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A little over a week ago, a bunch of us here got together and watched the long-awaited "Kimi no Na Wa" or "Your Name" by director Makoto Shinkai, who is known for having directed films such as "5 Centimeters Per Second" and "The Garden of Words" among others. Watching this film had been a long time coming after its absolutely glowing reception both in the west and in the east, rivaling the Ghibli classic "Spirited Away" in terms of income globally and having shot to the top of practically every single anime database out there in terms of popularity and average rating. In preparation for watching Kimi no Na Wa, the aforementioned bunch had gotten together in the months prior to watch Makoto Shinkai's older work. We watched "Voices of a Distant Star" along with some of his newer and more critically acclaimed work, namely "The Place Promised in our Early Days" and "5 Centimeters Per Second". I must admit that I had my concerns about this film initially. It's rare that an animated piece from Japan gets this much attention on a global scale and the general online opinion seemed to be that Kimi no Na Wa was undisputedly one of the best animated films to come out in decades. That sets the bar pretty high and I'd be lying if I told you that my expectations of the medium aren't a bit different from your average anime fan. As such I was worried that the movie would not live up to the hype and that I'd be disappointed by the end of it. Makoto Shinkai is notorious in the animation community for putting an insane amount of work into his films. While his official title might be "director" the truth is that he actually does pretty much everything. His earlier works were created almost entirely by him and his wife, including everything from storyboard and animation to sound design and voice acting. As he grew in fame as a director he has since gotten people working under him, but he still very much has a hand in the entirety of the creative process. With that in mind, it's quite simple to discern a Makoto Shinkai movie from other contemporaries because Shinkai has a very unique way of presenting his films. There is always a focus on the backdrop to the point where you could pause and screenshot almost any moment from a Shinkai film and it would make a great desktop background. Example from Kimi no Na Wa Example from 5 Centimeters Per Second Example from The Place Promised in our Early Days Kimi no Na Wa is insanely beautiful. A still image cannot do this movie justice at all. The backgrounds are so detailed that one can only assume the animators worked for days on every single frame. The characters move with fluidity rarely seen in anime and the use of CG animation is very cleverly hidden away to the point where you'd really have to look for it in order to spot it. I don't think it would be an understatement to say that Kimi no Na Wa is the most well-animated movie I've ever seen. If you're not familiar with Kimi no Na Wa I will briefly summarize the plot for you. A high school city boy and a high school country girl from two entirely different places in Japan begin mysteriously swapping bodies for no discernable reason. Every time they go to bed, they swap bodies. That's it. That's the simple plot of Kimi no Na Wa. Of course the situation develops as the movie goes along, but I won't talk about that in detail because it's major spoilers. The bodyswapping aspect leads to some absolutely hilarious but also adorable moments for both the characters. The girl gets called out for speaking like a girl when she is in the boy's body (Certain Japanese words and phrases are considered masculine/feminine, women use "Watashi" while men use "Boku" or "Ore" fx.) and the boy has no idea how to do his hair properly while stuck in the girl's body. Overall, it's pretty damn hard not to be endeared by the characters in Kimi no Na Wa. They have just enough genuine human elements in their portrayal that you can't help but get attached. This goes for the side characters as well (BASED TESSIE). Earlier in this post I talked about how certain things repeat in Makoto Shinkai's work and Kimi no Na Wa is no different in this regard. One of the biggest overarching themes that exist in all of Shinkai's work is a sort of melancholy, longing or sadness. Every single one of his movies is sad in one way or another. Be it sadness over the loss of a friend, a lover or melancholy feelings of times past. Kimi no Na Wa has this aspect as well and there is a certain point where the movie twists into this theme. I won't speak of it in any more detail, just be aware that it does also happen in this movie, just like all the rest of Shinkai's films. Personally I was very invested in this part of the movie, it didn't feel stupid or contrived to me instead I was just feeling genuine concern for the characters involved and by the movies' end I shed a tear. You'll have to watch the movie to find out whether that tear was one of happiness or sadness. In summary I can tell you that my concern about Kimi no Na Wa being overhyped was totally unfounded. The movie really is just that good. It hits all the right beats in terms of pacing, plot progression and characters on top of having an absolutely fucking stellar presentation that is practically unprecedented. Kimi no Na Wa is a film that can be enjoyed by people of all ages and is something I wouldn't be ashamed to show my parents, who know nothing about anime whatsoever. It's just all-round a great film that I really recommend that you watch.

Fireball launcher is fun. It rewards accuracy with a faster cooldown and ends up as a really fun DM weapon. Sacrifices the crowd control capabilities of the flamethrowers though, you won't be stealth burning crowds of people with it. Plus if you miss, you may as well be dead, because it takes two to three hits to kill anyone, more than enough time for a heavy/soldier/scout/flamethrower to unload on you. And it's missing the +20hp on extinguishes, making it less useful with teammates. Like, getting blasted at point blank sucks when fighting it, but it's pyro. He's supposed to be close range. So after the pyro spam dies down, I think it'll be a balanced 1v1 tool which rewards aim, but is worse against crowds. Because it doesn't feel any more lethal than getting two shotted by a rocket launcher, it's just that pyro is actually killing people now. As for the Jetpack, the fast equip time and long unequip seems to be valve trying really hard to prevent Flyro/Pyroknight. It's an excellent positioning tool that lets you cross gaps and gain positions formerly exclusive to Soldiers/Demos/Scouts, without having to spend health to get there. The Tackle damage and extinguishing teammates really feel like things they just tacked on because they're wildly impractical. Maybe they're vestiges from an earlier version. I know people were really stoked to have Jetpacking flamethrowers, but it sounds like a nightmare to balance/fight especially when you'd have shit like surprise Jetpack charging Backburners/Phlogs into crowds of people. So I'm perfectly okay with the mobility niche it fills, because giving the Pyro what is effectively a Chargin-Targe jetpack sounds like a horrible idea for everyone who isn't pyro. Gas Can is really meh? It takes forever to charge, doesn't charge on respawn or on cabinet, and can easily be extinguished. Probably they did that to prevent people from just permanently gasclouding an area, but right now it's just not very good. Like, why am I going to use the Gascan once every Sixty seconds (Which is longer than it takes to charge Uber!) to Gas an area for a couple seconds? Maybe I hit four or five people if I'm lucky, now for the next ten seconds they're mildly inconvenienced by the potential to be hit by regular afterburn. Which can easily be extinguished. If it's going to take sixty seconds to charge and replace the shotgun/flaregun/jetpack it needs to do something a little better than that. But just making it charge faster is probably a bad idea because then you'd just have permanently gassed areas on payload/defense maps.

Further proof that dog lovers are mentally ill.

I'd compare Warframe to the story of Sisyphus, but with a twist. You start rolling that rock up hills, but sure enough you will be beating people with the rock once you reach the top.

Cubes can die.

Holy fuck look what I found