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Hello every1 and welcome to another exciting update of my nendoroid review blog sorry i know i haven’t posted in a while but that’s only bcuz my mom took away my allowance



Today we will be taking a look at number 989, “Joker,” but not the one u r thinking of!!!! ;P

(this one only murders your BRAIN)



Sorry about the lighting i couldnt figure out how to get the flash working on this phone also ignore my brothers pills we’re using his desk for this because i do not have one and also he bought this figure and it’s going in his room

Btw i dont know who smugdad is in the background but he scares me

Btw i dont know why wolf link is the only amiibo he owns, trash game



Lookit all the little pieces!!!!



Hello my smugboy



A little weird that there are only two faces and the only extra hair is just to add the mask, but not like this character does a lot of emoting, w/e



Armsies and legsies!



Handsies!

(Yes, there are only three here, there’s one more left hand but i took a separate pic for it cuz its more of an “accessory” imo. also yes, that bottom right hand is supposed to be shaped like a triangle, you will see)



Whatever this is-ies!

(It’s a replacement shoulder piece, because his arms aren’t always long enough for the poses where he bends them without this)



Eyesies? gross



Here’s the extra left hand, holding the mask



For his neutral special, he wields a g—



Let me see what you have

(i thought it weird that there’s no “open” left hand so you can’t put the knife in one hand and the gun in the other, but i haven’t played that much of this game so i don’t know if he does that in the game either)



Here is Joker’s “Stand” (i was informed this would be a funny joke to make)

Now i will go through all the poses i had the patience to try, please vote for your favorite and i will display it like that in future blogs



Pose A. Joker run.



Pose A2. Joker run with mask



Pose B. The weird triangle glove was so you can make it look like his victory screen where he puts on his gloves:



Yes, that’s it exactly



Pose C. Clearly supposed to be this pose:



Could not get the left leg to look right though



Pose D: Gunboi. Looks rad.



Pose D2: Me realizing i had forgotten to swap out the eyes in the mask (you just push them inward from the front to pop them out) and putting them in at the last opportunity so i didn’t have to mess around with recreating old poses



Pose E: The knife would not stop falling out of his hand. It also looks weird and bad and like he’s Harry Potter. Trans rights.



If we remove the insert in the box, the back side has a background showing Joker’s Persona



Looks like his stand was a Stand!

Of these poses, i lean towards either version of D. There was also a potential Pose G, which presumably would have looked something like this:



but i forgot to take a picture of it and did not care enough to make it again

Also also, i’m surprised there was no version of this:



Now to place it on the shelf with the rest of my brother’s nerd junk:



Perfect

Thank you for reading, i will be back as soon as my brother runs out of dopamine again and needs more aesthetic stimulation via anime. I wonder what else this “good smile” company has in store for us!






Nendos were a mistake



Chapter 4: 4/10-4/11: Instant Derail

This update covers (the rest of) Part 3 of the original LP.

Video: Crash






Japan’s just been gutting the budget for public transportation these days, what a shame. The trains can only afford to run for five minutes!



Oh hello, small child. Everything’s gonna be just fine! This isn’t horrifically dark or anything!



The conductor ignores the danger and keeps pushing that throttle. I get it, man. Sometimes, you just gotta see the train go fast. Nothing else matters.




psychotic breakdown conducting may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,




If the train’s a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’.





This poor… conductor? Train… guy? Whatever, I’m saying this poor schmuck’s basically staring down the barrel of a loaded mountain lion. Dude’s about to get fucked up.





So, one subway train derailing at high speed, causing at minimum numerous deaths and almost certainly major physical and psychological injuries for every person on board. We have to assume these aren’t peak hours because we didn’t have much trouble getting to school and the train was not terribly full, so let’s say… 40-60% congestion, spitballing low, and keeping in mind that today is Sunday? Keep in mind that during peak hours congestion can rise to as high as 200%. So… how many people is that?

I tried to find some data here for the average train capacity, but I couldn’t get anything comprehensive. I was able to find the capacity for a few specific subway train models, including the Tokyo Metro 10000 series, so unless someone informs me that this is a terrible way to measure things I’ll be going with that one as a baseline. The 10000 series was introduced in 2006, so it would have been in service in 2016. Assuming this is a 10-car set, the total capacity would be 1,518 people, with 522 of those people being able to sit. So, again, 40-60% of that is… approximately 600-900 people. If even 5% of those people died, that’s like, 30-50 deaths, plus, again, massive physical and psychological trauma for the survivors?

And this is obviously not the bad part, but let’s just add in the economic toll for fun! As a young white guy in a position of relative financial privilege, I don’t actually know how much things cost, but it’s plainly obvious that the cleanup alone of this event would be incredibly expensive, factoring in fixing the platform, fixing the track, and physically removing the destroyed train. But that’s by no means all of it! Hospital and funeral costs for the injured and dead; the costs of shutting down this line today; the additional costs of shutting down this line (or at least platform) for every day in the future you are unable to use it due to cleanup; the further economic ramifications of people not being able to use this platform to get above-ground, hurting businesses; lack of trust in public transport leading to further problems; etc., etc., yadda yadda we get it. It doesn’t take Adam Smith to recognize the aftereffects of this event would easily cost, at minimum, tens of billions of yen and massively disrupt Tokyo-at-large for multiple months at the very least.

(Note: some cursory actual research into costs of similar incidents involving subway derailments suggests my estimate may be a tad high. In that case, uh… my brain is bad, ADHD, research too hard, oops)



Oh Akechi, you rapscallion!

I spent like an hour writing all that



Oh, hey! They actually subtitled the newscast this time!



Police are still looking for a plausible motive.
It’s less of an operating accident and more of a crime of the company and the government.



Seems the railway company and the Ministry of Transport both turned a blind eye to the truth. There’s no way they can hide. This will go all the way to the top.




Just what could be causing such a drastic change so suddenly in these people?



This scene continues to be incredibly confusing even if you know what’s going on. To summarize: the conductor had a psychotic breakdown, and the SIU Director’s role here is to show that it will be blamed on the government, the Minister of Transport in particular. But it just does not read that way. Why? Well, it’s for a few reasons, the first of which is pretty obvious: We just saw the conductor clearly out of his mind (literally), so our reaction to the SIU Director saying it was something else is just confusion. We don’t actually know that this guy is evil, there’s not a lot of reason to even suspect that, because we have no idea who he is or what his motivation for lying might even be at this point.

Then, focus shifts back to the newscast bringing up the psychotic breakdowns… but why? I know we need to establish further that these incidents are widespread, but the game here is literally showing us the connection in these cases while simultaneously saying that people aren’t realizing the subway incident was anything other than an accident. And on that note, the train’s dangerous acceleration is also glossed over here, which is entirely tied to the conductor’s mental shutdown, and the news just… offhandedly mentions he had no motive for doing what he was doing? Figuring out why he did it seems kind of important, and minimizing that detail is strange because the audience knows it is the entire reason the accident happened. And then Kirk Thornton here literally says “Everything’s linked,” in an attempt to make Sae doubt herself, but it really seems in the moment more like he’s validating her theory. And to make matters worse, they just don’t properly emphasize the public narrative for the rest of the game. People openly discuss how the subway thing was caused by a psychotic breakdown, while the part of the game actually talking about the backlash toward the current government is relegated in its near-entirety to incidental lines you get for checking the TV every day. It’s bizarre.

I think a lot of it is just incredibly awkward phrasing here. Rereading the “even he could not explain his high speed” line, it almost seems like the newscaster is trying to say that the conductor was trying to slow down but inexplicably couldn’t? Which would make more sense as a cover story, I guess, fitting in with the ATC line from the Director? The Director’s lines, by the way, are also just incredibly stiff. “It’s less of an operating accident and more of a crime of the company and the government.” Jeeeeezus.

Basically, the SIU Director doesn’t come off as manipulative here. He just comes off as an idiot. Which, fair.

…Ah well. Are you free? You and I haven’t gone for a drink in a while.



I must be going.




HERE HE IS, MY AWFUL COP BOY, 1312 BICTH




The perspective here is nonsense. Is Sae dramatically shorter than Akechi? I don’t think she is, at least not to the magnitude that seems to be suggested here. Also, her size relative to the camera just seems off somehow. It’s honestly pretty unsettling.

Conveyor belt only.



God, Sae. You have to feed the Akechi if you want him to do murders! What did they even teach you in law school?!

Evening

Music: Beneath the Mask (Instrumental Version)




This line clearly features Scratchy Sojiro, so I went back and checked—the line was not rerecorded, it just was not previously voiced. If I call out any of these instances ever again it will be exceedingly rarely because I’m just not going to fucking watch videos of every scene in the original game to find out which lines were voiced or not. I only caught this one because it was obvious.

I wasn’t able to open the café today… Whatever. Just head upstairs. There’s something I need to give to you.

Is it my birthday? No, really, is it? How old am I?




Eighty people is 8 people per car. We saw at least one car that already had more than that, which I know is not how averages work but come on. It’s also 13% of 600, my completely unscientific low estimate, and five percent of capacity. That is plainly fucking absurd for the most populous metropolitan area in the world, even if it is Sunday. Maybe all the passengers were busy watching football, I don’t know.

We will never find out if anyone actually died in this incident (including the conductor, but he’s pretty obviously dead considering Akechi’s methods).



You may be under probation, but there’s no special limitations on what you do in particular. Besides following the law, that is. However, I’m obligated to report on you, which is why I’m having you record your daily activities.

Aren’t you supposed to like, actually check up on me? This doesn’t seem right. You seem lazy, old man.





…I’m about to leave right now.



…Uh-huh. I’ll see you soon.

Part of me likes to think he’s talking to Futaba right now, but if he is this is terribly inaccurate to real anxiety. Nothing is more terrifying than calling someone on the telephone!



Oh, but don’t mess up my store. If something goes missing, I’ll hand you right over to the cops.

What would I possibly want to take from this dump?/You seem nice./>Where the hell is the shower? What do I even *eat*?
My Guts needs to be at least D’ARBYYYY!!!

You got school tomorrow… You better head off to bed, all right?

You can’t tell me what to do! You’re not the cat!





You remember how to save, kids?



Fiiiiiiiiiine.




Maaku decides to head downstairs to answer the phone, instead of ignoring it like a sensible person. I myself haven’t answered the phone for an unfamiliar number in years unless I was positive it was the pizza guy calling to tell me he was lost. Now, you may say, “Arist, Leblanc’s phone doesn’t even have a display, there’s no caller ID!”, well, MY POINT EXACTLY. Don’t answer that shit! It’s probably just some scammer who needs me to wire them bitcoin in exchange for the location of the plot where my grandfather is buried alive—just a massive headache for all involved.



(Newscaster) The train schedule is disrupted, and there’s no estimate as to when train service will resume. It seems that transit problems caused by the accident will continue into tomorrow morning.
It’s new coverage about the derailment. It looks like a major accident.

Continue into tomorrow morning!? The platform was destroyed!

I believe most of these lines when you examine the TV are exactly the same per day as they were in the original, but at the very least I didn’t actually show this one in the original LP.




“Male Voice,” huh? Sounds suspicious. Not my first rodeo, pal. Put my pop-pop on the line, I’ll figure out his location from the background audio in the car trunk.




Sojiro looks sounds mad we haven’t learned his voice yet.

Anyway… I closed up shop, but I forgot to flip the sign to “Closed” when I left. It’s too much trouble for me to come back just for that. Think you can do it for me?



It’s a personal policy of mine not to save a guy’s number in my phone.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH

Either way, I’m glad you actually picked up. Anyway, I’ll leave the shop sign to you.

We deserve an allowance for all this menial labor. Time to form the Leblanc Union, consisting of Maaku Hamiru as the representative, as well as… hmm… I see… there may be a small issue here. Sojiro, hire more people so we can collaborate against you!





That aside, I need to get up early tomorrow. I should flip the sign and head to bed…



That aside, I need to get up early tomorrow. I should flip the sign and head to bed…

Still locked into Leblanc.



Sign flipped.




Why even tease me with this, game? You know there’s exactly shit to do.




I need to take the train to school…



It looks like I need to go out to Shibuya, then transfer there. …… More news about that subway accident… It sounds like a lot of people were hurt.

Yet somehow far fewer than it seems like should have been…

I bet this’ll affect the timetables for tomorrow too…

Kind of callous, Maaku.




It keeps showing up…




I think someone took “refusal of the call” a little too literally here.




Get under the covers at least, dude.



Early Morning

Music: Beneath the Mask (Instrumental Version)



God, what’s the point of being a criminal if we still have to go to stupid school? This wasn’t worth it at a—wait, we stopped a rape, never mind

Hopefully I can get there without getting lost… I don’t want to be late on my first day. I should head out now…

Spoiler alert: we are going to be incredibly late on our first day.



Still gotta appreciate Maaku grabbing his bag as he descends the stairs.



(Newscaster) This has caused transfer stations to become extremely crowded with passengers, and…
Looks like all the trains are running late. If you space out, you’re gonna be late to school.



Let’s go grab something to eat from the fridge.



Hurry up and close that. I don’t want anything in there getting spoiled.

What!? What am I supposed to—ooooh, is that curry?



Here, I’ll feed you. Just make sure you finish it before the customers start coming in.



Don’t complain. Just eat.



I can taste complex flavors within the bold spiciness…





I am now a machine that runs purely on curry. Feed me only curry for MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE.

…Hurry over to school. You’ll end up late if you get lost on the way.
*curry-fueled nod*




“Already”? If anything, we’re running late. Now, you better hurry on out. You’re gonna be late if you get lost, country boy.

Foreshadowing!






Let’s waste more coptime! Hello Mr. Pig!




Oh, don’t worry, it’s not anything major. It’s just a patrol. Patrols are a good idea after an accident like that. A lot of residents have been worried.

Oh, I can interpret this! He’s saying, “If we keep visible after a major threat to public safety, we’ll get more funding!”




Go toward the main road, at the opposite end of here. If you don’t hurry, you’ll miss your train.

Oh, it won’t be the train that’s responsible for my lack of punctuality, don’t you worry…





Ah, you must be that boy who’s living with Boss now. I was wondering who you were. You’re a high school student, aren’t you? You can’t loiter if you want to make it to school. You should hurry on. I hear the trains are running late because of the accident yesterday. It was terrible, just terrible. Just what is going on with the world?




Go back out this alley, and turn left at the intersection. From there, you’ll see the big main road. Well, you could also keep going straight through here. It can get a bit narrow though. You should hurry on. I hear the trains are running late because of the accident yesterday. It was terrible, just terrible. Just what is going on with the world?





(Radio Host) This could mess up the schedule again. If you’re going out today, try to leave earlier than usual.
That accident would never have happened if they weren’t slacking off.





Let’s head to school, I guess.




It turns out the rumors about the Tokyo subway are true… They’re showing the news up on the LCD screen… It seems like there are still some lingering effects of yesterday’s accident…




In Shibuya Station, we find (relative) chaos. Crowds are gathering around the station attendants demanding answers for why they’re going to be five minutes late.



(Exhausted Station Attendant) Our apologies. However, it was a major accident, and—
This isn’t the first time this happened. Why weren’t you better prepared for this one? Sheesh…

Yeah, you tell that low-level employee providing an essential service what for!



Ohhhhhhh shit, it’s our favorite gay nightmare, Ohya! What’s she up to?



Some people are saying it’s the result of an oppressive work environment. Do you have any comments on that?
(Unreliable Station Attendant) I-I’m terribly sorry, I don’t know anything! We’ll, uh, make an official statement at a later time…

Ohya’s chasing those hot scoops!



Please go toward Exit 8 to reach the JL and Ginza Lines. I can help the next customer…






One thing I appreciate now that was totally lost on me every time I played the original: you’re supposed to get lost here. They don’t just expect you to, they actively want you to and have actually closed off routes to get to the Ginza Line to facilitate this. The devs have done what little they can in this physical space to cause you to become confused. The Teikyu Building’s entrance is still really easy to miss, and crucially does not have a sign above its entrance informing you it contains the Ginza Line. There’s a sign inside the entrance telling you that, but the entrance to the building is kind of off to the side and not really emphasized by the space. Why would the train you’re looking for be in this completely separate building, idiot? I finally realized this after taking into account the various little warnings about not being late and getting lost, and it’s honestly a really nice, tiny moment of putting the player in the exact headspace of the character. They’ve made it slightly simpler now because there’s just a station attendant near the stairs who will explicitly tell you, “the Ginza Line is in that building next door, dipshit,” which does weaken this effect a bit, but I still love it.



The cause of yesterday’s subway derailment has affect all transportation lines. The string of accidents has put commuters on high alert…



I was about to cut this shot, but I realized it’s the only shot I have with Rise in it and it automatically became mandatory.




Could this puzzling accident be a coincidence? To ensure the safety of the people, countermeasures must be taken immediately…

Never change, you beautiful dopes.







Enough listening to the vox populi, let’s board this train already.




Huh? It’s raining outside?
It just started all of a sudden… This is why I hate the early spring.
That reminds me… Did he take an umbrella?

Aww, he cares about us! A little!

Hm? Who’re you talking about?
Don’t mind me. So, what’ll it be?

Aaaaaaand the moment’s over as quickly as it began.

One house blend, please.



There’s been a lot of nasty accidents lately. You know, I mean the subway accident that the news is talking about… My coworker got caught up in it and is in the hospital now… But that aside, it’s kinda creepy. The people who caused these accidents supposedly went crazy all of a sudden. I heard that some of them suffered from nervous breakdowns during interrogation.
Huh…

You’re a really bad conversationalist, Soj! Can I call you that? I’m gonna call you that.

Music: Beneath the Mask -Rain (Instrumental Version)




It took some time, but I finally made it…



This time, it happened on a subway. If it weren’t on a Sunday, I might have been on it.

I just love these fixed camera angles! Really great to be totally unable to get a good generic portrait here!

(Anxious Student) That’s really scary… How much longer do you think this sort of thing will happen?



Let’s try to get to school before we are accosted by plot get caught out in the rain.

Video: Encounter





Maaku, why are you trying to wait out the rain? Do you even know how to get to school? You’re just gonna make yourself late.





Maaku looks at his phone and discovers that the mysterious app is trying to thwart his attempt to Google Maps his route to education.




As Maaku stares at his phone like an idiot, someone stops next to him.



Music: Encounter







God, Maaku just has no game whatsoever, huh?



But maybe Ann is actually into the awkwardness?





Um, sure. Thank you.




Nah.

I mean, knowing what we know this situation is absolutely fucked, and even not knowing what we know it’s at best pretty creepy and awkward, but it kind of bothers me that Maaku clearly has no idea where he’s going and still turns down a ride in the pouring rain when he’s about to be late. Take your studies more seriously, whippersnapper!





Ahahaha, I’m sorry, I just can’t get over how after that shot of Ann clearly in distress Maaku just stares blankly forward with a bored look on his face, it’s so incredibly tone-deaf. I once again choose to impose my view of Maaku as just a complete fucking dipshit onto this story so that he reads that way rather than as actively callous.







Sure wish I could read any of this! (Fairly certain it’s just noting the active keywords, though)



Aww yiss, motha fuckin VULGAR BOY

Music: Suspicion



You plannin’ on rattin’ me out to Kamoshida?

Fuck no, I ain’t no snitch!






What? No. Why are you phrasing it like that? Are you a robot? I’ve heard about those weird Kirijo anime robots, are you one of them? Where’s your Jersey accent?




No, I mean… ……



You’re from Shujin, right?



What? No other high school’s got a uniform like this.

With good reason. These plaid pants are doing Maaku and Ryuji here no favors.

A second-year, huh… We’re the same grade then. Never seen you before though. Oh, you a transfer student?
*nod*

Got it in one! And people say Ryuji is dumb.

Then no wonder you don’t know him. This rain ain’t too bad. We better hurry up, or we’ll be late.





There are random citizens standing closer to us right now than Akechi was when we accidentally pull him into the Metaverse in September. Also, none of them disappear when we ostensibly enter the Metaverse. Those aren’t actually important details, really, but I’d also just like to take a moment to appreciate how hard the script has to bend over backwards to justify us managing to accidentally enter Kamoshida’s keywords, especially because we don’t even do it in full. We never use his given name! This scene is a tad contrived, is what I’m saying.



Dammit… I wanna go home…




Maaku decides to follow Ryuji, figuring he probably knows the way to school, right?

Music: Interrogation Room







I assume you know of the uproar that the public calls the “psychotic breakdown incidents.”



I don’t really pay attention to current events. That’s not true I actually watch the news every day sorry for lying to you



It was all over the news, and one of the victims included a teacher at your high school. I’ve no doubt you heard about it.

“I’m just going to talk around their identity because we’re saving that reveal for a bit more impact in about an hour!”

On that day… were you still an “ordinary” student?



Really appreciate how Sae’s stilted dialogue is confusing even diegetically.

…Let me change the question.

I prefer the original to Renee Montoya myself.

(In the process of writing this joke I learned that the original Question’s identity was Charles Victor Szasz, who by the way is a totally different character from the Batman villain Victor Zsasz. Goddammit, DC.)

(Also Steve Ditko was a weird objectivist and created the Question to also be a weird objectivist like his earlier character Mr. A, who was, you guessed it, a weird objectivist)

You transferred to Shujin Academy, correct?
*nod*

STOP FUCKING SQUEALING, MAAKU

An ordinary prep school that could be found in any city… That’s what it should have been.



Tell me everything—truthfully.



Video: Castle

Music: To Another World










Wha—!?




Note: Ryuji did not, in fact, know the way to school.

We didn’t… come the wrong way though… Yeah, this should be right. What’s goin’ on here? I guess we’ll just have to go and ask.

What? No!





And so the idiot boys enter the mysterious castle. Jesus fuck.