Cultural victories

Also: skeleton battles, Sonic mythology, and Letterboxd crimes.

EX Research

EX Research

— 8 min read
Cultural victories

This week we’re talking about the battle for the reputation of Miami Vice, the encroachment of anime forces upon the baseball diamond, and the search for the soul of Minecraft music.

Also, hello to all new readers! If you haven't yet, sign up for free here to view the full post. If you’ve got tips, thoughts about our big Roblox report earlier this week, or anything else, email us at team@exresearch.co. 

Vtuber “cultural victory” imminent, Vtuber stans report

The anthropomorphic shark girl Vtuber Gawr Gura sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” on the Jumbotron at a Dodgers game last week. The event was part of a Hololive Night event that included baseball cards and a drone show; some fans traveled across the country to see it and created an hours-long line at the merch booth. (Hololive is one of the biggest Vtuber agencies, along with Nijisanji and VShojo. Vtubers are "virtual YouTubers" who use 3D models to look like anime characters.) 

Some commenters called this the moment when Vtubers achieved “total cultural victory” and gleefully speculated about the confusion of a “father of three” in the stands who just wanted to see a ball game. However, weebs may have underestimated the level of sensory overload, cross-promotion, and ad-induced delirium at any given Dodgers game; one commenter mentioned that his parents attended and didn’t even notice the Vtuber stuff. 

New horrible effect achieved with AI

The Twitter user @jonathanfly, whose bio reads “CEO of bad ideas,” achieved an impressive mutilation of the stop-motion skeleton battle from Jason and the Argonauts using video AI. “With a sequence of keyframes from the original film, we can seamlessly remaster [it as a] modern single-take action scene”, the tweet declared, above a video of Jason writhing, shape-shifting, and collapsing into himself. The tweet reached a ratio of 3.8K comments to 1.3K likes.

But it’s a joke, right? This is an AI shitposter masquerading as one of the true believers who create oddities like Princess Jane. The tone, the use of “game changer” (even AI guys now roll their eyes at the “game changer of the week”) and “single-take action scene” (also now a groaner for action fans), the disrespect to a famously hand-made work of skeleton art — it has to be a put-on. The guy seems to be having fun producing the most uncanny stuff possible, but presenting it in a deadpan style likely to inflame the opinions of AI pros and antis. 

Miami Vice brings people together

A rogue tweet from a film critic about showing Michael Mann’s Miami Vice (2006) to his girlfriend led to a Film Twitter dust-up the likes of which has rarely been seen in the site's Elon era. The tweet was made on the 4th, but the niche drama spun up by one vocal detractor continued into this week. The back-and-forth prompted a larger wave of Miami Vice positivity as people announced their discovery of the film or love of mojitos; two theaters (IFC in NY and Lumiere Cinema in LA) announced screenings. 

The original poster Brandon Streussnig, who is also a fan of Michael Bay and B-movie hero Albert Pyun, must have known what he was doing in setting up a playfully loaded discussion of one of Mann’s most divisive movies. His tweet also completely derailed an EX meeting, which fell into a Mann-hole for 20 minutes of blather about early digital video grain, the special reputation of Thief, Heat, and Collateral among gun guys, films with inaudible dialogue, and characters who are simply described as “a pro.” 

More:

What should Minecraft sound like, anyway?

Many players share a common memory of the Minecraft soundtrack: melancholy tunes like C418’s “Subwoofer Lullaby” that accompanied lonely treks across an endless landscape. “This was my childhood” people are sometimes surprised to learn that later Minecraft updates kept adding new music from different composers after C418’s departure. Some offbeat extra tracks from these composers (not featured on the in-game ambient soundtrack) continue to be added to the world as lootable, playable music discs. 

Lena Raine, composer of Celeste, contributed a “Pigstep” music disc in 2020 that got attention for departing from the sedate sound anthologized on “you fell asleep playing Minecraft over Christmas break” playlists. This week, a high-energy music disc called “Precipice,” by Aaron Cherof, revived debates over what constitutes “real” Minecraft music. But the whole argument is an offshoot of a larger, endless discussion about how much the game is allowed to change. Minecraft is both a childhood touchstone for millions and an evolving live service title, so old fans are perpetually revisiting the old neighborhood and remarking on how different everything is.

More:

EX is completely free. If you’re enjoying what we do, consider forwarding it on to a friend or colleague. And if you are that friend or colleague, consider subscribing.

Recommendations

Against Great Darkness

Playing Against Great Darkness feels like projecting a game of Breakout on top of a game of Galaga. It’s a roguelite shmup with auto-battling mechanics reminiscent of Vampire Survivors, though its central conceit involves using your ship to juggle disks that bounce across the screen and deal damage. Unlike a game of Breakout or Pong, however, there’s no penalty for missing disks, which respawn at fixed intervals. It's like a pinball parlor power fantasy: infinite, multi-ball chaos that fills the screen with damage values. Steam's marketplace is rife with genre-bent hybridizations of various "trends" in roguelite design, but Against Great Darkness' systems synergize surprisingly well with one another. [Pao]

Astronarch

Astronarch is a tiny auto-battler roguelike that understands the one thing it needs to get right: how to balance a dungeon crawl. It looks basic — simple pixel art, monsters with crabby little eyes, and characters that hop to move like the cutouts in South Park. You pick a team of brawlers and mages and march them through Slay the Spire-style acts, kitting them out along the way. The auto-battling setup makes it less puzzle-y than the excellent Slice & Dice, but it’s also more relaxing, which is a welcome change after a week in the Elden Ring boss gauntlet. A follow-up, Primarch, is due later this year. [Chris]

Previous Industries, Service Merchandise 

Like the late MF DOOM, Open Mike Eagle frequently collaborates with heavy hitters, but he always sounds most at home kicking bars with a small group of obscure, long-time friends. So it’s a kick finally hearing Mike just lock in with Video Dave and Still Rift across a full LP, loosely grouped here around a theme of ancient big-box mall retailers. Mike’s records have gotten increasingly shaggy and low-stakes over the years, in a good way — in 2020, he released a concept album about anime — and Service Merchandise is the woolliest yet: a consummate hang-out album, as if the three emcees only rose to enter the booth in between bouts of Street Fighter, day beers, and carryout. It feels like classic De La Soul minus the heady conceptual arcs, plus a few decades of rueful, woozy living. [Clayton]

Read more