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NEWS AND VIEWS - JANUARY 2024
WRITING NEWS (I have a Substack now. I'll be posting these monthly updates both here and on the Substack from now on, but I'll be posting some other things there as well, from time to time, so check it out.) It's been kind of a slow month -- my insomnia started getting really bad around the beginning of January and I didn't get as much writing in as I would have liked. I managed to add three chapters to the latest Signalverse novel, City of Strange Gods, but that's about it. I'm five chapters into this book now, which means I've got twenty-two chapters left to go (according to my outline, anyway). Looks like it's probably going to take me most of the year to write this one. I do have another release planned for 2024, though: Sam Fortune and the Hazards of the Game, the second book in the Sam Fortune series, which will probably be out in March or April. This is an action-adventure story that takes place mostly in California in 1927, and like the first book, it's full of things that interest me personally -- boxing, old cars, silent movies. Kind of indulgent, maybe, but hey, it was fun to write. I've also been investigating the possibilty of releasing audiobooks of some my novels, especially the Signalverse books. Unfortunately it turned out to be a little more expensive than I was expecting -- getting an audiobook produced, even for a short book like Galatea and the Dupe, would probably run something like $2,000 at the low end and $4,000 at the high end, and it's hard to justify spending that kind of money on an audiobook when 1) I'm unemployed, and 2) the ebook editions have never sold all that well. But I'm still exploring my options there. * * * * * * * * TENGAI MAKYOU: JIRAI I started playing the fan translation of Tengai Makyou: Jirai this month. This series, the Tengai Makyou series (sometimes called Far East of Eden) was extremely popular in Japan -- Japanese RPG fans used to rank the series right up there with Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. A few spinoff games eventually made it to the West, but for a variety of reasons, none of the games in the main series were ever released in North America, which makes this fan translation the first time any of the games have been made available in English. I love obscure RPG's like this, and I've long been curious about this series in particular, so I gave the game a try. It's a curious artifact. It was the first JRPG to include voice acting, character portraits, and animated sequences (albeit very primitive ones), but because it came out in 1989 -- before Dragon Quest IV, before Final Fantasy III -- some of its mechanics are absolutely ancient; for example, you have to open the menu and select "talk" to talk to NPC's, and select "check" to open treasure chests. And the graphics, aside from the character portraits and little animated sequences, are approximately NES-level. Very strange. 
Mechanically speaking, it's a pretty straightforward RPG, with battle sequences reminiscent of Dragon Quest. I had a good time with it at first, and the localization was excellent, but it started getting aggravating after a while, and now I'm not sure I'll finish it. About halfway through the game (inside Mt. Fuji) the encounter rate suddenly skyrocketed, which was very annoying and frustrating. That would have been bad enough, but by this point virtually every encounter had become highly dangerous -- monsters can cast blinding spells, sleep spells, defense-halving spells, and so on, and some of them can take out a third of your HP in one hit. I tried grinding a bit, but that turned out to be kind of pointless, too -- your characters' stats don't really increase all that much when you go up a level. So I finally set it aside. Nevertheless, I'm glad this game is finally available in English and it would certainly be nice to see a few more of these games translated (especially Tengai Makyou IV). * * * * * * * * MORE KOREAN DRAMAS I watch a lot of Korean stuff. I'm not alone in this; Korean TV shows have become very popular in the West recently (see Squid Game), and they've long been popular in Japan and other Asian countries. I'm not new to this genre myself -- I've been watching Korean movies and TV shows since about 2002 (the era of My Sassy Girl, Please Teach Me English, and My Wife is a Gangster). The quality varies, of course, from show to show, but in my experience Korean dramas are usually pretty slick, with highly original and engaging stories (again, look at Squid Game). I'm particularly drawn to cheesy romantic comedies, though -- I guess I'm just a sucker for feel-good shows with happy endings. Anyway, here's some more Korean shows I've watched recently. Weak Hero Class 1. An eight-episode series based on a Webtoon, Weak Hero Class 1 is a grim and violent show set in an all-boys school. Si-eun, the protagonist, is a quiet but very intense kid who is only interested in studying. When another student starts bullying him, he reacts violently, and things quickly get out of hand, with the bully eventually calling in his lowlife gangster buddies to make Si-eun's life miserable. Si-eun makes friends with two other students, Su-ho and Beom-seok, and the three of them manage to turn the tables on the gangsters, but the friendship falls apart after Beom-seok (who is being abused at home) begins acting erratically and lashes out at the other two. It's kind of sad. 
The show is very well made, full of edge-of-your-seat tension, and the fight scenes are fantastic. Si-eun's rampage in the last episode is particularly satisfying. I'm looking forward to the second season. My Strange Hero. Romance blossoms between high school students Bok-soo and Soo-jung. But then a new guy, Se-ho, shows up at the school, and he likes Soo-jung, too. Uh-oh. The conniving Se-ho turns Soo-jung against Bok-soo by making it seem like he revealed Soo-jung's deepest darkest secret (she's poor) to her classmates, then stages a fall off a roof and makes it look like Bok-soo pushed him. Bok-soo is expelled. Nine years later Se-ho becomes the head of the school, and Soo-jung becomes a teacher there. By coincidence Bok-soo winds up saving Soo-jung's life after she falls into a river, and as a reward, the school allows him to reenroll to get his high school diploma. So now he's a student in Soo-jung's class, and trying to figure out how to get revenge on Se-ho. If all this sounds ridiculous, it's because it is -- the plot is extremely contrived, so much so that I had a hard time taking it seriously. It's also very schmaltzy; the lead characters are constantly weeping while some Korean pop singer croons out a heartfelt ballad. I have a high tolerance for schmaltz, but c'mon. Anyway, I did like some aspects of this show, but it's one of the weaker series I've watched lately. Go Back Couple. Ban-do and Jin-joo met in college, fell in love, and got married. They eventually begin to drift apart, however -- Ban-do's job sucks and he doesn't get much time off, which makes him bitter, while Jin-joo feels that Ban-do doesn't appreciate the work she does around the house. The unexpected death of Jin-joo's mother makes matters worse. After a series of misunderstandings (Jin-joo suspects Ban-do of cheating on her) they finally decide to get a divorce. After throwing away their weddings rings, both of them mysteriously wake up in 1999, back in college. Offered a chance to do things over again, Ban-do decides to pursue a relationship with a girl he had a crush on, while Jin-joo goes after a popular upperclassman. Even in the past, though, they can't seem to stay out of each other's way, and they're both troubled by the fact that if they do wind up changing their futures, their toddler son will no longer exist. It's a unique premise for a romantic comedy. The characters are likable and it's genuinely moving at times; it's one of the better series I've seen lately. Abyss. A supernatural murder mystery/romance. Cha Min is the rich heir to a cosmetics company. He's had a one-sided crush on the gorgeous Se-yeon since high school, but she's never been all that interested, at least partly because he's kind of a short, ugly dude; however, they've remained friends. After a bad breakup with another girl, Cha Min considers suicide. At the last minute he decides not to go through with it, but accidentally falls off a roof anyway. He's saved by a mysterious extradimensional duo who bring him back to life with a glowing orb called "Abyss", but the orb gives him a new body, so he looks like a completely different person. Se-yeon, meanwhile, is a detective or prosecutor or something, on the trail of a serial killer. The serial killer breaks into her house and kills her, but Cha Min resurrects her with Abyss, so she gets a new body, too. In their new bodies, they attempt to solve the murders and catch Se-yeon's killer. The fact that Cha Min is much more attractive now, and Se-yeon a little more plain (at least that's what the characters in the show seem to think), causes them to reappraise their feelings for each other as well. I'm not really a fan of the "genius serial killer" trope, but this was a pretty good show, and again, the premise was certainly unique. Fair warning, though -- the last two episodes are extremely schmaltzy. * * * * * * * * AI JILL This is great. |