"By all accounts this canon is garbage but I enjoy it anyway"

Zicak: The 1998 Godzilla movie. It is absolutely awful and the one good thing going for it is a cool design for Godzilla

The acting is rough, Matthew Broderick looks lost and disconnected the entire time, Zilla is a loogie to the face for any big G fans, the enforced hetero romance is between a simp and an ultra toxic bitch, the writing is garbage, they don't even commit to the jab at Roger Ebert (who he himself noted they didn't kill off his stand-in like you'd expect)

the inclusion of Jean Reno is not nearly enough to save this heap of crap

There are. So many things wrong with it, many of them revolving around Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich thinking they're way cooler than they really are. Fuckers even crammed in a knock off Jurassic Park segment in their struggles to make this a blockbuster hit

...and I love it

It's so comically fucking bad that I can't help laughing at it. This movie is my guilty pleasure, one hundred percent

"this canon would be so much better if it dropped the pretense and just embraced itself"

"I am rescuing my blorbos from you"

The one good thing to come from it is a cartoon that acts as a direct sequel to the movie. It fixes almost every problem and actually puts out a really good series? Made by the same studio who did Men In Black: the Series, no less

But I could dedicate an entire plurk to that cartoon

cityescape: This is normally the part where I'd go into the Devil May Cry reboot and how it could've been a badass take on urban fantasy if it didn't drag its feet when trying to be Devil May Cry, BUT I GOT A NEW CANON TO TALK ABOUT FOR THIS ONE (new to me more than anything)

you ready for this shit?

CHRONO CROSS

The sequel to Chrono Trigger that everyone loves to hate and I can't blame them for it. In order for this game to exist, it has to outright bastardize a beloved game that many consider to be one of the best RPGs of all time

I'm maybe approaching the halfway point in my playthrough after listening to a friend rant about it until sunrise and. Jesus Christ...

What twists my nipples is that there's a lot to love about this game. It focuses on Trigger's subplots that couldn't get much attention because they were a lesser priority compared to an alien parasite that feeds off of entire planets. Which is...fair.

Some hard talks about environmentalism, mankind's destructive tendencies, racial prejudice...

All portrayed through an awesome concept of hopping between two timelines split apart by a butterfly effect about ten years prior

Not to mention Cross being a gorgeous game with an absolutely phenomenal soundtrack

It ain't perfect even on its own merits, don't get me wrong. Combat's slow, the main battle theme that you hear so very often is one of the least enjoyable tracks in the game, there is an absurd number of recruitable characters who are wildly unbalanced, ranging from absolute shit to absolute gods among men, with their plot relevance just as swingy

The lattermost really suck because there's some characters who are. Significantly more relevant to plot things who can and do get shafted. And one particular instance of a literal goddamn alien relevant for exactly one event who is mandatory while motherfucking Magus got cut to make room for ALL OF THIS FUCKING GARBAGE--

WHEN HE'D BE THE ONE CHARACTER FROM TRIGGER MOST INVESTED IN CROSS' MAIN PLOT

AND THE BIG PARTS FROM TRIGGER THAT DO MAKE IT IN TEND TO BE. REALLY REALLY MEAN SPIRITED? I don't get it

It makes me wish Cross could've been its own thing so it could refine all the ideas they had for it. Suikoden made a recruitable list more than double Cross' work, after all

flare_sword: Final Fantasy Type-0

Jesus Tapdancing Christ, it goes so far beyond enlisting child soldiers into all out war that I'm surprised it's not talked about as much as it should be

granted, that ain't gonna happen since it's not a mainline entry and it's the red headed stepchild of Fabula Nova Crystalis, but holy shit, man

A group of twelve mama's boys and girls plus two shoujo protagonists wind up in a Madoka-esque time loop of endless suffering because of a convoluted plot that'd take several playthroughs and maybe some knowledge of FFXIII to fully comprehend

It's...one of the bleakest games I've ever played, holy shit. The kids deserve so much better than what they god

got*

It's telling when the good ending to this game involves twelve of the fourteen playable characters dying and asking mom to let them stay dead

(not the shoujo protagonists, they survive to try and give this miserable world a happily ever after. I think the epilogue says they succeeded? Don't remember)

FNC isn't allowed good endings, change my mind

Why allow good endings when you make an OC you love so much, you creep on them and continue to make them suffer

"Okay but hear me out this is actually good I promise"

Metafive: Jesus Christ, three different canons came to mind around the same time, so I'm gonna give each of them a spot

"You remember that terrible 1998 Godzilla movie victim to Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich's confused machinations? Yes, with Matthew Broderick saying 'that's a lot of fish'. Yes, with Godzilla being a wimpy coward who runs away from the military and ultimately gets killed by a dozen normal missiles.

It has a direct sequel cartoon that fixes everything."

No seriously, Godzilla: the Series is a really good show

Matthew Broderick is replaced by the protagonist from Sharknado, this Godzilla is Zilla's badass son who remembered to be bulletproof and is genuinely intelligent and adorable for a reptile, most of the characters are pretty likeable, with one taking a while to be less of an ass and one being a toxic bitch who carried the bitchiness over to the show.

Genuinely interesting original monster designs while also being surprisingly factual whenever science or military hardware is brought up, a team of humans who actually matter and develop over the course of an episodic show

nowadays, people might write off the character dialogue as MCU-esque, but this came out a good ten years before The Avengers. The wittiness was fun and made everyone more believable. It was good before Disney turned it into a cliche

I loved this show as a teenager and am proud to say that as an adult, it genuinely holds up

number two to this same opinion:

"Hey, you remember that soulslike Final Fantasy game with the dude playing Limp Bizkit on his cellphone with modern clothes in a fantasy setting and talking about killing Chaos so much, it became a meme? Yeah, the one everyone wrote off for being edgy and being a soulslike.

It's actually a really good game with care and some sense put into it."

Final Fantasy Origin: Stranger of Paradise is unironically a really good game, people just can't decide when edgy should be funny or cringe and soulslikes is a genre tainted from the very beginning

When its not taking itself seriously, it's hilarious in an unintended way that feels intentional. When it is taking itself seriously, it weaves an intricate plot that links together so many things in ways you just wouldn't expect that it's genuinely impressive

i cant get over the music

I cant fight it, I love it so much

IT'S SO FUCKING GOOD

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin - Shadows...Just.../chef's kiss

captures that Linkin Park energy perfectly

Mirage – Motif from “The Crystal Tower”also shoutouts to this mesmerizing number when you first enter the Crystal Tower level

This is another game where I could give it its own plurk because god damn. This one game has great combat, solid soundtrack, characters who grow on you, a plot that's fascinating and ultimately comes together to tell the true origin of Final Fantasy

It explains the Warriors of Light's existence, it explains Bahamut, it explains the time shenanigans, it explains Lufenia, it explains Garland, it connects to motherfucking Dissidia

and did I mention this was made by the developers of Nioh 1 and 2? Some of my all time favorite soulslikes right there. It is really good

I understand people won't like playing it because it's a soulslike, but give it a look at least. It blew me away with how deep it goes once you work past the opening memefest

and for the showstopper, number three:

"You see this cartoon here? The Arthurian one based on a newspaper comic? The one on a Christian family channel that banned it from presenting magic or dragons and came on before ultra boomer show The 700 Club?

This is genuinely one of the most respectfully mature, beautiful, well written and well voiced cartoons ever made."

The Legend of Prince Valiant is a show that made me choke up just by saying the start of this sentence out loud

When I say it's mature, I don't mean Frank Miller levels of gritty and bloody. I mean they give violence and war the gravitas it fucking deserves.

It respects your intelligence as the audience. It weaves together interesting plots and cool moments that the characters earn. And despite the limitation of not allowing magic, it instead gets away with so much cool stuff by employing science instead

so you get Merlin who's still mystical and wise because he's well educated while there's a main character who is straight up illiterate

you get so many callbacks to Arthurian lore that's treated with respect and in some cases, outright improved upon, like the fantastic job they did with making Mordred a lawful evil villain

You have characters who feel real, characters you root for and want so badly to succeed and find their place in the sun because they try so goddamn hard to battle against countless foes for a fair and just world they believe can exist, if people are willing to try

you see human flaws in each of them that make them so much more real

And the cherry on top is some absolutely fantastic voice acting which includes some really big names. Tim Curry plays a recurring character while motherfucking Belle and Beast from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST voice THE TITULAR MAIN CHARACTER AND HIS LOVE INTEREST

And they're not the only quality voice actors, either

This show brings out raw emotions from me. It makes me cry. It makes me believe in fictional characters. It blows me away with fantastic writing and well acted scenes. It tells a story that, despite the show being cancelled because of conceited old white men, has a satisfying conclusion that can even double as a middle finger to the dudes who

cancelled them in the first place

Please, for the love of God, watch The Legend of Prince Valiant

I cannot recommend this show enough

The Legend of Prince Valiant Opening (Second Version...My man.

thankfully TLOPV and Godseries: the Zilla both have DVD releases now

that said: that opening is... holy shit yeah this cartoon sure came on right before the 700 Club, that's some Christian Pop glurge

I gotta give it to them: it fucking slaps

I just might have to save up for DVDs of Prince Valiant. Thankfully, I already own all of Godzilla on DVD

you know what? "Okay but hear me out this is actually good I promise" gets a bonus round because another one came to mind that I will defend to my dying day

"So...the newest Pokemon game. The one that was so absolutely broken and glitchy and buggy on release that Modern Day Ebenezer Scrooge Nintendo actually allowed people to get refunds on the game? When they can't even get a good network going and will sell you decades old games at full price?

Please stick with Scarlet and Violet, you won't regret it."

If you told me eight years ago that I'd one day choose the compulsion to buy a pokemon game over Bayonetta 3 and have it somehow be the far superior choice? I would laugh in your face, then laugh even harder

Scarlet was an impulse buy because I wanted a pokemon game again. I'm not sure I could've chosen a better Pokemon game to impulse buy

As a Puerto Rican, it immediately hooked me with the sheer Hispanic vibes your home gives you. Then I kept playing and realized that there was...so much charm to be found in the game and the characters. Before I knew it, I found myself actually getting engaged in a pokemon storyline

Like, actually giving a shit. And relating to the characters, loving them, sympathizing with them, seeing this fascinating interconnected storyline come together while also subverting quite a few tropes you'd associate with the series.

Yeah you still have to get eight badges and become champion and that still sucks, but the gym leaders are pretty great? Not just because Tumblr Sexyman Larry is among them, either.

And even though the sort of freeform gameplay wasn't as well executed as it sounds, for once the writing made me wanna keep going rather than just looking forward to the postgame like I always do in a Pokemon title

I'm not gonna get into details in case people are wary of spoilers, but I related so strongly to some of the core themes and loved how others were handled. Music fucking kicks ass, I liked having a Pokemon game that didn't feel super slow like postgame gen 4 did

And there were several moments in the story where I genuinely got emotional. I finally found a Pokemon rival I love. The box art legendary is finally integral to the plot and while you recruit them early on, you don't really recruit them until after you earn it and after they earn it

Because they have a character arc, too

I will cry if I get into the story details or key moments that were phenomenal storytelling moments or even moments that blend story and gameplay

But what upsets me most is that there are people who refuse to give this game a chance because it's still buggy. Yeah, it is, but people will fucking swear by the disastrous Sword and Shield while the far more engaging Pokemon game gets shat on

I think ScarVi would have been great if it had been polished IMO? That seems to be the general consensus.

It is in need of polish and I won't argue that. Fuck, I'd even agree

Like I would not touch SwSh with a 300 foot pole. ScarVi has me curious but like. I also don't wanna clip through the world because I took a wrong turn--

but what might be my favorite mainline pokemon game could get overlooked because The Pokemon Company fucked up hard enough for Nintendo to own up to it

and that breaks my heart

I think the worst thing is

It could be fixed with a solid patch???

Like literally just. Release a good bugfix patch.

why do they when they can release more dlc and just make money instead

It's Pokemon! It prints money!

Which really isn't fair to ScarVi when so much of its story revolves around the careless decisions of people in power and how they harm so many others

Grumbles