to take a basic looking game that has a lot of features. 

I struggle to call this game bad. Objectively, it does what it set out to do with no major issues. But the big problems come from it doing what it set out to do, and not really doing anything else on top of it. It looks extremely basic, like a mobile game ported to consoles, but that in itself is kind of an insult because the mobile game has a better presentation then this game. The core itself is fine for the most part but compared to other video games based off of card games, even ones like Gwent when they were mini-games in Witcher 3, It just looks and feels bland. But at least there aren't any microtransactions using real money, because, with the number of duels you'll be playing and replaying, you can easily stock up on a lot of card packs. It's fine, but could have been a lot better.

Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth (Switch Port): Just as unpolished as ever

This is a follow up review to the original review of Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth. Link to the original: https://mediaholicreviews.blogspot.com/2017/02/digimon-story-cyber-sleuth-shes-had-her.html

While Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth was a game I enjoyed when playing it on the Playstation Vita, there were some glaring problems with it when it comes to the polish of the game. From localization errors to not making story event changes depending on the player characters gender, it gave the game an awkward charm to it that players will either like, or hate. As a quick follow up to that review though, the game has come out on the Switch, and has it made any improvements in that department?

Short answer, no. In fact, using patch 1.01, it's even worse, but in an amazing way that I am surprised did not get caught earlier on in development. There isn't much to add to the presentation, it looks and sounds as good as it did on the Vita, but thanks to the Switch's Sleep Mode, and the Digi bank, it is shocking how quickly you can get powerful Digimon as the game doesn't stop counting playtime while the console is in Sleep Mode. According to the in-game clock, I've put in over 114 hours and am barely into Chapter 3 (at time of writing). According to the console though, I've put in somewhere between 10 and 20 hours. In that time, I already have 15 Ultimate Level Digimon, most of them in the level 20s to 40s, purely by having the game running in sleep mode. I honestly struggle to call that a glitch because of how easy it is to catch and use. It's baffling to me that something like that wasn't caught before release, but considering as the game gives you several Mega level Digimon in the form of smaller versions of the Royal Knights for free, I can't help but wonder if it was intentional or not.

Presentation-wise though, this is still basically the same game, just with the extra DLC (not counting the Vita themes). Some of the visual problems are more obvious now, such as some stiff animations here and there, but it does look like the localization hasn't been improved either, as I did notice some odd word choices in cutscenes every now and then. The soundtrack is still good, and fitting for the game, but some parts of the game that I didn't do in the initial playthrough, such as the Digimon missing items in Kowloon are annoying to do and were probably worse to do on the Vita. Seriously, who's idea was it to put white sparkly things for items in a dungeon that has the primary colours of light blue and white?!

Is it worth a double-dip? That depends. For me, the main reason to get it was to get Hackers Memory, a prequel to the events of the story that I'm hoping to get a proper review of done sometime in the new year, as that game only came out to the PS4. It's a solid game to play on the go and being honest, most people reading this probably don't have a Vita around, and the better investment is to get a Switch (unless you're committed to PS4 Remote Play?). Worth a look if you can find it on sale at least, but that's without judging the second half of the package.