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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!!

@crispyburp.bsky.social
61 followers 33 following 126 posts

They/Them. Cinephile and avid anime watcher. I also support Tottenham Hotspur for my sins.

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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 15h
The normal difficulty was a little easy, and became incredibly easy when I realized how S-Breaks works way, way too late into the second game. But I'm not sure I want an RPG to be tweaked to be hard anyway, because unlike a game where you have full control, it's just setting the numbers against you.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 15h
Finished Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter. What a game. Folks, if you want the JRPG equivalent of the old Umberto Eco "100 cliches move us" line, it's these two games. That's a full compliment by the way, everything you'd expect and want from a JRPG was in this pair of games and I loved it.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I watched some more episodes and I have a new formula: if Gundam SEED is “what if a giant robot show was also Dawson’s Creek?” Then Code Geass is “what if a giant robot show was also The O.C.?”
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Look, no characters designed by CLAMP could be straight (heterosexual), but I do think the show is expecting the viewer to take it seriously. One is by no means obligated to, of course.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I started watching Code Geass again since it's been twenty years since it came out, and folks... not to tear down a sacred cow here, but this show feels like someone tried to make Kujibiki Unbalance from Genshiken completely straight with robots added. Deeply symptomatic of 00s anime maximalism.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Seeing today’s anime discourse and remembering an interview where Tomino talked about how the producers wanted a Japanese name so he called it “Kidou senshi Gundam” even though the robots in the show are referred to as “mobile suits” and never “kidou senshi.” So, don’t be too precious about titles.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I also started thinking about what anime of the 21st century could hang with this list and the number of TV anime I'd add is depressingly small.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Several things: I think this is a fine list, but given the pride of place the NYT has given to TV stars in the voting, it's ultimately kind of meaningless. I really don't care what actors think are the best movies or TV shows of all time. I'd be much more interested in critics' lists.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I admire just how long Trails 2nd Chapter is making me wait for the Estelle/Joshua reunion. They want big, cartoonish tears, born half of happiness and half of relief, and folks, they just might get them at this point.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Yes, there absolutely is some "proper noun-slop" when it comes to the equipment and the magic in the game, but that is not what the story is focusing on to any significant degree. So, constant lore dumping isn't just how anime is or Japanese games are.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
It's also funny, with Fire Emblem having come out this week, I heard a lot about the writing being way too lore-heavy, and some people saying that "that's just how anime works." No, the first ten hours of this game has been all about character relationships. If anything, it's holding back plot.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
The first chapter of Trails 2nd Chapter feels like the first 5-8 episodes of a 50 episode anime series, and that's kind of where the magic of Trails lies. Playing it really does feel like playing a solid JRPG and watching a great late 90s/early 2000s TV anime.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Is Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter just really easy if you start with a clear save or is there going to be more of a ramp here? Don’t get me wrong, I love hanging out with all my best friends again, it’s just the combat is pretty straightforward.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Year of Penny, bitches!
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Not to be one of those anti-localization monsters, but it’s a bummer when you want to play a game with Japanese dialogue, you have to read the dub script. I realize the alternative is impossible unlike with subtitles on a video, but I wish there wasn’t that uncanny feeling between speech and text.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Debating starting the demo of Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter tonight and then seamlessly transitioning into the main game when it releases on Thursday or waiting until launch and I have the game in hand. Difficult choices.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
It’s not that it’s a bad interpretation (I’d say it’s pretty good, even). Rather, it’s more that I think jumping to interpretation without first getting a hold of the surface of something and understanding how a work achieves its narrative effects feels limiting to me.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Finally got my partner to watch Serial Experiments Lain with me given that they love everything Ghost in the Shell. I’m trying to resist seeing everything that happens in the show through the lens of Gnosticism, but after watching Argonbolt’s video on The Big O, it’s hard to resist.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
If I still had access to a university library, I would use interlibrary loans to track down every omnibus of Shonan Junai Gumi (GTO: The Early Years) and upload the scans online because the middle part of the series that’s available right now is rough. I’d be a hero.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Both the fifth story arc of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (Golden Wind) and season five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer have villains with multiple personality disorder. Coincidence? (Almost certainly, yes.)
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Elizabeth Holmes is the horrifying funhouse mirror of our “share everything/tell your story” society and letting Nathan Fielder engage with that is like someone making my dreams (or nightmares) a reality.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I finished Fist of the North Star. A bit of a series of two halves. Once they hit on the theme of the manga during the Raoh battle, the rest just finds ways to restate that again and again. It was fun though. Now I’m thinking about letting the dark thoughts win (what if I got in to City Hunter?).
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Fist of the North Star Part 2 Shameless 80s Movies References Update: more Star Wars (a character called Leia!), Cobra, The Goonies, and Shachi’s design might be partially lifted from Khan from Stark Trek but I’m not dead certain of that.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Publication history and there’s very little in the first few volumes that makes me think of either of those things other than apocalypse stuff. Did any of the Slum King/biker/the character Violence Jack show up during its initial run? Or is all that from later publications in the 80s and 90s?
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Related thought: reading Fist of the North Star has me thinking of Violence Jack and I wish someone could provide a genuine publication history of its chapters to see if the parts that supposedly influence FotNS and Mad Max were actually written before them. Violence Jack had such an uneven…
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
So far the second half of Fist of the North Star has contained overt references to Hulk Hogan, Mr. T, Jabba the Hutt, Dolph Lundgren, and the Karate Kid. I’m sure there’s a few I’m forgetting but I believe Buronson when he says they were coming up with it on the fly, especially after Raoh.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
You're desperate to deny the influence of Bringing Up Father on the history of manga because of your Orientalism. I'm desperate to deny the influence of Bringing Up Father on the history of manga to avoid a Jiggs vs Goku powerscaling discussion. We are not the same.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I just finished Maison Ikkoku, and yes, I cried at the end. I'm happy that those two idiots managed to work their stuff out. Rumiko Takahashi is very good at it. It being writing stories about two very stupid people who are clearly in love with one another.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I finished the first half of Fist of the North Star. I love it. It is violent, grotesque and morally bonkers (if you think Dragon Ball lets Vegeta off the hook, wait until you see the way the villains are lionized in this). It’s also in the DNA of every shonen battle manga after it.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
I appreciate the response. I studied film so I’m deeply sympathetic to that reasoning. Also, your explanation of the title was the clearest I’ve ever seen, so even if it caught me off guard it was also an additional insight.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
The teases of something more akin to a historical poetics of manga, i.e. a tracing of different narrative or illustrative techniques and how they developed and were used and re-used fires my imagination more than business numbers, but as a general history, I understand the need to accommodate both.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
The most insane thing he does is insist on using a translated title for Urusei Yatsura, which given the title's status as a very particular Japanese pun, is deeply uncanny. I also think the book's split focus on both the stylistic and business development of manga could lead to two separate books.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I do, however, appreciate the ways in which he demystifies much of the history of manga and its reception. His commitment to situating manga as Japanese comics, and not as a uniquely Japanese phenomenon with its own historical continuity is admirable and well supported.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I've been making my way through Eike Exner's Manga: A New History of Japanese Comics. I think the first half of the book is much stronger than the second half. You can tell Exner is much more at home in the old archives and tracing the influence of foreign popular cultures on Japanese modernity.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Harada from Touch is the manga equivalent of Falstaff and I will accept no objections. One of the best supporting characters in anything ever.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I've started reading Robertson Davies' The Lyre of Orpheus and I think Schnak is one of the most fun characters he ever wrote. You can tell he thinks she's awful, but she's such a breath of fresh air next to his stuffy literary types. A Gen-Xer has entered the chat.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
It tries to wrap 70s feminist (film) theory and problematic sexology into one amalgam of shame, but then offers a standard Lacanian theory of jouissance as the escape valve from this bind. It's like when someone starts talking about the limits of theory before bringing up a new dead French guy.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma has a lot on its mind, and frankly, I didn't agree with or enjoy very much of it. I think I understood what it was doing in drawing a parallel between autogynephilia, apparatus theory, and the dismissal of horror movies, but it didn't offer a convincing counter.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
The way nearly every major boss encounter in Sekiro starts with a sense of despair and a sense of “how the hell am I going to do this?” To making you feel like a conquering master when you do figure them out and learn them is one of the most amazing feelings in games. A great, great video game.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Spurs gave really hit the ground here against Brentford in the first game of the season. No, I do not mean "hit the ground running," they have just hit the ground. It's not an encouraging start, and while I think it will take time for things to gel, I'd like to see a more positive effort than this.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
I understand that the story is complete, but I wish there had been a "fuller" version of the story recounting all 48 demons and maybe seeing through the complete arcs of Hyakkimaru and Dororo. It definitely fires the imagination, and sometimes that's what matters.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
I finished reading Dororo this week. One can really see the influence on Berserk, Sekiro, and a bunch of other more contemporary media. I certainly enjoyed it, though Tezuka's more classically cartoon style art juxtaposed with the grimness of the story was a bit jarring at times.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
This week’s Ghost in the Shell was the Toh EnJoe showcase I’ve been waiting for since this show started. Obviously, a lot of comes from Shirow’s manga, but let Toh cook like that.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Curious to see Visconti’s White nights getting a new release. I always thought it was one of those movies where Marcello Mastroianni is miscast. The lead in White Nights needs to play as a kind of a loser and it doesn’t convincingly suit the hottest man who ever lived.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Reformulating differance from first principles as I realize that "hanger" as in "coat hanger" and "hanger" as in "hungry anger" are indistinguishable when written down.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
There is a stretch in the middle of the volume where it just slowly begins to unthread everything and it’s some fine elliptical storytelling. The twist, if it can even be called that, is a gut punch and is built up so tensely that you’d think it was a thriller, not a romantic comedy about baseball.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Volume seven of Touch is one of the greatest volumes of manga I’ve ever read. Adachi sets up the stakes of the series as the long simmering tension between the leads begins to boil over, and then he changes gears and transforms the context of the series entirely.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
I spent the evening reading Mitsuru Adachi’s Touch and watching Urusei Yatsura. Folks, I don’t want to be one of those it used to better people, but it was pretty good.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
I have found a way to make frozen chicken burgers good. Now no one can stop me.
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Crispooky Burportal to... HELL!! @crispyburp.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
This is not to suggest all mass art is ideologically neutral, of course. The values of a specific work, or specific audience reception vary, but those instances don't condemn the activity/medium itself. The encouragement to enjoy might be ideological, but I don't think enjoyment itself is.
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