Gaming Narrative

We went over the dating sim/visual novel subsection of games in class, and it got me thinking about a game that reads so well as a narrative that it has been fan-translated and is available to read online like a comic. This game is called Danganronpa and it also has a sequel, Super Danganronpa 2, that is currently in the process of being translated as well.

Danganronpa is a Japanese murder-mystery game that plays like a blend of the movie Battle Royale and the Phoenix Wright series. The plot revolves around fifteen high school students that are each exemplary at one particular talent. Because of this talent, they have been selected to go to Hope's Peak High School. The school has no entrance exam; recruiters go out and find these kids themselves. However, once Naegi, the main character, has made it inside, he blacks out and wakes up in a classroom with his fellow students. Shortly afterward, they discover they have been locked in, and that, if they want to escape, they must kill another classmate. However, if someone is killed, the school hosts a trial, and if the culprit is correctly identified, he/she will be punished (killed). If they aren't identified, everyone except the culprit will be punished, and the culprit is free to leave.

Danganronpa shares characteristics with dating sims, in that the player can make a choice to go and speak to another character, and the dialogue shows up on the bottom of the screen with a sprite. However, none of the characters in Danganronpa are persuadable love interests. There are hints at romance, but none that matter much to the main plot. The player also does not have the option of choosing what the main character says. There is, essentially, only one ending to Danganronpa. It is possible to get a "bad ending", but the game doesn't end if this is reached. It instead resets back to the point where you made the crucial decision, and you can fix what you did wrong.

The gameplay in this is mainly found during the trial segments. There, you can use "evidence bullets" to literally shoot down what the other classmates have said, or support them. This is the most interactive part of the entire game, because usually you are walking around the school, talking to other characters, or investigating murders, all of which have approximately the same feel to them.

What I enjoy about Danganronpa is that they made me care about the 15 characters in the game. Battle Royale had a more difficult task at hand, making me care about around 40 students, and because of this I feel like Danganronpa was the more successful of the two at grabbing my interest. The interactive aspect of an actual game doesn't hurt much, either.

Graphic Fiction: Persepolis Response

Persepolis is an autobiographical graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi. It documents her life growing up in Iran, and then leaving to stay in Europe when Iran's political atmosphere became dangerous.  This is one of my favorite graphic novels that I've ever read. Satrapi's writing style is compelling and believable, and her character is strong-willed and interesting. I enjoyed watching her grow up, and how her views changed while still keeping usually the same basis of her childhood dreams. For example, in the very beginning, Satrapi says that she wanted to be a prophet. While she later abandons this idea, she spends a great amount of time educating herself and not letting others suffocate her with their own opinions. She speaks out for womens' rights, and stands up for what she believes in.

One of my favorite sequences in the book is when Satrapi becomes depressed, and decides to kill herself. This is her character's lowest low, and she "sleeps for three days", until God tells her she isn't ready. Satrapi then wakes up and begins living life again with a renewed passion.

After reading this book, I decided to watch the film, because Satrapi played an enormous part in its creation. In fact, she was one of the directors. The film follows the book very closely, and keeps the same unique visual style. It is also in French, as the original graphic novel was.

Persepolis is a graphic novel that most everyone in the graphic novel fanbase has at least heard of, if not read, and for good reason. It's an incredibly fascinating work with notes on Iran's current political unease, and the tension this puts on those living there. In the end, Satrapi's parents send her away for good, telling her not to return to Iran, as it was unsuitable for her now. This bittersweet ending neatly wraps up a rather bittersweet story, and provides the springboard into Satrapi's life as an artist in France.

Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams

I was told that these readings would be difficult to get through. I love to read, but I've never been very good at something as dense as the essays given to us to analyze. I regret missing the class where we discussed them as well, because perhaps I would have a better idea of what they were trying to get across. However, I did a bit more research, and I think I've managed to at least decode them enough to get the general ideas both were trying to communicate.

Stuart Hall's essay was the more difficult of the two for me. However, what I think he was saying was that television presents us with something that can be described as an encoded message, and it is up to the audience to decode that same message. To be entirely honest, I'm not even sure if that's correct. But if that is what he was saying, it makes sense. All media is just a message that the audience can interpret for themselves. This isn't something that applies to television and television alone. It also relates back to radio, movies, advertising, magazines, music, and any other commercial media that we take in daily, whether or not we're aware of it.

The Williams essay made a bit more sense to me. It mainly discussed the effect television had on society, and how this new technology would change our world whether we liked it our not. This is absolutely something I agree with. Television, and computers, and the internet, have changed our social norm in a way that it is almost unrecognizable from that of fifty, forty, thirty, even twenty years ago.

During my internship at Sony this past summer, we listened to the CEO of Sony Entertainment give a speech. He said that one day, he was watching his child play with a digital tablet. He then looked around the room, and was rather shocked when he noticed something. Years ago, when he had been the age his son was now, the house he had lived in had looked almost identical to the one that his mother had lived in when she was young. Now, it was nearly unrecognizable. Phones, television, internet, HD surround sound, laptops, gaming systems, tablets, touch screens, you name it. Technology and television have completely changed our lives. Is this for the better? I think it's both "yes" and "no". We are more connected around the globe than we have ever been before in the history of the world, but at the same time, we are also growing more and more distant from our immediate family. I hope that this is something we can fix later on.

Auteurship: Jacques Tati

Jacques Tati is an incredible French filmmaker of the early to mid 20th century. His use of color and subtle humor has made his style extremely unique, and each one of his films tends to reflect this.

First, there is the matter of Tati's characters, with one in particular: Monsieur Hulot. Hulot was written and preformed by Tati himself, and appeared in several of his films, including Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot, Play Time, and Mon Oncle. While it wasn't explicitly stated, I also believe that Hulot "appeared" in an animated film based upon a script written by Tati and directed by Sylvain Chomet, entitled The Illusionist. Hulot is often found in similar costumes in each film: a coat, pipe, and hat tend to be prominently featured. The humor of Hulot's character is usually due to how awkward he is when required to interact with any sort of technology. One may even be able to compare him to Charlie Chaplin's character.

Even with Monsieur Hulot as an icon, Tati's true genius and style come from the way he uses composition and color in his films. Each shot is clearly carefully art directed, with certain colors removed or added. In Play Time, this technique actually led to Tati's downfall. He spent so long agonizing over making each visual detail flawless that he abandoned all story and plot completely, and the film fell flat.

The themes of Tati's work often revolve around the same principles as well. In particular, he was very fond of bringing up the "modern family's" obsession with technology, and the industrialization of the west. The atmosphere in his films is usually rather cold and sterile between the characters, contrasting with the appealingly awkward nature of Monsieur Hulot.

Jacques Tati's unique visual style and specific subjects make his films some of the greatest of the mid-1900s, and certainly some of my personal favorite French films.

Read a Book Like a Film: Director's Notes

The film I chose was Ghost World. Prior to reading the screenplay, I knew absolutely nothing about this film, other than that it was based on a graphic novel.

I've decided to analyze it by thinking about the cinematography that the screenplay suggests. If I were the director, I would try to refer back to the graphic novel as a foundation for the film. In doing this, I would keep all the silhouettes as clear as possible. The opening scene in particular really brings this idea to mind, as it's describing the lives of the apartment tenants as seen from outside their windows. I would make sure that the scene visible in each one could be read in an instant, much like a panel in a comic strip or graphic novel. The key to this is a clear story-telling image for each window.

The cuts would also be quick. This isn't a Kurosawa film, where cuts can be several long minutes apart. However, because graphic novels are art, I would also treat the cuts as art. Each scene would need to be carefully composed so as to achieve maximum clarity. The audience must never be confused as to where exactly they are at each point in time.

I would also make the characters just as unique and cartoony. I briefly glanced at the movie poster and cast list, and I think these were all great decisions that I wouldn't stray from. Enid looks like how I imagine her to be: an outcast art student. Steve Buscemi (Seymour) is also famous for his unique look, and I think it fits the "comic book world" very well.

Films such as Amelie and Paprika both feel grounded in the real world and in a universe entirely their own, and I would model Enid and Rebecca's world in the same way. It would feel like the "regular American suburb" that it's described to be, but there would also need to be an element of "otherworldliness" to it. This, I think, I would achieve mainly through the color schemes.

I am excited to watch this film now that I have read the screenplay, and I think the graphic novel is certainly worth exploring as well.

Medium is the Massage

I decided to make my page about animation and the process behind making an animated film, because it's something that a lot of people are ignorant to, and it's something I feel very passionate about. The fact that the Oscars complete dissed animation and VFX last night doesn't hurt, either.

Lolita

Lolita was written and published in 1955 by Vladimir Nabokov. It is possibly one of those most fascinating books I have ever read. However, despite the perfectly written text, which I would find very easy to read under any other circumstance, I'm still forcing myself to get through Nabokov's novel. We were told the subject matter wasn't meant to be pleasant, and that it would make us uneasy. I had no idea how bad this would be, until I started reading. Usually, I have no problem reading books that the K-12 school system has banned. In this case, I could barely read, or listen to the audiobook, as I did try both, without feeling sick to my stomach.

Lolita is about a man named Humbert Humbert, who is sexually obsessed with young girls around 12 or 13 years old, whom he refers to as "nymphetes". The novel is supposed to be an account of his life that he writes in prison, and is told in first person. Humbert is one of the most unreliable narrators I have ever experienced, though he reminds me somewhat of Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye. The beautiful way he writes is meant to convince his audience that this could be a love story, and is also meant to make such an ugly subject palatable. To a point, I could almost buy these things. There were times, though not many, when I would look at what I was reading and think that he truly cared for Lo. He often said he loved her. For example, at one point he specifically says: “It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.” But then, the true perverted nature of Humbert's thoughts would come out again, and I would need to put the book aside for a while.

Lolita, or Dolores, is 12 years old when she's introduced. From the start, it's clear that Humbert does not love her so much as he loves what she is. She embodies everything that he personally finds appealing in a nymphete. Lo is just beginning to reach puberty, and I think that is why she toys with Humbert and allows his flirtings and touches the way she does. To her, or, according to Humbert's view of Lo, she simply finds him to be an attractive, older man, like a Hollywood star. However, because this is Humbert's writing, I couldn't trust this at all. Humbert stays with Lo and her mother, Ms Haze, in their house, renting one of their rooms. I have just reached the part where Ms Haze has told Humbert that she is madly in love with him, right after Lo has left for camp. The details leading up to this section, particularly when Humbert licked Lo's eye, and when he later satisfied himself with Lo's legs across his lap, left me feeling nauseous. I will try to finish this novel, because I do think it is incredibly well written, as well as an extremely important literary work, but I can't say I enjoy it much at all.