Korakuen Hall Zine

I’ve had the pleasure of going to Korakuen Hall, near the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, several times now to watch pro wrestling of all types live, and greatly enjoyed every visit. There’s no bad seats, the crowd loves the action, and every promotion treats Korakuen like it’s a big deal. I made a zine to show my appreciation, using photos I’ve taken from my first trip up until my most recent last year.

I first went to Korakuen Hall on a whim while on a trip with friends, with vague memories of George Morikawa’s Hajime no Ippo and blurry NJPW real media files in my head. I got convenience store chicken on the way in, and soon fell in love.

Oracle Arena in Oakland, California is my most favorite arena in the world, but when it comes to pro wrestling, no place is as cool as Korakuen Hall.

This one’s 64 pages, plus a legend. If you want to download it for free, you can go to my page on itch.io. With a little luck, though, you should be able check out an embed right here:

NO RELATION: Heroes Eventually Die (a close look at Armored Core 6)

New video: NO RELATION:
Heroes Eventually Die
(a close look at Armored Core 6)
 


Above is a companion video to “Evil Mind, Evil Sword,” an AMV I cut to try to figure out some feelings about Armored Core 6. Previously, I wrote an essay about how moving I found the game, too. This video, “NO RELATION: Heroes Eventually Die,” is a close look at how I felt going after Tester AC over and over, racking up money to buy gear to go after bigger and badder enemies. I hope you dig it. It’s 9:30-ish. Transcript/essay below.


Are you there? This is No Relation, and I’m David Brothers.

“Kamina: Go on! I know you can do it, buddy!”

“Simon: Uhh, but I don’t!”

“Kamina: Listen, Simon. Don’t believe in yourself!”

“Simon: Huh?”

“Kamina: Believe in me! Believe in the Kamina who believes in you!”

“Yoko: What’s that mean…?”

“Simon: …right, I’ll try!”

I’ve been really thinking about overcoming in the mecha genre. Sometimes it’s a young pilot overcoming her past trauma in order to reach her peak, and, y’know, sometimes it’s a grizzled old vet proving that they are not past their useful season, that they have not become “winter men.” In Gurren Lagann, y’know, it’s a young boy learning to believe what others see inside him, instead of the doubt and insecurity that his heart is burdened with.

“COM: Main System. Activating Combat Mode.”

“Handler Walter: Commence mission.”

“Handler Walter: We’ve got a read on the target. Now’s the time, 621.”

Stories for me are about seeing a breadth of responses to the slings and arrows of the world, that’s what gets me fired up in mecha stories especially. I found FromSoftware’s Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon, directed by Masaru Yamamura and written by Yamamura and Kazuhiro Hamatani, it was a sensational playground for this kind of storytelling.

Your character is a mostly blank slate, y’know, very easy to imprint your self on, and the cast is filled with characters who range from violent sadists to people who kind of have a point, even if their execution leaves something to be desired.

“Dafeng Student Pilot: The Redguns need this AC. I…I can’t fail this mission!”

I said “your character is mostly a blank slate, easy to imprint your self on” but what I really should have was that “my character was a blank slate, easy to imprint my self on.” ’cause I played this game in character. I aligned myself with a different faction on each run and did my best to see things their way, to behave in the game as if I was working towards the same goals right alongside them instead of, y’know, pressing buttons on the couch.

I found myself empathizing with a lot of the characters in the game because of this, thanks to the fantastic writing and storytelling, but one caught me more than all the others. He’s only ever referred to as “Dafeng Student Pilot,” a representative of the company Dafeng, and he operates Tester AC, an armored core—a mobile suit, a giant robot—for just one mission in the game.

“Handler Walter: Got a job for you, 621. It’s an open call from the Arquebus Group.”

“Arquebus Corporation: To all independent mercenaries—this request comes from Schneider of the Arquebus Group.”

“Arquebus Corporation: Dafeng, one of our adversaries allied with Balam, has introduced a new tester AC.”

“Arquebus Corporation: It’s a sample model from an external architect, featuring extensive assembly optimizations.”

“Arquebus Corporation: In the hands of an experienced pilot, it will pose a threat far too great to ignore.”

“Arquebus Corporation: This brings me to the request.”

“Arquebus Corporation: Intercept delivery of the tester AC and destroy it.”

That one mission is called Destroy the Tester AC. In exchange for more or less a hundred thousand bucks, mostly less, you’re tasked with destroying the Dafeng Core Industry Tester AC. Your handler Walter needs the various corporations and factions that are battling on the planet Rubicon to move a certain way, to get into certain positions in order to achieve his own private goals. And calling Destroy the Tester AC an assassination mission is way too kind. Because you assassinate human beings and you destroy machines.

“Arquebus Corporation: Briefing over—and happy hunting.”

Dafeng Student Pilot isn’t even collateral damage when it comes to Handler Walter and everyone else giving orders on Rubicon. He’s nothing.

But, a quick sidebar about money farming in games. If I could play a video game and never spend even a single solitary second grinding, that is game of the year for me as far as I’m concerned. But money farms can be useful. You know, if I need money, if I need a quick payday of some type, then a money farm is a quick route to get the money that I need to make a later mission easier.

And…it’s a useless experience, is my thing. It’s tedious! Because you’re just exploiting a video game’s mechanics or doing something really repetitive, running forward and hitting the same button over and over. The art of video games is lost when it comes to grinding. It’s a distraction from what’s real about the video game.

In Armored Core 6, the money farm mission is Destroy the Tester AC. Dafeng Student Pilot doesn’t put up much of a fight, and it’s a quick in-and-out. Not a huge draw on your time or energy. You don’t even have to think too hard. You just get in there, hit him a few times, and you’re done. But the empathy I felt for the other characters in the game eventually extended to Dafeng Student Pilot as well.

“Dafeng Student Pilot: Damn it!”

“Dafeng Student Pilot: I… I just…”

He has a work ethic.

“Dafeng Student Pilot: I’ll deal with the merc! I’ve been training for this!”

He understands the stakes.

“Dafeng Student Pilot: The Redguns need this AC… I… I can’t fail this mission!”

And most striking to me, that he has skin in the game.

“Dafeng Student Pilot: I can’t die to a merc who only kills for credits!”

Our character, my character, 621, is not even from the planet Rubicon. Another character in the game calls him a tourist repeatedly and exclusively. But all of these are traits that Dafeng Student Pilot has are things that I would find admirable in a hero character, or a villain character, to be honest. But he’s not really either one of those. He’s worth a hundred thousand bucks, and I have a ton of equipment left to buy. I can’t get away with not grinding in this one.

“Handler Walter: That’s it for this job, 621. Return to base.”

I like that this money farm puts the cost of farming front and center. You have to listen to his screams before you get your little reward, before you can go off and buy a new shotgun or funnels. There’s something really nice about that.

But even still, I obliterated Dafeng Student Pilot over and over for my own benefit and the benefit of my handler. Each time, he insisted that he was ready for it, that he could keep up, and that he just can’t let it end like this.

One alternative to overcoming is surrender. And where overcoming is triumphant, surrender is cold, an acquiescence to the, the way of things. No matter how much our hearts, training, or willpower say otherwise. Sometimes you don’t get to win. Sometimes you’ve had enough, sometimes it’s easier to not do the hard thing. Sometimes the game’s mechanics point you right at the big bags of money even as the game says you’re evil for taking it. And sometimes you don’t like it, but do it anyway, because this is how video games work. You know. Very much “It is what it is” as a curse.

“Chirico Cuvie: And, feeling as safe as a child held to its mother’s breast,”

“Chirico Cuvie: before I knew it, I was fast asleep.”

So, what was possible for Dafeng Student Pilot if it isn’t what it is? What’s likely? Would he have grown into Amuro Ray type of character, one of those heroes who finds a new path and doesn’t leave a trail of death and destruction behind them like I did on Rubicon? Does he become a symbol of hope for his community? An ace like Roy Fokker? A tyrant? Something else? What exactly am I crushing when I snuff out Dafeng Student Pilot’s light?

It doesn’t matter. I’ll never get to know. There’s only this moment, shared between us where I show up, he does his best, and it’s not enough. It reminded me of the first ending from Yoko Taro and PlatinumGames’s Nier Automata, when a character faces a great tragedy and, in a fourth-wall breaking moment, says, “It always ends like this,” just…bleeding despair.

“2B: It always ends like this.”

It always ends like this because it was written this way. It would take impossible effort to change it. So, if I can’t win, if Dafeng Student Pilot must die in order for me to achieve my goals, in order for things to proceed, then there has to be something that I can learn from what I’m taking from him. What does it mean for me, the nominal hero character of the game, the savior of Rubicon…what does it mean for me to punish Dafeng Student Pilot over and over again?

Questions like these are why I love Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon. It was hands down the best thing I played in 2023.


Further Reading:

Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon: Directed by Masaru Yamamura, written by M. Yamamura & Kazuhiro Hamatani. Dafeng Student Pilot voiced by Johnny Yong Bosch. FromSoftware (2023)

Armored Trooper VOTOMS Complete Collection: Directed by Ryosuke Takahashi Written by Soji Yoshikawa & Jinzo Toriumi. Sunrise (1983)

Gunbuster: The Complete OVA Series: Directed by Hideaki Anno Written by H. Anno, Toshio Okada, Hiroyuki Yamaga Gainax (1988)

Gundam: Reconguista in G Written and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino. Sunrise (2014)

Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt & Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt: Side Story: Yasuo Ohtagaki (writer/artist) Shogakukan (2020)

Nier: Automata: Directed by Yoko Taro Written by Y. Taro, Hana Kikuchi, & Yoshiho Akabane PlatinumGames (2017)

Street Fighter 6: Directed by Takayuki Nakayama Designed by Mitsugu Ashida Capcom (2023)

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi Written by Kazuki Nakashima Gainax (2007)

The Winter Men: Brett Lewis (writer), John Paul Leon (artist), Dave Stewart & Melissa Edwards (colorists), John Workman & Jared K Fletcher (letterers) Wildstorm/DC Comics (2007)

“Evil mind. Evil sword.” (Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon)

“To the mother of my enemy, I just killed your son.
He died with his face to the sky and it can not be undone.”

In the first verse of “Tougher, Colder, Killer,” track six on his album Cancer 4 Cure, El-P sketches out the story of a man unmoored and eventually ruined by the aftermath of what his masters ask him to do in their name.

He delivers the verse in first person, inhabiting the character. The verse takes the form of a letter—it could be another type of message, but the most romantic option is a letter—to the mother of the deceased, describing how her son died and how it felt to kill him. El-P made the son dig his own grave at gunpoint, which implies that the son was unarmed and helpless. El-P describes the son as laughing to the gods as he dug, amused by his fate and his place in the wartime food chain. The son doesn’t fight his way to a valiant death. He doesn’t go out on his shield. He dies lost and exhausted, the victim of a particularly cruel war crime.

The son’s reaction, the fact that he died with no fear and full faith, utterly destroys El-P.

The laughter and grin combine with the son’s last words and transform into a lasting curse. You can feel El-P’s skin crawling now that he’s been forced to see the man’s humanity. You can feel the questions about what that means about El-P’s own humanity. El-P describes himself as “Pandemonium me,” a double reference to a state of utter confusion and the capital of Hell in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Imagine Hell as a city-state. Pandemonium is the seat of government, to use human terms, and when El-P says he’s fucked by decree, he’s coming to the understanding that he’s become a demon at someone else’s request and for someone else’s benefit.

He is lost, consumed by the atrocity his job demands and pushed to extreme lengths to kill the voice of the son in his head. There’s no justice in making someone dig his own grave, no balancing of the scales or protecting anyone. There’s just cruelty. And this time, the cruelty reflects back on El-P. Before the son dies, he tells El-P that there’s a tougher, colder killer than him, and that in just one day, a mere twenty-four hours at some point in the future, El-P will also learn to crawl before his own tougher, colder killer.

“Tougher, Colder Killer” has stuck with me since I first heard it. The opening verse sets up a good story, and the revelation embedded in it is the type that fascinates me. (The rest of the track is normal rapping instead of pure storytelling.) It’s a song you can see as well as hear, and when I felt moved to make an Armored Core 6 music video to try and describe my experience a little bit, it quickly came to mind as the best option. Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon made me into a tougher, colder killer than every single boss I took down on my way to seeing all three endings.

Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon is my game of the year for 2023 and it’s not even close. I probably played Street Fighter 6Final Fantasy XIV, and Apex Legends more frequently, but the most affecting, interesting, and melancholy experiences I had last year was playing Armored Core 6.

The game stars 621, a blank slate character who is an exceptional armored core pilot in my hands. I’m sent on missions by Handler Walter, serving an agenda that unveils itself over the course of the game. During that unveiling, I met the really fascinating and charismatic people that are fighting over the planet Rubicon and its mysterious energy source, folks like Cinder Carla, “Chatty” Stick, Ayre, G5 Iguazu, and V.IV Rusty. The cast is a mix of warriors, leaders, thralls, and those who seek to overcome every single one of their foes as a way of proving their self-worth.

The beauty of Armored Core 6 is that it imbues each of its characters with such life and perspective that I was constantly confronted by their own humanity while simultaneously trying to take it from them. It’s easy to see why the characters are the way they are, and that expectation of empathy is threaded throughout the game. Iguazu has been forced into a shape he cannot abide, fighting on behalf of another in order to clear unfair debts. Ayre would simply like her species to survive. Walter doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past, and will go to extreme lengths to make it happen. “Chatty” Stick is an artificial intelligence that’s loyal to his boss, who has created as warm and welcoming an environment as you’ll find on Rubicon. I came to understand all of them.

At the same time, the characters frequently denigrate my reasons for being involved in the battle and almost never address me by name. I’m 621, I’m the merc, I’m a tourist. I’m a symbol of liberation or a divine punishment. I was repeatedly and explicitly defined as an outsider with no skin in the game, a nobody amongst titans and bloody warriors.

The meat of the narrative is delivered via dialogue, in the character’s own voices. I heard pilots mumbling as they struggled to eject before dying. I heard their surprise and shock at seeing 621 in action. I heard them hyping each other up before cutting them down like wheat. I heard sudden gasps when I betrayed them. I heard the supreme confidence in the voices of my friends when their gun turned in my direction. I heard friendly voices turn cold when our respective goals become incompatible.

Armored Core 6 asked me to commit to the bit, and then wanted me to sit with how I feel about that fact afterward.

When I was short on cash, the easiest mission to run for a quick but sizable check is against a student pilot from Dafeng Core Industry, one of many corporations in the game. The student pilot is assigned to transport a certain mech to another faction, Dafeng having modified, developed, or upgraded the gear attached to it. He dies easily, quickly transitioning from idealism (“I can’t die to a merc who only kills for credits!”) to regret as his dreams and machine are scattered to the wind (“I… I just… I just wanted a callsign of my own…”).

In my video, I paired El-P’s “Tougher, Colder Killer” with the death of the Dafeng student pilot. Replaying that mission and sitting with the vibe of it is a big part of what made Armored Core 6 open up to me and what made me open up to Armored Core 6. The student pilot is meat beneath tank treads in a war he’s trapped in but still cares deeply about. He’s not there for money. He wants the glory of having a call sign, of being an ace pilot. He wants to be a hero, and the only thing standing in his way is me and my desire for a hundred thousand credits.

When I killed him, over and over and over, I eradicated the Dafeng student pilot’s potential for my own benefit. I destroyed his future and I left with a little money in my pocket to upgrade my war machine. He’s not even a footnote. He’s a checked box on a spreadsheet. Something for the memo line on a check.

Each ending forced me to make decisions and align 621 with this faction or that faction. I was forced to choose between my friends and my cause, and even between my friends and their causes.

There is an all-time great older brother character in Armored Core 6. V.IV Rusty fights alongside the Vespers, an elite crew for the elite Arquebus Corporation. (He’s “vee four Rusty” when said aloud.) While fighting alongside him, I quickly realized that he’s like Kamina from Gurren Lagan in overdrive. It is a genuine delight to fight beside him. It’s the opposite of an escort mission, or maybe he’s the one escorting me. Either way, when he says, “We’re war buddies now” after one collaborative mission, I felt the honesty of it.

When the winds changed and I was forced into combat against him, he said something that reoriented me once again. I’d already accepted the cyberpunk evil corpo storyline, but Rusty added another layer when he said, “Hate to say it, but Rubicon still needs me. So, buddy… who needs you?”

I laughed in surprise when I first heard it, but felt it bone deep all the same. It was expert writing, the kind that sounds like one thing but then clenches your heart once you let it in. The line and scene have only grown on me since.

It’s not “Who needs you?” in the sense of me being worthless. It’s “Who needs you?” as in “Who do you fight for, and do you really think that your dedication measures up to mine?”

Who was I fighting for? At that point, I was making decisions based on however I felt in that moment. I didn’t have a position on the plot so much as I was content experiencing the story as it unfolded at my fingertips. By the time I found a way to beat the brakes off Rusty, I’d recommitted myself to the game and to being 621. 621 is the crux of the story, and the choices I make in 621’s name lead directly to each of the three endings.

Rusty made me want to believe in the path I was walking rather than just walking it. I knew I wanted to see all three endings, but Rusty reminded me to live them, not just see them. To chase them. To commit. I needed to show him who needs me, and the only way to do that was by fighting him with everything I had.

I realized I loved the game, that it had truly captured me, when a mission required me to kill a friend. The dream we shared had been torn asunder by our circumstances and choices. My friend said, “I know that you… You’ve made your choice. Then I must do my duty…” and the battle began.

Most good/evil systems in video games are tedious. The evil is cartoonish or the good is a fantasy or the actual system is just another meter to min/max for later reward. Armored Core 6 leaves the definition of good and evil up to you, and only asks that you respond to the situations with your whole heart.

621’s friend needed to die for my goals to be achieved. That means that our shared history and our dreams did not matter in that moment. There was 621, a friend, and a need to complete the mission or risk losing everything. The end results are what they are. The game does a good job of creating a dilemma that doesn’t have an easy good/bad/true ending setup. It has a series of situations and perspectives that are presented to the player for judgment and contemplation.

I fought the friend with a guilty conscience, knowing that it was the wrong thing to do but necessary for the mission I was on. When that friend said that we could have walked together, but now there’s no reason to hold back, I responded in kind. I met their determination with my own. I love you, but goodbye. I’m needed.

The difficulty of the fight only added to the impact of the story. I could feel the resolve of my friend, how important it was to them that I die and how much they didn’t want that to be reality. I had to close my heart and focus on the mechanics. 621 is an ace pilot. Everyone who raises a hand against our machine dies. My advantage is that I can do the fight a thousand times, learning and changing each time. I am inevitable.

I felt that fight more than anything else in games this year. I was surprised at how much I needed this friend to die, and then elated and ashamed when it actually happened. I achieved my goals, simultaneously saved and ended countless lives, and annihilated a friendship in the process.

The three endings build on each other in interesting ways. When I got the third, “Alea Iacta Est,” the satisfaction felt incredible, like finishing a good novel or draining movie. Armored Core 6 pulled me out of my self and showed me three perspectives on ending one conflict with wildly different outcomes. Each ending hurt in different ways, and each ending delivered moments of triumph at the same time. I wanted and regretted each ending as I got them, and really thought about it before I made my decisions, knowing that I would have to disappoint and maybe battle any of the characters I really liked.

The combat in this game, combined with the customization system, fit into my brain like a key in a lock. Playing it feels good, angling to pull off all the moves and tricks I’ve seen in robot anime. The story is great, but the gameplay is on point too. Glories abound. Thrust vectoring and an Itano circus are cool forever.

Armored Core 6 was a beautiful experience, and rare. There are games I play because I love the story or the gameplay, but rarely in equal proportions. Apex Legends has my favorite FPS combat (melee aside), but I’m not playing that one a few hours a week every week for the story.

Calling Armored Core 6 an “exercise in empathy” would be overstating things a bit, but it’s not wrong. It’s a game that’s greatly improved if you take what the characters want and strive for seriously. It asks that you believe, and in exchange for that belief, it offers heartbreak and contemplation in equal measure.
Relevant vibes, by Emma Ríos:
Chatty” Stick

NO RELATION: Sandman Sims & The Street Sweeper (“Little Foot, Big Foot” by Childish Gambino)

(sorry if you’re getting this twice. it turns out the email version doesn’t embed youtube videos, so I added a link.)
NO RELATION 01:
“Little Foot, Big Foot”
by Childish Gambino feat. Young Nudy
directed by Hiro Murai
NO RELATION with David Brothers is an excuse to talk about music, movies, life, and whatever else I find interesting. This first episode is with my longtime friend Jamila Rowser, founder of Black Josei Press, co-creator of Wash Day Diaries with Robyn Smith, and josei manga maniac. She texted me a link to Childish Gambino’s new music video and we chatted about it for a while, and then decided to freestyle a little show out of it.

I wanted practice editing videos and it’s always a good time talking to friends, and NO RELATION is a good way to get both. I’ve never done one of these before. You should pause it if you need to pause it and disagree with us out loud if you got a better take.

0:30: http://www.JamilaRowser.com
0:48: Erica Sakurazawa, Moyoco Anno, Kyoko Okazaki, Ai Yazawa, Mari Okazaki, Kyuta Minami, Kiriko Nananan are some of Jamila’s faves
0:55: Buy Wash Day Diaries from Chronicle Books!
1:07, and throughout: “Little Foot, Big Foot” by Childish Gambino
1:40: Atavista album info on wikipedia
2:18: “This Is America” by Childish Gambino, directed by Hiro Murai
3:35: More on The Great Migration
3:40: City Mouse and Country Mouse by Lenika Gael & Mike Spoor
3:48: Quinta Brunson in The Hollywood Reporter
7:30: The Beatles were paid only 5 pound for this gig
8:05: Hellzapoppin’ (1941)
8:15: “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)” by Beyoncé
9:35: “CREAM” by Wu-Tang Clan
10:00: “Telegraph Ave” by Childish Gambino, directed by Hiro Murai
11:43: Blazing Saddles (1974), directed by Mel Brooks
11:58: Veep season 2 episode 9 directed by Tim Kirkby
12:08: No Way Out directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
12:24: Do the Right Thing directed by Spike Lee
13:45: Out of Sight directed by Steven Soderbergh
14:45: Richard Pryor’s Mudbone goes to Hollywood
15:05: Jamel Shabazz
15:07: that’s my real barn from real life
15:20: black population distribution chart
16:11: OJ da Juiceman’s I Got Da Juice mixtape
16:35: “Feel Good Inc” by Gorillaz
16:44: “Hard Knock Life” by Jay-Z
17:33: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw_country
17:50: “Freddie’s Dead” by Curtis Mayfield
18:27: “Drug Dealin’ Muzik” by Young Jeezy
19:18: “OG Kush Diet” by 2 Chainz
19:40: “Wine-O-Baby Boogie” by Joe Turner
20:03: Hellzapoppin’ (1941)
20:29: “Tight Like That” by Clara Smith (it’s not that dirty)
20:36: “WAP” by Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion
22:08: Jamie Foxx vs Doug Williams
23:23: “On eating watermelon in front of white people”
24:05: why is this guy the most famous critic? he stinks
25:23: Capcom Design Works technically counts as black history too.
25:35: Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott
26:47: “Chonkyfire” by OutKast
27:24: Queen & Slim (2019) dancing moment
27:24: Love & Basketball (2000)
28:00: “I’m Not A Writer” by Cam’ron
29:44: “Deeper” by Freddie Gibbs
31:10: “Idlewild Blue” by OutKast
31:30: I’m New Here by Gil Scott-Heron
34:25: Listen to Mangasplaining!
35:20: https://JamilaRowser.com
35:34: “Wine-O-Baby Boogie” by Joe Turner
35:40: http://essays.iamdavidbrothers.com

(me+you): “I would like to know who made this magnificent cut.”

This is a piece from my newsletter, (me + you), which comes as the spirit moves but is hopefully worth the wait. I use it as a place to test drive ideas, to practice therapy, to get writing tics out of my system…it’s really just a sandbox for me to write to you. The newsletter is about everything and nothing, and this one is about how I felt before, during, and after watching Takehiko Inoue’s The First Slam Dunk. I wrote this back in January, shortly after seeing the movie in Japanese sans subtitles and after a season of bad brain days. Memoir as criticism, I guess. The First Slam Dunk is a great movie, and the art book is pretty cool, too. I saw the English dub today, which is as good a reason as any to make this public.


“Top priority:
Peace before everything, God before anything
Love before anything, real before everything
Home before anyplace, truth before anything
Style and state radiate, love power slay the hate”

–Yasiin Bey, fka Mos Def, “Priority”


Back when I was first learning how to read, I used to do this one thing that was great for me but terrible for my aunts and uncles. They were nine or more years older than I was back then, so firmly in their teens and early twenties. Whenever we watched a movie, I’d demand to watch the credits to see if I could find my name, and, being one of the babies of the family at that time, I usually got my way. I was learning to read, and since David is an eternally popular name (with good reason, beloved), I knew my name would be in there somewhere. I just had to sound every other name out to find it.

So I’d read all the credits to everything we watched while my aunts and uncles were desperate to change the channel, to leave the theater, to simply get on with things. I’d even get upset when tv shows do that fast credit thing to get to the movie up next faster. I’d read all the jobs and names in my head as the credits ran, even though I didn’t understand many of them.

I still do this as an adult, and since Marvel’s movies made it cool, my friends get it too.


a drawing of Ryota Miyagi from Slam Dunk, by Takehiko InoueOn New Year’s Eve just past, I was sitting in TOHO Cinemas Nihonbashi in Tokyo about fifteen minutes before the year turned over. I’d just finished watching The First Slam Dunk, the adaptation of Takehiko Inoue’s classic boys’ sports manga written and directed by the mangaka himself, and the credits were rolling. I don’t read Japanese well yet, but I wanted to see if I could read some of the kanji and see how many names I could read and roles I could sound out. I’ve been studying Japanese off and on for the past few years, never quite as seriously as I should be considering my day job is in localization, and this was a good way to test my reading after a whole movie’s worth of listening practice.

I thought about being a kid and doing this same thing thirty-five years ago maybe and laughed a little. I thought about becoming a comics critic as an adult and how important proper credit eventually became to me. Getting the names right centers that fact that whatever thing was made by human hands in my head. “If you do it, it’s yours and you deserve the credit.”

It’s less a line drawn from childhood to adulthood so much as two parallel lines, two ways of looking at one thing. I didn’t have the capacity to understand the importance of artistic credit as a kid, right? But as an adult, reading credits is like looking at a long list of people who’ve earned being credited their work, even if I have no idea what their field is all about. “We made this.”


On “RAP Music,” Killer Mike says, “I’ve never really had a religious experience in a religious place. Closest I’ve ever come to seeing or feeling God is listening to rap music. Rap music is my religion.”

I’m a little similar to Killer Mike here. I grew up in the church and I still practice/believe, but I don’t go to in-person church for various reasons. But I do appreciate and desire the presence of the sacred in my life, and the way I experience my connection with the sacred more often than not is through creation of my own and through seeing the results of someone else’s thought and effort.

I don’t know if you feel similarly, but I absolutely love to see people cooking, just killing it at whatever they do. Whether it’s Steph Curry draining threes from unlikely distances and angles or Kim Jung Gi effortlessly drawing a whole piece freehand, I love when there’s something there that makes me pause and go, “Man, humans can do that?” It’s that hashtag blessed to be here feeling, but overwhelmingly earnest.

I’ve talked about this a fair amount on our podcast Mangasplaining, but there is a real pleasure in reading a book by someone who loves to draw, rather than someone who just uses comics as a vehicle for the story (non-pejorative; sometimes you need a certain box to carry a certain idea), and a special pleasure in seeing the figurative hand of the artist behind the work. I recognize that hand most often in how “drawn” something feels, how well I can see the seams and imperfections that come when humans do anything. The emotional resonance that they pour into the work matters a great deal too, (said the critic, shuffling towards legitimacy), but give me a scratchy, uneven human line over a cleanly machined one any day of the week. Clean drawings are nice, but there’s something fresh about the other.

It’s like songs with dirty drums. Clean drums are great, but dirty ones just hit different, especially in a car. Sometimes the imperfections of the process become a bonus feature of that process, and that’s something you can really fall in love with. This is as true of art styles as it is music production. The idiosyncrasies are the best part.

I don’t know the meaning of life, what God specifically wants me to do on Earth, but my best guess is that simply living it, taking care of each other, and doing things we love is gonna get me pretty close to the target. When I see someone excelling at their craft in a certain way, I feel second-hand enthusiasm. It makes me think that they’re feeling it, that they’ve gotten in touch with something that has then gotten in touch with me. It feels amazing, experiencing things like that. It feels sacred. I’m frequently flooded with gratitude when I find something that hits the right spot.


I feel it directly when I’m writing. There’s this bit in the war movie Fury I dig a lot, when the character Bible is complimented for some good shooting, and he says, “I’m the instrument, not the hand.” Flip it to “I’m the bullet, not the gun,” and you kinda have how I feel about a lot of things. I haven’t aimed myself or placed myself anywhere. I’ve gone where I’ve been sent and met whatever was there for me head-on, to the best of my ability, and in doing so, hopefully revealed my own nature to my self.

Nothing feels as good as sitting there with a blank page and filling it line by line, crystalizing my thoughts one after the other and making them readable for someone else, even if there’s no intended audience for whatever I’m writing. When it’s pouring out of me, I know that I’ve found something inside myself that I needed to say. When it’s dragging, I know that I’m not writing the thing I need to write at that particular moment in time, like I haven’t given the idea enough time in the metaphorical oven to crystalize it just yet.

Realizing that I feel better when I’m writing regularly was a big surprise. I didn’t recognize the meditative aspect of a regular writing practice, for lack of a better phrase, until I hit a period where I wasn’t writing and getting used to a new gig and felt off in a new way. When I came back, it felt like coming home.

Nowadays, I keep a few projects in progress, and this newsletter is my “long-term” one. I do it as needed…I hesitate to say “as the spirit moves,” but it’s not not that, either. I don’t wait for inspiration, but sometimes something settles on my heart and is like, “Yo, get me on a page somewhere quick.” Sometimes the idea itself is banging on pots and pans, hollering about finally being ready to go. (That’s where that Gundam fanfic I wrote came from.)

I’ve been writing comics for a couple of friends (an unexpected development, but welcome) and doing a little prose fiction for myself for a long while now. I figured out what I want from my creativity and I think I’ve found solid ground to stand on. I want to be better than I am, but I’m happy with where I’m going, too.

(I don’t have the heart for the full freelance life, though. Chasing invoices was stressful enough to me that even if I’m on vacation from my day job, if I know one of my freelancers has an invoice coming, I’ll file that from wherever I’m at.)

I’m not sure where writing will take me, but I don’t know that it needs to take me anywhere. I do what I want, it feels good, and sometimes people say nice things about it, too. It would be nice to get rich off words, but that’s a long shot. I’m happy doing what I do, and challenging myself when I can.


In John Rambo, a fairly execrable movie, Stallone says that “When pushed, killing is as easy as breathing.” Love the line, don’t care about basically anything else in the movie, except for a gnarly mounted machine gun bit at the end. Anyway, I’ve been stealing that to describe how writing feels for years. “Writing is as easy as breathing to me.” It’s how I process things. Writing well? That’s a little more complex, of course.


a drawing of Ryota Miyagi of Slam Dunk by Takehiko InoueHow was The First Slam Dunk? My spoiler-free take is that it is a comic book movie that would be delighted if you read the comics. There are multiple moments where you can see Inoue’s hand, not just as director, but as the original artist. It’s explicit about its origins, about the fact that someone sat down and drew a couple dozen volumes of basketball action with his own human hand.

It’s beautiful in a way I wasn’t expecting at all. I’m not really into the 3DCG side of anime. Mostly, they make me want to read the comic because the visuals tend to be lackluster compared to that raw uncut stuff that I love. But Inoue is so present here that the texture of the thing actually feels good. It made me want to reread the comic because it’s a testament to that work. Having Inoue behind the camera reinforces his POV from the original work, but now with the presence of thirty-some years of hindsight and frankly explosive artistic growth. There were multiple moments where I knew exactly what was about to happen, and yet it still hit me like a ton of bricks. I was vacillating between being fully in my feelings while watching and being fully wrapped-up in the world of the film.

It’s a couple hours long, and the majority of it is an adaptation of existing material, with the addition of several new scenes to further flesh out the original work. I watched it in Japanese sans subtitles and understood maybe a fifth of the dialogue in real time, but, having read the series a handful of times, I know the comic well enough that the other four-fifths was still familiar in the moment, and I got the rest via context. (Slam Dunk is an all-timer. A lot of what made Haikyu!! so good feels like a response to Slam Dunk.) I was crying by the end of the movie, even with the language barrier.

I crystallized the idea that led to this newsletter while watching it. I took a trip to be anonymous and out of my head for a while. I had a year that felt like it sapped my motivation despite having a number of true highlights that I appreciated. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts and out of my routine, but not so far out of my element that I’d feel uncomfortable and be unable to focus. I’ve visited Japan a number of times now and my Japanese is finally strong enough for a solo trip, so I went for it. When I saw that The First Slam Dunk was still in theaters, I took it as an opportunity to watch a movie that at worse would remind me of something I liked and then greet the new year ten minutes later on the walk back to the hotel, just me, my self, and I.

I’d been thinking a lot about the sacred and my connection to it before the movie. I love the idea of ecstatics, people who’ve given themselves body and soul to art. It’s not quite my relationship to art (I was never really a speaking in tongues guy, either), but when I’m feeling low, art is what I tend to turn toward when I need something to smother a bad brain day.

I was thinking about ways to reinforce my connection to the sacred and steal back some motivation when I sat down. About ten minutes into the movie, I had my answer. I realized that Inoue was cooking, and cooking in a way that felt custom built for me.

He was cooking cooking, like that ten-minute Black Thought freestyle. That thing in him that led to Slam Dunk in the ’90s reached across the years to find him once again, resulting in something new and wonderful. And then that new thing enveloped me in a theater an eleven hour flight from home and a sixteen hour flight from where I grew up, and found me too.

I felt what he was putting down, and the way he put it down demands more from me as an audience member and a person who writes things. It made me wanna really shake some confidence issues I’ve been working with and get back to being dangerous. If he can do it with his own human hands, and art and culture is achievement stacked on achievement on achievement, then I have to build from this new foundation he’s shown me. It made me want to be better. You must aim this high to ride.

The First Slam Dunk is a proper sports movie. It’s the exact kind of achievement that makes me feel grateful to God for letting me and Inoue share the same time on Earth. I could’ve been born at any time but I’m right here, right now, watching a basketball movie based on a basketball comic that’s making me think about how much I love my mom in the middle of one of the most awe-inspiringly dense cities on Earth. That level of depth makes me feel like there’s something bigger than us that connects us all.

Thanks for reading,
davidb