Author: david

New video: NO RELATION:

the greatest show on earth
(In Search of Steve Dillon)

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This year’s my twentieth anniversary of becoming a comics critic, and a culture critic more generally. And the one thing that’s remained true, you know, amongst these two decades is that drawings are dope. And seeing behind the scenes, seeing how and why people drew things, is even doper.

It’s interesting to see what kinds of choices people are making behind the scenes, and what kind of things they’re studying in order to, you know, get their reps, the experience to make those choices. Every great stays in the gym. Whether they’re putting up three point shots or doing sketches for fun just to keep their sword sharp.

Chris Ware’s ACME NOVELTY DATE BOOK is a dream project for me. I love seeing behind the scenes like this, seeing all the prep he made for his projects. Original art is a thrill, and if you’ll walk with me for a little bit, I wanna talk with you about how art progressed from opaque to enthralling for me, especially the work of Steve Dillon.

I’m David Brothers, and this is No Relation. The Greatest Show on Earth.

I asked a few friends how they felt about original art because, you know, I know how I feel, but checking myself against others is always fun. Before we get into the mix, here’s Chip Zdarsky, creator of PUBLIC DOMAIN, writer of BATMAN, DAREDEVIL, and co-creator of TIME WAITS on original art.

CHIP: I think comic book art is one of the highest art forms. It requires so much knowledge to do really well. And to see that in the flesh is pretty amazing. There’s also, you know, nostalgia in there, because 99% of the time when you buy a piece, it’s something you originally read in print. So to have that piece is an incredibly powerful thing.

Next is my friend Amy, taterpie on bsky. She’s been a part of the comics internet for a long time, and I’ve really enjoyed, you know, picking her brain over the years and seeing various pieces of original art that she’s picked up. She’s definitely the real deal.

AMY: I got into original art via the usual door: comics. I started with con sketches and then a page or two from books I enjoyed. Part of it is owning something either from or that alludes to something I really enjoyed, so I can feel that spark over and over. Some of it might be bragging rights, showing others the thing in hopes they feel the same spark, and then you own a shared moment in time. And then I realized it didn’t have to just be comics. I could buy all sorts of original art in many mediums. And sometimes the artists even let me tell them my idea. The thrill of that small slice of collaboration is real. Now I have more art than I have walls. And that is a problem.

Jim Lee & Chris Claremont’s X-MEN #1 in particular was a gateway to the wider world of comics for me. Books like this and Katsuhiro Otomo’s AKIRA gave me a peek at a world that I never could’ve imagined on my own, of super-idealized humans and impossible to believe action. There was something really incredible about this book as a kid, and I’ve been really grateful that my appreciation for it has only deepened as I’ve gotten older. Jim Lee and Scott Williams were doing a lot of interesting things, and it’s really paid off, you know, kinda, looking a little bit closer over the years. Looking just past the glitz and the glamour.

Books like this are a window to another world. This one sci-fi, romantic, adventurous. A far cry from the life I was living in Georgia at the time. You know, I had a barn in my backyard when I was growing up, so there was definitely a ceiling on my fantasies as a kid, let’s say. So when I saw TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (1990) for the first time, this was another window via artwork for me. This movie helped define what New York City looked like.

The water towers, the cityscape, the buildings… I dunno if I saw a building over four stories tall that wasn’t a hospital for years. But this movie showed me, and it made me think that New York was an amazing, wonderful place. And when, you know, I eventually got there, I found out that it was.

This kind of art represents reality, but through someone else’s perception. Someone decided what this New York was gonna look like, what kinda vibe it was gonna bring. Looking at art through other people’s eyes, you know, using their eyes as windows, is something that’s incredibly powerful. I’ve learned a lot from works like Toni Morrrison’s BELOVED or Takako Shimura’s WANDERING SON, books that dig into aspects of our culture or our shared reality that I may not be privy to, but need to understand in order to be the best person that I can be.

Allegory is really useful. When I didn’t have the words to describe how it felt being the son of a single mom or what depression felt like, probably before I even know the words depression, before I even probably knew the word depression, rap music was there for me. Projects like Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness” helped me define my self and what I was going through.

Excerpt:

KID CUDI: If I fall, if I die, know I lived it to the fullest. If I fall, if I die, know I lived and missed some bullets.

I’ve been fortunate that I backed into a career where I get to see art all the time. I got my start in the video game industry and transitioned to comics, and I’ve been sitting here shiny and chrome for a few years now. And comics artists are often free with their time. They love talking about the people who influenced them or ways to get better at my own art. Or even just pointing out really dope projects.

I think that Tsutomu Nihei’s TOWER DUNGEON is gonna hit with a splash later this year, once, you know, more artists get their hands on it.

This kind of experience has been very humanizing, in terms of art. These are less idols and gods creating, you know, cosmic tapestries and more people putting marks on paper, making decisions every step of the way.

Art’s not magic. It takes work and effort, and you can’t really phone it in. But it’s worth the effort, you know? Art is timeless. Art is our way of finding immortality, I feel. So, seeing artists as people more and more often, reminds me that they’re just like me. You know, I might not be able to draw as well as this person or that person, but if I put my nose to the grindstone, I can find my own path, I can find my own way of drawing well.

There’s something delightful about that. There’s no taking that away from me. It’s just a part of natural human expression.

One of my favorite examples of a great being human in front of people is on Richard Pryor’s third album. He’s easily my favorite stand-up comedian, someone I appreciate a great deal, and when he opens his, you know, classic album with a little bit where he says, “I hope I’m funny”…that really struck me.

That little bit of vulnerability, even if it was joking, you know, self-deprecating, there’s something true and real there. Even with all the success he’s experienced and all of his hits and money and everything, part of him is still like, you know what? I hope I’m funny and I hope y’all have a good time tonight. And I really, really love that.

Excerpt:

[applause]

RICHARD PRYOR: Thank you. Good evening. I hope I’m funny. Yeah. ’cause I know niggas is ready to kick ass. Talmbout, “You better be funny, motherfucker…”

One of the best parts of living in Oakland, California is having access to the Oakland Museum of California. It’s one of my favorite places on Earth, and I go there whenever I can.

It’s a three-part museum. There’s natural science, California history, and an art museum, along with a rotating special exhibition. The museum does a great job of contextualizing its exhibits within California history. You know, the art is from people who are from California or about Californians, that kinda thing. It’s very focused, and I appreciate the clarity, the context that it provides.

There’s this group called Sketchboard Co., and they’ve partnered with the museum to do figure drawing in the art museum section a couple times a month for a few months now. I’ve been going as often as I can, you know, you can see me in the background of a lot of their social media photos, getting my reps in.

I love drawing at the museum. There’s something about that atmosphere that is perfect for finding a groove and kind of locking in on what you’re doing. Even if you’re having a hard time doing it. Because even if I am, you know, struggling with getting a line right, you know, finding the curve of a back or, you know, a gesture or something, if I raise my eyes a little bit, I’ll see more people who are struggling with the same thing I am in their own particular way, or maybe they’re breezing through it, like they found the magic line to get it done. And if I raise my eyes above that, I’ll see the art surrounding us, depicting California history, landscapes, photographs of workers, migrants, everything. It’s beautiful. And it’s a great place to create art, and I’m really grateful that they’ve set this place up. It’s another way to satisfy my curiosity for original art.

I mentioned that Jim Lee blew the hinges off the doors when I was a kid.

Steve Dillon had a similar effect when I was an adult, but almost the opposite in a way. I didn’t get his work at first. You know, coming from the bombast of all my favorite Image comics, Dillon was composed in a way that I didn’t expect, and it took some time to wrap my head around that.

As a critic, this kind of thing is enthralling to me. When I can see quality in a work but not quite get it, it’s almost like…throwing a ball for a dog. Like, I’ve gotta find out what’s going on there, I’ve gotta find out what’s provoking this reaction in me and why. And I ended up tracing Dillon’s career back, forwards, and sideways.

I came to him first through MARVEL KNIGHTS PUNISHER with Garth Ennis. I thought it was good, but this is the book where I was like, “Oh, this doesn’t really seem like a Punisher artist, exactly…” I went to WOLVERINE, and then back to WILDCATS with Joe Casey, and then HELLBLAZER. And eventually to PREACHER and to JUDGE DREDD and forward to PUNISHER again, kinda getting it this time, and back to JUDGE DREDD, with more understanding of what he’s done. And by the end of it, suddenly I had a new favorite artist, you know?

Steve Dillon’s work really crept up on me, it got its hooks in me. And the more I looked at it, the more I liked it, which is a delightful feeling. It’s genuinely incredible.

I got a copy of THE 2000 AD ART OF STEVE DILLON, the APEX EDITION, a black & white, facsimile-style project that reproduces his art at size and, you know, like, unaltered, lots of paste-up and that kinda stuff. It’s really very cool, and it’s the freshest look I’ve had at his art since I first discovered him all those years ago, when I didn’t understand what he was doing or where he had come from.

Now I understand that he’s been good his entire career, from when he was a young gunner on 2000 AD to the wily vet of PUNISHER. There are great things about his art in every era of his career, and THE 2000 AD ART OF STEVE DILLON does a great job of capturing these snippets and little bits and pieces of greatness that he’s blessed us with over time.

I own a fair number of artist editions, artisan editions, whatever any company wants to call a book that has a bunch of black & white drawings in it that are slightly unfinished… like, I’m there. Like, hook me up. I love it as a format, and this is probably my favorite one yet, even above the incredible BATMAN YEAR ONE by David Mazzucchelli. That series is an unbeatably high water mark in comics, but there’s something about these Dillon pages that just get my brain buzzing. Like, they’re just bleeding thrill-power every time I take a peek at the book.

I co-created a book called TIME WAITS with Chip Zdarsky, Marcus To, Marvin Sianipar, Matt Wilson, Ariana Maher, and Allison O’Toole. And we ended up going to Yorkshire, in England, for the Thought Bubble convention, Thought Bubble Comic Festival, which was a great show. The icing on the cake was finding out there’d be an exhibition of Steve Dillon’s original art there. And I’d seen very few of his originals up until recently. It wasn’t really something I had access to or could afford, to be quite honest. So, like, I leapt at this.

My trip to the UK suddenly had two goals. I wanted to see a bunch of JMW Turner originals at the Tate Britain. He’s an artist I love; I came to him through a Lupe Fiasco album that used “The Slave Ship” as an intro. And I wanted to see a bunch of Steve Dillon originals. You know, those are my two peaks of British art, let’s say.

And off I went. And it delivered.

Like, it was a beautiful exhibition, it was organized by his family, and just seeing all of that work there on those tables and on the wall was really inspiring. Like, this guy did it. Steve Dillon was the man. And it’s really fascinating to look at the art and try to divine what was going on back in the day.

Like, why did he draw this specific thing this way, instead of another way?

One of my most favorite comics ever is called HEARTLAND, and it’s by Steve Dillon, Garth Ennis, and friends. And it’s honestly one of the finest things I think DC has ever published in its entire history. It’s a spinoff…re-do…a follow-up to their run on HELLBLAZER together, where they also did a story called HEARTLAND in HELLBLAZER #70.

There’s no magic or monsters or anything like that, just a series of conversations and heartbreak and reconciliations and all the good stuff, you know, all the stuff that makes comics beautiful. Amazing drawings. And getting to see the title page from HEARTLAND, from HELLBLAZER #70, that version, was really moving for me. I really enjoy urban sketching, you know, like, drawing buildings and your breakfast or whatever whatever. And here’s Steve Dillon, the master, drawing The Crown Bar for an issue of HELLBLAZER.

I didn’t even know this was a real place for years. I just assumed that, you know, Ennis and Dillon were riffing on something. I love it. This title page is so straightforward and beautiful to me, the way he captured the feeling of the bar, the evening, you can see little buildings in the background that maybe didn’t come through in the print edition. And those thick marker lines… maybe it’s from him, maybe it’s from production. There’s such a human hand here.

You can see it especially on the right with his drawing of Tommy Monaghan from HITMAN. You know, you’ve got these really fine shadows on the sleeve, and then like, these chunky blacks for the body. It’s just so good. Everything he drew from Wolverine to Punisher to Deadpool to John Constantine to Dredd to everything…

I just love seeing the world that he built. I feel really fortunate that I figured out, you know, what was so good about Steve Dillon.

At this point, I think you get it, and I’ve got one last bit. I asked my friend Michael Molcher, the 2000 AD Brand Manager, what he thought about Dillon and original art and he blew me out of the water. He has a great take, so, enjoy these works cited and this last little bit of wisdom.

MOLCHER: …and it wasn’t just because he was a great artist, which of course he was. It was because, allied to that, he was a great friend as well. And, erm, you know, a raconteur, bon vivant, however you want to call it. And all of that, I think, was wrapped up in his art. His ability to imbue lines with humanity… And it’s one of those things, you kind of refer back to Roland Barthes’ CAMERA LUCIDA, where he talks about the secondary part of the perception of a photograph as being the stab of pain, where you connect with the emotion of the object. And I think that’s a really important thing. Not just in terms of original art, but in terms of Steve Dillon’s stuff. That I look at it now and there is that stab, not just of having met him and talked to him and the amount of love that the people had for him, but how he conveyed that in his artwork, which is a lot rarer than you might imagine. And that’s really the main aspect of Dillon’s work that I love, is its humanity. Is the way that it conveys the everyday in a way that demonstrates empathy and understanding and awareness of the world around him. And the fact that, you know, he started drawing like this when he was a teenager is just utterly ridiculous. So when I see original artwork of Steve’s, there is that kind of Barthian stab of pain because you recognize the humanity in it, and that is the value of original art, is being able to not just see the artwork but get some sense of humanity, the human behind it. And I think that uniquely, Steve’s work was just imbued with his personality, which was one that connected with people, that enjoyed connecting with people. Yeah. And that makes him unique, I think.

New video: NO RELATION:
How SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE
Taught Me To Play STREET FIGHTER 6
(this one is also from a couple
months ago. we’re caught up
now though. more soon!)

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As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be good at Street Fighter. I was never really good enough to compete with family, friends, and strangers on the internet. But after playing SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE, I found my self playing video games differently. SEKIRO taught me how to get good at STREET FIGHTER 6. This is the story of how it happened and how the devils in my brain affect me in one very specific way.

I: Life’s Ill, Sometimes Life Might Kill—Contra (1987)
II: Every Experience Has Its Lesson—Final Fantasy VII (1997)
III: What Thing Can Kill Me?—Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003)
IV: Never Be Game Over—Persona 4 (2007)
V: It’s Just…You Should Be Punished—Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019)
VI: I Want You To Hit Me As Hard As You Can—Street Fighter 6 (2023)
VII: People Said His Brain Was Infected by Devils

References:
-Street Fighter Alpha 3
-Street Fighter 3
-Samoa Joe
-Emma Ríos—Sekiro: Gracious Gift of Tears
-Tekken 8 (2024)
-Mobb Deep, “Right Back At You”

New video: NO RELATION:
the art of storytelling
with Alissa Sallah.
(technically, this went live
months ago and I forgot to
send it here. sorry, but enjoy!)

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NO RELATION with David Brothers is an excuse to talk about music, movies, life, and whatever else I find interesting. Think of it like a comic convention panel in the form of a video essay. Does that make the comments Q&A?

Either way, this NO RELATION is about storytelling in Moto Hagio’s A Cruel God Reigns, Kentaro Miura’s Berserk, and Akimi Yoshida’s Banana Fish, and the lessons that cartoonist Alissa Sallah has learned from the techniques used in their work.

0:00: Alissa Sallah, Weeaboo, & Bonfire Anthology
6:52: Moto Hagio’s A Cruel God Reigns
18:50: Kentaro Miura’s Berserk
34:23: Akimi Yoshida’s Banana Fish

NO RELATION:
–Sandman Sims & The Street Sweeper (“Little Foot, Big Foot” by Childish Gambino) featuring Jamila Rowser
–Heroes Eventually Die (a close look at Armored Core 6)

ALISSA SALLAH:
Web
Instagram

Alissa’s latest work is Sun Tribe: Waffle Shack Index, a one-shot released on Viz Media’s VizManga app and viz.com. Perfect Crime Party (an anthology story with me!) funded on BackerKit and will be available this spring/summer. The Viscere folk horror anthology funded back in December and will be on the way shortly.

DAVID BROTHERS:
Web
Instagram

NO RELATION with David Brothers
The Art of Storytelling
featuring Alissa Sallah

Works:
Sun Tribe: Waffle Shack Index (VizMedia),
Perfect Crime Party (Iron Circus Comics),
Weeaboo (Oni Press)

Discussed:
Moto Hagio’s A Cruel God Reigns, volume 2
Kentaro Miura’s Berserk, volume 9
Akimi Yoshida’s Banana Fish, volume 8

Mentioned, in order:
Bonfire Anthology
Floating World Comics
The Comics Journal 269
Moto Hagio’s Marginal, A Drunken Dream, Heart of Thomas, The Poe Clan, Otherworld Barbara
George Morikawa’s Hajime no Ippo
Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto
Hiroaki Samura’s Blade of the Immortal
Usamaru Furuya’s No Longer Human
Mandy (2018)
Roger Ebert x Hayao Miyazaki, RogerEbert.com
Emma Riós’s Anzuelo
Kazune Kawahara & Aruko’s My Love Story
Berserk: The Golden Age Arc (2012)
Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics
Nier: Automata (2023)
Jerry Maguire (1996)
Berserk (1997)
Hirohiko Araki’s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Part 2: Battle Tendency
W. David Marx’s Ametora
Ernest Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”
The Great Gatsby (2013)
Banana Fish (2018)
The Weekend’s “Out of Time”

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

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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.

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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.

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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)