I wasn't old enough to go and see The Thing at the cinema, so had to wait until 1983 (edit: A whole year later. None of this, out on streaming or DVD in just a few weeks or months) to see it on a Betamax VCR (much better picture quality and smaller cassettes, than VHS). It was great and stuck in my mind over the years.
Well, that she even took the Jouney was a change in her life Elves tend to become Hermits in their later years and Frieren withdrew from Society and slaying demon for 500 years in those woods and only reason Himel knew she was there was cause she helpec him get back home when he was a kid and lost in those woods Most people miss Frieren would be like an Elf coming back from Evermeet,(Toril) or The Undying Lands(Middle Earth) so of course she isn't as sociable as she would have been 500 years ago between aloofness and Cynisysm thus the Hobby of Collecting Cantrips and minor magic items as a passion
Frieren is real good but for me nothing is ever touching full metal alchemist brotherhood. And honestly i feel like it only got dethroned due to being out for over a decade now while freiren is fresh.
The care taken in the pacing of the story, the astonishing animation applied to a hand caressing a flower, the words used to describe time as the memories made with others... this is a masterpiece, storytelling at it's peak. The cusp of magic.
I think the reason the thing has thrived and ET has kinda been forgotten is, Liking the Thing started out as being more of a club, a secret society if you will. And people over time have slowly wanted to join this club and be a member of the group. Now take ET. A movie EVERYONE knows, even if they haven't seen it, they've at least heard of it. I just asked my 14 yr old, what is ET, he told me the movie about the alien and boy!! So, while people may not know of the thing, it's still popular in the sci fi rings. Will, nobody may talk about ET out loud, EVERYONE still knows who ET is!!! I guess it's not fun to talk to people about something they already know about, where as with the Thing, most people don't know , or know very little about it, so, it's still interesting to talk about.
I really like your editing style, and I think pairing Frieren with classical music is so tonally perfect. The edit at the beginning of the first few episodes to Debussy was especially good.
Man i fucking love alternative histories/endings and the Thing and E.T. its a maflskdmarolihauiabsldnalksdnwondavelous mixup hahdahdhah Greetings from 🇲🇽
part of the reason that this entire saga hits home with so many people is because it's the story of Nazi-occupied Europe during World War Two. Andor specifically is the story of Occupied France and the French Revolution. Many, _many,_ other parallels can be drawn.
1982 was a GREAT year for peeps like me...I don't know about anyone else, but Carpenters The Thing was an absolute fave and a movie I saw several times in the theaters that year...equalling Blade Runner and ST:TWOK as among the very best.
The feeling one had during the Science Fiction craze is hard to relate to a modern generation. It was almost real and palpable, like an alien was about to step out or a UFO was overhead making your skin crawl almost anywhere, anytime, if you believed. Toss in a little free-love sexual taboo in the story and you were taken over by the sinister and insidious force from beyond carried on shortwave radio static. The Thing and Alien and the rest of the movies discussed here were actually late to the game of Science Fiction. Every Sci Fi theme had already been imagined in those novellas in pulp paperbacks like Analog, Sci Fiction, Argosy, Saga, Amazing Stories, Astonishing Stories etc in the 50s, 60s. They were a vehicle for expressing controversial and cutting edge social and moral changes mirroring social movements of the period. Reading some new and exotic and scary sci fi story on a summer night in 1966 with your window open to the breeze, stepping out to have a cigarette and gazing up at the sky with only the sound of crickets...spooky, rich and very captivating. Almost like self-hypnotization to be so lost in the theatre of the mind and something never duplicated by a movie. The movie medium simply cannot engage as deeply or as strongly as the written word with its myriad of tentacled hooks while modern cinema has but a handful of standard devices.
Let's be honest ET is a severely overrated movie. Akin to the popular kid in class that stole all the attention from everyone else. It even had the "George Lucas" treatment where the special effects were changed. The Thing didn't need that. It's effects are still amazing to this day.
You literally pointed out EVERYTHING I hate on Isekai and it's modern depiction on anime/manga. I love Narnia so much that it's not the change to another world that brothers me, but everything you just pointed out
Andor is not Star Wars, it is just an over dramatized war movie. You came so close in the beginning about what makes Star Wars what it is. It is a Fairy Tale told to us without holding our hands. Real Star Wars has twists, romance, action and swashbuckling mages that fly space ships. Star Wars isn't this over produced drama, I was considering watching this but you completely changed my mind. It is absolute garbage for a Star Wars show.
Here's something I don't get. In the video he says ".. isekai protagonists who often act like they are owed a second chance." What isekai's are good examples of this? The isekai I've seen (granted not many) mostly have protagonists who are hopeless and have lost hope. I see 'life sucks' more than 'life owes me one'.
I see your point overall. tbh, I'm not huge on isekai in general, but I'm going to have to fight you on a few of these. ex: the characters in Konosuba are all extremely quirky and memorable. Sure, they play with tropes, but the overall tone and chemistry between the characters are unique and reasonably consistent throughout. In general, isekai does best when it sticks to comedy, doesn't take itself too seriously and focuses predominantly on character interactions. As for power fantasies, I see nothing wrong with them. I would just prefer more of an actual story behind them than is typically the case (while not an anime, a good example is the Darth Bane trilogy)
Well, you tried, but your reasons for popular relevance between the two movies were specious at best, but I like the composer bookends, the approaches of both movies, and the video’s ambience. The Thing, like most horrors, works due to its isolationist confines, whereas ET stars small in scale, later involving a broader scope of, as you impart, adults intruding in a childish world. It’s easy to transplant ET as a cloistered endeavor and still remain the same conceptually, but imagine a Thing movie as a worldwide terror, treating all of Earth like a giant house of horrors, with all of humanity isolating from each individual, which would make a relevant parable to today’s society. The very act of reaching out to another person being considered a matter of life and death. I think the Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake already achieves that approach. Also, Blade Runner was just as critically panned as The Thing, similarly gaining cultural significance in the video market. Nowadays, I question how any modern movie could achieve a cult status, considering how quick society is to consume and forget product, and judge art and those who appreciate it.
I haven't seen Frieren, but this video makes me want to. I love how Gilgamesh-like (but switched around and from a different perspective) the story seems to be, something I think is very interesting and cool. Thanks for the beautiful and great review!
Gintama is another good example of an anti-isekai. Gintoki have to keep living a harsh life even after badly losing a revolution. Gintama has multiple episodes tackling the various forms of escapism and anime genres, making fun, criticising and at the same time still respecting it.
anime cartoons main issue has always been the abysmal writing which is easy to fix if anyone actually gave a shit. too bad the target audience is usually ten yr old boys with absolute shit taste
the grapes are a reference to the fox story :) the fox who finds grapes and tries to jump to them, but then can't get them alone, so he convinces himself that "the grapes were sour anyway" :D and the ice shavings with no syrup bc she has no issue being a bit cold and refreshing, but being sweet comes harder
Wonderful video. I genuinely almost cried from the opening segment, because it reminded me so viscerally (in a positive way) of all the Big Feelings that Frieren, as a show, made me feel. Calm music that feels like home set to phootage of the journey, the friendship, all those unique and happy and deep moments that will stay with Frieren the mage and, by extension, the viewers. This montage captures precisely what makes me love Frieren as a show so much, what makes me listen to the soundtrack over and over again to try to recapture what I felt listening to it as it played over both of Frieren's journeys, even years apart.
Have yet to re-watch E.T. as an adult, that is something I'll definitely have to do, thank you for your story about it. 🙂 I can't help after watching this thinking of how great the movie industry was back then, and of course how amazingly mediocre it is now, studios don't reward creativity like they used to, it's all very formulaic now and mostly a rehash of old stories, and yet they still often find failure in them.
I think part of the thrill of The Thing is the unnerving feeling that something about its horror is deeply rooted in primal human psychology. It taps a kind of deep-rooted fear that we bury. Maybe this is the fear of being trapped with someone with nefarious motives, or the fear of viruses and parasites. It's also hard to shake the feeling that this kind of lifeform, or something akin to it, might be plausible somewhere out there in the cosmos.
My mother is a cinephile and she has a book that she recorded between the end of 80s and up to the year 1992 all the films she saw (in the cinema or on VHS), dividing them into categories. The favorites genres were suspense, horror and science fiction. Without a doubt, The Thing was registered and, I had to check there, but I knew because she told me it was a well-made film, it surprises me to have to hear from John Carpenter that the fans hated it... I feel out of place.
Wasn’t born until 82. When I actually watched E.T. I was around 8, 9. Really didn’t care for it and was living in Japan so I was kinda spoiled on SciFi and Fantasy anime. Now Blade Runner when I got to watch it I think I was 16 and loved it. Didn’t watch The Thing till I was in my mid to late 20’s and we had a huge flat panel TV with stereo surround sound in a theater room. Oh boy!
