Watching Gameoverse and Jentry Chau after being sooooo immersed in The Amazing Digital Circus for the past half year (to the exclusion of any other media, mind you) is SO TRIPPY.
Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Gameoverse for what it is, will probably be watching, not least of all because I am really digging the reduced frame rate animation and the style. Gobbles was also adorable and nostalgia-inducing. Which I will probably be doing a separate post about, bc (I think) it relates to autism.
And I’m going to talk about that villain in a minute.
But the whiplash, man. To go back the formulaic, unilaterally malevolent and menacing villain after slathering my psyche with the complexity that is Caine is like eating thin, watery soup when the day before you had a five course meal.
Or, to be less harsh, as if you just finished eating a bowl of ice cream and someone is immediately trying to get you to eat spicy peppers. Like give me a MINUTE, lolllll.
Caine may have permanently altered my taste in media.
(metaphor intended)
Too soon to tell … but possible.
Definitely gonna need to find a character to cleanse the palate with, some well-meaning not-too-grimdark anti-hero of some sort (reccs welcome)
I need to find that post that’s like “robot characters that mean well but screw everything up” cause there were like 3 or 4 others named because I need MORE!! I’m craving it! I think one of them was The Wild Robot? Haven’t watched that on Netflix yet. One of them was BayMax, which unfortunately I’ve already seen, but I may need to peek into the series they made about that movie to see if they continue that trait bc cause holy crow. Was BH6 set in Korea, too? *checks* Oh no it was a fictionalized Japan hybrid kinda like Korra did the American-esque Roaring Twenties in fictional Asia and Spiderverse (gasp! Wow that trilogy is gonna reach its climax relatively soon too!! Ahhhh) did with the Indian urban setting, I think? (I should check but this is already a long sidetrack. But just to say all this is mentally bringing up Kubo and the Two Strings as well for various reasons… peak claymation, saw an indie animation that was even more peak stop motion recently. Should fish that out)
So getting back to Gameoverse. And its villain. Seems like he may be trying for a Well-Intentioned Extremist Trope, like a large-scale version of Jentry Chau’s antagonist and Spiderverse’s driving conflict of getting family members back.
And even though his cliche manner and otherwise pretty predictable design and fire-theming makes me want to roll my eyes so hard they go back into my head, I did notice something that potentially could be interesting if I’m reading it right.
One detail, as exemplified in the preview images there, is that his furnace-mouth seems to spit the same substance as occurs when somebody dies. Does this imply that he has to consume people in some way? Like he has to ‘burn’ them like coal? The same way his ship absorbs planets? Is he cult-of-personality’ing his way into everyone else going along with this so he can survive? Or does he choose to do this? Does it increase his power?
Burning questions!
(pun intended)
