Over the Garden Wall is a Cartoon Network miniseries created by Patrick McHale and starring Elijah Wood as the main character Wirt. It is seen as a "Fall Special" as it does very well in portraying Fall themes, settings, and tones. It also has a fantastic musical element to it that just adds to the world that the two boys Wirt and Greg find themselves into and the story is clever and filled to the brim with hidden lore left for the community to search for.

Over the Garden Wall boasts a "Fall" feeling when watching it. The colors and backgrounds are all beautiful and well designed with an incredible amount of detail for a Cartoon Network miniseries. It really LOOKS like the Fall with the orange leaves reflecting the sunlight onto a dreary mill or the greenish water being pushed around by a river boat. The music also compliments the settings and tones of this special perfectly. It uses a mix of Folk instruments like regular guitar as well as early Jazz type instruments like Clarinet. It has a very well done Jazz/Folk/Opera mix of songs that set the whole tone of the series. For example, an operatic track like Come Wayward Souls is perfect for a dreary and cold atmosphere with no hope to be found and Over the Garden Wall is a perfect song for the series. All of the tracks seem important to the story and very thematic to the situation they are put in. None of them seem like they are shoehorned in.

The story of the series is also very creative and well done. It follows two step-brothers Greg and Wirt as they travel through the land called "The Unknown". As they travel this mysterious new world they come across everything from talking pumpkin people to talking birds and even a schoolhouse full of animals! It seems weird at first but you get used to the weirdness of this world. It kind of reminds me of the off-putting worlds that the likes of Miyazaki sometimes puts us in. In fact, this whole show reminds me a lot of Spirited Away as they both do a good job of setting up a strange world with a deep and sometimes scary lore that is just barely hidden away. Though both of these works of art have different themes that are being portrayed I can tell that Patrick McHale was at least a little bit inspired by Miyazaki's works. Its pacing even reminds of the type of storytelling I would associate the My Neighbor Totoro! So, in short, the story is captivating and done very well.

Over the Garden Wall is a miniseries that anyone should go out of their way to watch this Fall season. Everything about this series is just fun while also bolstering heavy themes and tonalities that people and frogs of all ages can enjoy!

Over the Garden Wall is a Fall classic!
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Undertale is Toby Fox's first game. And it is one of the best games I have ever played. This little gem that has been exploding all over the internet as of late is about a little kid (you) who partakes in a "tale" that takes place "under"ground! Not only does this game have an amazing story, characters, and atmosphere, but managed to do the one thing that not many games have been able to do. Make me have REAL feelings for the characters and locations in this pseudo 8-bit world.

Without spoiling too much, the story of this game is deep, intuitive, and just overall amazing. As previously stated, this whole game takes place in a place called The Ruins that is filled with seemingly evil monsters and goofy characters. You play as whoever you name your character and your ultimate goal is simple: try to get out of this world. You can do this in a number of ways. Either by killing every enemy, sparing every foe, or a combination of the both. This is where this game really shines.

You see, the characters in Undertale react to you in certain ways depending how you interact with the environment and the way you go about disposing of enemies. This is done by the genius battle system that Undertale has. In this gem you don't have to kill a single enemy in the entire game. That's right. You can choose to "spare" every enemy, including bosses. This compliments the story so well as you really become attached to certain "enemies" after you fight them which makes them all so memorable. The characters that aren't enemies are also just as memorable and I still remember every line that Sans spits out and the intricacies of Papyrus's cackle! They all have deep feelings that go way past the initial character traits that are given to them. Even though they are "monsters", they feel like humans. Like real people.

The atmosphere and music in this game is some of the best I have ever seen in an indie game. The music fits every character and situation perfectly. The cave's atmospheric tunes and Snowdin theme are all magnificent and just... well... atmospheric! The graphics, though minimal, make everything pop out with color and personality and the animations are fluid though true to the old 8-bit style. It comes to the point where I can recognize every single enemy and character from their overworld sprites alone!

Undertale is not only one of the most well-made games I've played, but one of my favorite games of all time just because of the amount of hear that was put into it.

Undertale was magnificent!
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
The Nightmare Before Christmas is a very special musical. It acts as both a Halloween and Christmas movie and has a great soundtrack. Because I've been watching a lot of musicals lately and have been beginning to appreciate them more, as well as it being October, it's finally time to revisit this great Burton film! It has surprisingly catchy music, extremely well done stop-motion, and delightful characters.

Like I said before, I'm not one to completely love musicals. Though there are ones that I like, like The Sound of Music and some Disney musicals, The Nightmare Before Christmas just has an awesome style of music that combines a dark and creepy styles with a bright and colorful Christmas style that makes the soundtrack stand out among the rest. It's not too one style over the other either. Jack's Lament in particular stands as a good example of the combination of styles. This song has lyrics and a rise in tone that is distinctly Halloween while having instruments that you might hear in a Christmas special. It is also quite special how the score can express the emotions that these characters are having at any given moment. Town Meeting Song is also very stylized and probably my favorite track. It is creepy but also somehow festive and gives you insight into more of Jack's feelings.

The animation in this film is outstanding! The Halloween Town characters move and flow in a way that give them all a distinct personality and the backgrounds are all extremely detailed and magnificent. I especially like the What's This scene where Jack Skellington is exploring the newly discovered Christmas Town. He creeps into houses and strolls the streets of the town. This scene in particular is great at showing bright and colorful backgrounds and landscapes that really pop out at you. Halloween Town is also very booming with... well... cleverly a lack of color. It looks and feels like a Halloween-themed town filled with ghosts and ghouls that all look and act like you think they would. The stop-motion nature of the film also gives way to great looking but simplistic natural effects such as natural shadows and lighting. The editors also added in additional effects, however, like the ghosts being hand-drawn animation as well as the fire. Everything comes together in a truly remarkable looking musical.

Though the most I liked about the movie was its atmosphere, the story was very enjoyable and constantly kept me guessing on what was going to happen next (even though I had seen it before). It also takes a very good writer to make me care for minor characters. The Doctor for example. At the end of the movie you see that he has created him a wife for himself so he has someone to love. This just warms my heart and it shows that, though this is Halloween Town, everybody can get a bit of Christmas if they want too.

Overall, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a classic that will always be remembered as a weird and fun musical that families all over the world will get together to watch on either Halloween or Christmas.

The Nightmare Before Christmas was creative!
Thursday, October 15, 2015
How to Train Your Dragon 2 is one of the best animated movies I have ever seen. It serves the audience very well as a prequel, has a great heartfelt story, and has a kick-a** soundtrack and visuals! All of this is wrapped up in a sequel that dare-I-say is better than its predecessor.

First of all, a strength - or weakness depending on your outlook on the movie - is that the movie doesn't need to take a lot of time establishing itself as a sequel. It gives you a summary of the entire first movie in the first five minutes of the film. And it's done really well! A quick summary, with an awesome dragon-racing scene on top of it that introduces each of the characters in clever ways without relying too much on the audience's previous knowledge of the series. It really hits all the necessary marks for a franchise trying to build a universe. Very clever and very quick!

The story in this movie, though similar to How to Train Your Dragon, is still amazing and gives you an even bigger scope of the world and of the lore within this world. The story centers around Hiccup, obviously, on his quest to explore new lands on his never ending quest to find new species of dragons. During one of his travels, however, he finds a band of dragon trappers who serve under a powerful dragon "tamer". He quickly discovers that this dragon tamer is taking dragons in order to create an all-powerful dragon army. Though the premise is different from the first film, a lot of the mystery behind this movie are very kin to what the previous movie had though in slightly different forms. I never felt this to be a problem though. The first film had a great story with it really only starting to ramp up during the last act of the movie. In How to Train Your Dragon 2, however, the whole film is an upward slope to a great and satisfying climax that had me clenching my teeth the entire time! Overall, the story maybe even better than the first film's, though slightly too fast and repetitive from the first.

The visuals are even better in this film than in the previous one. The characters are all bright, flowing and expressive, and all have a unique appearance that set them apart from each other. You can especially tell the quality of the animation in the characters' hair and eye movements as the hair flows in the wind or stands up in the cold and the eyes constantly show emotion when they move! The soundtrack is also spectacular in the film! From the Scandinavian sounding orchestras or the huge choirs of singers and percussive instruments, the score always fits the emotion of the characters and the lush scenery perfectly. Whether it be a vibrant dragon sanctuary to an icy battlefield, the sounds always fit the mood of the situation perfectly.

Overall, How to Train Your Dragon 2 is, again, not just one of the best animated movies I have seen, but one of the best movies I have ever seen. Period. It has a fantastic story, amazing atmosphere, and spot-on story. How to Train Your Dragon 2 was amazing.


Thursday, October 08, 2015
I find Twenty-One Pilots to be a strange band. They have a mix of sounds and styles that you don't hear very often from modern pop music. One song will be a rap, others will have ukulele, and the rest are stereotypical pop. Some of those do all three! This is a really unique sound that, though I don't particularly like the two-man band, I can see why it has a large audience. And yes, all of these sounds are from the minds of two individuals. Maybe that isn't the best for the sound, though. It almost feels that one member wants to focus on pop sounds and rap, while the other wants to focus on natural sounds and the voice. Again, I personally don't find it very enjoyable but I can see why people do.

There are moments and certain songs that I truly like. For example, I don't like the lyrics and tone of voice of the song "Car Radio". I do, however, absolutely love the background sound and build up to the explosion of confused, frustrated, and emotional sound that happens at the climax of the song. I could honestly listen to a karaoke version of this song on repeat for a long time. The overall sound is very much clever and enjoyable. And then there's a song like "Stressed Out", which I appreciate on a totally opposite level of the previous song. I appreciate the lyrics and the chorus, but I find the background sound just... boring. Obviously I have very mixed reactions from most of their songs.
Not all of their songs have a similar effect on me. I find that the songs with heavy ukulele backtracks or the ones with a reggae feel to them. I particularly enjoy the more simple songs like "House of Gold". A song like this has a simple theme, simple ukulele and piano tracks, and clever lyrics. I enjoy this song and even took the time to learn the chords on my own ukulele! 

In conclusion, Twenty-One Pilots is only alright in my eyes. They have a good sound sometimes and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they have interesting and thought-provoking lyrics; other times they don't. They do have some songs that I enjoy though!

I thought Twenty One Pilots sounded good.
Thursday, October 01, 2015
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