Lithium Binge

Manga: "Komi-san wa Komyushou Desu / (Komi Can't Communicate)" Mangaka: Tomohito Oda Publisher: Shogakukan LB Rating: 3/5 (Note: This review covers chapters 1 to 305.) Komi-san wa Komyushou Desu follows the story of Shouko Komi and her quest to make 100 friends in high school. Komi is popular in Itan Private High School for being beautiful. She has big eyes, long flowing hair, long legs, and spotless skin. She's also a straight A student, with decent athleticism. So what's keeping her from making 100 friends? For one, she has a communication disorder - She finds it extremely difficult to speak. Worse, the students of Itan Private High School have zany and eccentric characters on their own. But, with the help of Hitohito Tadano, her first friend from her class, she believes she can really make 100 friends. It's surprising how a simple limitation -- the MC can't speak -- can be so interesting. (Image source: komisan.fandom.com) KKD is an exploration of h...

Game: The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of the Seasons Director: Hidemaro Fujibayashi Publisher: Nintendo LB Rating: 5/5 Aptly named--this game is legendary. A common thread in all art and literature I thoroughly enjoy is deliberate design. I will always appreciate when all the elements of the art or literature piece are intentionally placed, guided by a coherent thematic design in view of a meaningful goal. Conversely, I tend to consider fillers as waste of time. I like a piece where I am convinced to check out every nook and cranny because I know that each detail contributes to the grand meaning. Oracle of the Seasons is exactly that. When that theme kicks in, you know an epic adventure is incoming. In general, Oracle of the Seasons tasks the player the ultimate quest: rescue Din, the Oracle of the Seasons, and restore order in Hyrule. The main quest is presented in quite a straightforward manner. At the onset, the Maku Tree tells the player the general direction of where to go for the ent...

Game: Super Mario Bros. (1985) Director: Shigeru Miyamoto Publisher: Nintendo LB Rating: 4/5 I have finally completed this classic. You can definitely hear the music now. Ah. The iconic World 1-1 opening. Before I move forward with my rambling, let me put my perspective in context. As expected, this is not the first time I played Super Mario Bros. When I was younger, I played SMB in our knock-off Famicom until that thing broke. The game was too hard for me, so I was never able to finish it. Over the years, I would play the gameboy port of SMB through an emulator, play for a few minutes, then drop it off. For some reason, I had no patience with SMB... That is, until a few days ago, when I installed RetroArch (I covered this in Lithium Dosage #4). In other words, I had no meaningful history with SMB. My playthrough of SMB occurred at a time after I have been introduced and accustomed to more advanced, higher resolution, and technically better games. No points for nostalgia here. Anyw...

It's the third week of semester break in law school and I have moved on from spamming horror films and League of Legends matches, to exploring the wonderful world of emulation. When I was a kid, my family was not well-off. Consoles and gaming devices were definitely treated as luxury that we could barely afford. And so, the gaming experience of my childhood revolved around two consoles: a hand-me-down Gameboy Color and a knock-off Famicom. There aren't much games to play with as well.  In GBC, playing and replaying Pokemon Blue were all I did because it was the only game I had. Eventually, my parents bought me Tom and Jerry and Montezuma's Return. Not the best of games, but because I played them nonetheless because they're all that I had. Fortunately, some of my friends would lend me their cartridges for some limited time. We also had a Famicom that was definitely a knock-off but was at least able to run basic games like Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt and some Olympic gam...

Title: The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) Director: Michael Chaves LB Rating: 3/5 The third installment of The Conjuring series takes on the famous Devil Made Me Do It case of Arne Cheyenne Johnson. As usual, spoilers ahead. I always found the Conjuring and Insidious title cards as extremely unnerving. (Image source: empireonline.com) I understand that there are controversies surrounding veracity of events from which the Conjuring 3 is based. For the purposes of this review (and for the full horror experience), I will give the film the benefit of the doubt and assume that the events probably happened. From my understanding, there seems to be three thematically distinct parts to the film.  First is the prologue. We find the Warrens attempt to exorcise young David Glatzel. When shtick hits the fan, Arne Johnson begged the demon to possess him instead of David. Which it did. The exorcism scene gave me little to no scare. Exorcism scenes are cliche in horror films. Speaking ...

Title: Devil (2010) Director: John Erick Dowdle LB Rating: 1/5 Devil is a half-baked film, relying on its borrowed premise to carry the entire mess. The film opens with Detective Bowden in therapy, dealing with the death of his wife and son who were hit-and-run five years ago. A suicide later happens nearby, so Bowden started investigating the building where the jumper came from. The suicide was a foreboding of the things to come in the building. Bowden would then be involved in an attempt to save five people trapped in the elevator of the said building. As time goes by, the trapped individuals are mysteriously and brutally killed, one by one. Bowden, believing that one of them is the murderer, tries his best to control the situation. It was later revealed that one of the trapped individuals is responsible for the death of Bowden's family. Bowden surprisingly forgives him. But the individuals die anyway, as one of them was shown to be the devil. Five people trapped in an elevator a...

Film title: Deliver Us From Evil (2014) Directed by: Scott Derrickson LB Rating: 3/5 Deliver Us From Evil is a standard horror story where logic and the supernatural is pitted against each other. The protagonist Sgt. Ralph Sarchie embodies the close-mindedness of an arrogant rational man, with typical lines like "I've outgrown religion" or "the devil is a fairytale." Sarchie keeps this facade confidently, but inside he feels a lot of uncertainty and fear about something he cannot rationalize. Sarchie represses these feelings ineffectively, as they seep into his family, creating between them some cold distance. The events of Deliver Us From Evil help Sarchie unpack his fears and face them head on. I don't think the film actually shown true evil. (Image source: imdb.com) The story opens with Sarchie lost in his thoughts as he revives a baby but already too late. The film uses a lot of sneaky metaphors that work really great. This opening scene for instance p...