Wrath Legendary Baroque

Decision

In high school, I had an amazing Latin teacher. He made Latin very relatable, which is a difficult thing to do, as Latin is a dead language. Nobody speaks Latin except to point their nose upwards in the air and recite some lines, it’s no longer a verbal language. And one of those reasons is because it has non-standard grammatical structure. Without going too much into it, Latin sentences can be worded in dozens of ways while retaining the same meaning.

This made studying Latin like a puzzle. I was intrigued with the subject. We went over myths, culture, history, and the language. A key element of Latin, especially in the intro course, was to teach etymology, something particularly useful for law or medicine. We’d learn the roots, the prefixes, suffixes, and more. A key lesson my teacher went over was the word “Decision.”

Decision is a combination of two words: de = ‘OFF’ + caedere = ‘CUT’

We know words like detour, defer, or defame. We know words like incision or precision. Decision means to cut something off, to pick one, but not the other. My teacher made it a strong point to include that if there isn’t something being cut off, something removed, it’s not a decision. It’s only a decision if there’s an opportunity cost.

He capped off the etymology lesson with a great legend of Gaius Mucius Scaevola. One of the bravest Roman soldiers to ever live, he literally single handedly stopped the Etruscan invasion of Rome. Sent to assassinate the Etruscan king, he killed the Etruscan messenger and was captured. When brought before the Etruscan King, he proclaimed that he and 300 other soldiers were sent to kill him.

He demonstrated his courage to his captors by thrusting his right hand into a blazing altar fire and holding it there until it was consumed. Deeply impressed and fearing another attempt on his life, Porsena ordered Mucius to be freed; he made peace with the Romans and withdrew his forces.

He held his hand in a blazing fire, staring the king in his eyes. The Etruscans knew not to mess with Romans. His decision and his follow through allowed one solider to save a kingdom. To save his kingdom, he gave up his hand. Decisions are powerful because of what we choose and what we give up.

Denying Feedback

I think we all find it difficult to take direct criticism well, especially if it’s related to one’s pride. An easy concept to understand but a difficult one to swallow is crushing one’s own ego. We like to protect our egos and inflate them to their fullest, in a strange attempt to protect ourselves. As confidence and experience grows, egos are no longer needed to protect one’s self.

It’s difficult to pass on confidence and experience. We all know it’s easier to gain these things first hand than it is internalize something that begins externally. There are innumerable self help books, videos on YouTube, stories and reels. There’s nothing like burning your hand on a stove to teach you it is hot.

In college, a friend of mine taught me this analogy. He said, “Some times you just have to let your friend burn themselves on the stove. In fact, if you tell them not to do it, not only will they do it, they’ll resent you.”

This was tough for me to swallow. I grew up with Asian immigrant parents. I got an ear-full for everything. Leaving the lights on, talking on the phone for too long, not finishing my meal, not getting good enough grades. I’m 32 years old and I don’t think it really ended, I just moved away and stopped talking to them as much. What they instilled in me was the never ending thought that there was something wrong, that there was something to be done about it. This is kind of a great thing for a problem solver. It’s not so great in that humans are naturally inclined to find patterns, even when one doesn’t exist. Oops, I’ll just solve a problem that isn’t really a problem…

It’s easy to think of feedback for others, but conversely it is terribly difficult to think of feedback for ourselves. Many times we take it to the wrong degree, persecuting ourselves for our most self-hated traits while not addressing the true underlying pain points. I wrote previously that we are able to see the world so clearly yet we are unable to see ourselves. This remains true with feedback and becomes ever so more important in that the feedback we receive from others is the only social mirror we truly have.

This makes feedback such a conundrum. We don’t like hearing things from others if we are insecure about something, so we place our ego in front of it to shield ourselves. Our ego blinds us from not only the feedback people are attempting to give us, but also to our own experiences, causing us to trust our ego over our experiences. Until we gain enough experience that our ego may subside, we cannot perceive our experiences unfiltered. Combine that with the fact that most people, a vast majority of people, are too polite or unconcerned about others that they will never offer feedback in the first place. It takes time, energy, and thoughtfulness to provide feedback to someone. Why would someone take that time, energy, and thoughtfulness only to have it rejected instantly by someone’s ego?

We don’t like taking feedback. People don’t like giving feedback. What is all the point?

As someone who has been and is still terrible at taking feedback, what I’ve learned is that not every point of feedback needs to be addressed, but more-so heard. When we get a lot of information it comes to us as static and the important parts require parsing. It is easy to become overwhelmed by static, it is easy to have emotional responses to unpleasant news, and it’s easy to dismiss information that is not easily registerable.

People who are good at taking feedback know that not everything may be addressed and not every solution presented is appropriate. They know that the people who bother to leave any feedback at all are fans of it enough that they want to see it improve. A big mistake I made when taking feedback was believing that people were antagonizing or positioning themselves against my beliefs or ideas. The best way to see it is by seeing it as a multi-pronged attack together on the same goal. Not everyone has the same experiences or knowledge, so of course there are different approaches. The important thing to ask one’s self when hearing feedback is what is the goal of the feedback? Even if the feedback makes no sense at all, the goal is almost always to make it better. Take the kind sentiment and place it kindly wherever it belongs, at the forefront of priorities or on the backburner.

The easiest thing a person receiving feedback can say is, “I’ll think about it.”

The hardest thing a person giving feedback can say is, “I know what it’s like.”

Changing Sleep Schedules

I mentioned in my previous dating post that I am skilled in the art of changing sleep schedules. Seems like a strange skill to have, but it is a curious one to have if you’re traveling a lot or need to change obligations. I am by no means the best sleep expert in the world, but I have a lot of experience with changing time zones or changing schedules and have found that waking up is a good key to setting the day’s pace.

There are a couple tricks that people really don’t seem to pay attention to but understand intuitively. The easiest trick to explain is to simply listen to your alarm clock. It is extremely difficult for a lot of people to do this, as I’ve dated a few people who let their snooze button go on and on. That is probably the most annoying thing in the world to others who are trying to sleep. Simply listening to the alarm and waking up with the alarm is the first line of discipline when it comes to waking up. It’s the first confrontation between your night self and your morning self. The version of you in the evening says, “I’ll wake up at this time.” Then the person in the morning should respond, “This is the time we agreed to wake up at.” Unfortunately for many people this is not the case, as the morning version of many individuals tells themselves that they are tired, that what is happening right now is not what was agreed upon in the evening. This can only be settled between yourself and reality. Whatever time you set on the alarm clock should be the agreed upon time. If your morning self truly can’t do the time you’re requesting, simply change the time.

For some people, this doesn’t seem like an option. People say things like, “I hate waking up” or “I have to wake up early but I don’t want to” or “I’m just a night owl.” However the hard truth of the matter is that people can change given time and habit. What people are afraid to admit is that their current sleep pattern is a development of a habit. If you habitually wake up late, you’re allowing yourself to rest later into the day, which allows you to work later into the evening. What a lot of people don’t understand is that the time you wake up cascades into the rest of your day. There is very little chance that a person can wake up every single day at 6am and not be tired by midnight. For some people, staying up late isn’t a choice but a requirement. Each individual will be different and have different needs. What’s the same with all people is that we all need rest. When we choose to get our rest is how our sleep schedule is determined.

The first point is listening to your alarm. The second point is to go to sleep when you’re tired. Listen to these two rules, and you’ll start your day at the time you want.

But it’s not easy for me to get out of bed! I unconsciously hit the snooze button. I need to put my alarm across the room.

I’ve heard every excuse. What I rarely hear are strong responses to alarms. Yes, there’s alarms that require a math puzzle or require you to stand up to disable them. But these alarms don’t really work on a primary response; they work the same way a barking dog in the morning does, it annoys you. I don’t want an alarm that annoys me. I want an alarm that works. One may argue any alarm that stirs the user up works. I’d like to argue the user makes any alarm work if the user complies. What does this mean? It goes back to not snoozing but it also goes further.

The craziest and best trick I have ever learned for changing sleep schedules, nay, waking up in general is simply practicing getting out of bed. It sounds stupid or ridiculous. But there is such a thing as practicing getting out of bed. I did this for one single afternoon in college and I have never unlearned this habit.

Practice is all about cue and response. A happens, we do B. Alarm goes off, we get out of bed. It’s a simple as that. What’s crazy to people is the idea of actually practicing getting out of bed. The guide I read and what I’ll repeat seems strange, but as I said, I never forgot it with one afternoon’s practice.

Close your blinds, turn off the lights, get under your covers. Do everything that would make it as if the room was the same condition it is when waking up. Set an alarm for 1 minute, 2 minutes, or 5 minutes ahead. Whatever number you’d like. And then just rest. Act as if you’re sleeping. Close your eyes and pretend it’s the morning.

When your alarm goes off, GET OUT OF BED. Put one foot down, then the other. Take your covers off. And get dressed. Start the motions of your morning routine. Head to the bathroom? Make some coffee? You don’t actually have to do anything more than get your body used to these motions.

Then do it again. Lie under your covers, close your eyes, and respond to your alarm when it comes. Get out of bed. Take the covers off. Get your feet on the ground.

Do this three times. Hear the alarm. Get out of bed.

I have never unlearned this habit. There are still days where I imagine snoozing or the rare occasion where I didn’t go to bed at the right time and I need to sleep in. The sound of my alarm, no matter how gentle of a sound it is, stirs me to action. My brain starts working and my body starts moving. Soldiers train in total darkness, under extreme stress. You can train your body to get out of bed.

In a future post, I’ll cover sustaining the body throughout the day on altered sleep schedules, like jetlag or performance days.

Hosting Duties

A wonderful thing about World of Warcraft is that it is a social game. There are times where I’ve talked to a hundred different people by noon. As my social guild grows larger and larger, there’s a lot of opportunity for clashes to happen, drama to occur, just over chat. Some players invite themselves to this by being inflammatory and insensitive, riling up others with every comment they make.

Last night I was in such a raid. There was one particular red flag that I should have noticed when I was invited to the group. The player that extended the invitation asked me to promise not to rage quit, as he’s had other players do so. I assured him I would stay the whole time. I’ve hosted a lot of groups and I’ve had players leave before, it gets frustrating so I understand. What I failed to realize is that this is telling sign of how a raid is going, not only in terms of success, but in terms of attitude.

The first two bosses of Ulduar are easy. I’ve written a post about Ignis, the third boss, which is a difficult boss for many pick up groups. The apathy of the leadership was apparent from the formation of the group to the execution of the first two bosses. Very little chatter or organization came from leadership, with all of the communications being social banter. We arrived at Ignis and the group began to fall apart. Despite this being 15+ members of the same guild, there were attitude problems amongst a majority of the players. One leader asked a player to swap from a damage role to a healing role, which the player reluctantly accepted. As said player was switching roles, a comment came into raid chat. This player took the comment to heart, got on the mic and said, “You know what? I’d rather not deal with any of this shit right now.” He logged off. We were down a player, a healer at that.

Confusion struck the raid. We recruited a few more members, taking up lots of downtime. Players impatiently waited in front of Ignis. the chat was boiling. We attempt Ignis a second time and wipe. As we return to the boss and prepare for our third attempt, dissent began to brew in the raid chat. A player mentioned it would be their last attempt. Another player asked to skip this boss. Members of the organizing raid came at them with all kinds of attitudes. “I’d rather you leave now then after two more bosses.” “If you’re not going to stay then you can just leave.” Did these players not just start a raid an hour late? Did they not recruit these players over the last two hours in need to fill half of their raid? There was a clear dissonance. A few players left. We tried the boss again and wiped. A few more players left.

One of the hosting members began insulting those who left. I checked my damage meters to see the top contributors leaving. What was this guy’s problem? At this point I had concluded that these guys were assholes, so I tried to salvage the night by asking everyone to have a good attitude for the remainder of the evening. We looked for more players and waited at the next boss. I whispered the best healer in the group to gauge what was going on. He told me that the guild was talking about it. I could tell from the silence in Discord and the lack of progress with replacing lost raid members. I politely asked in Discord if we should continue by doing the trash before the boss. The group eagerly jumped forward. We wiped on the trash. The group fell apart.

The disconnect between the pick up members and the hosting group was stark. There was a clear lack of hospitality and gratitude from the hosting group. Impatience and poor communication led to weak execution and retention. The group had a limited loot set available for pick up members, which is normal for a strong group. But the product the organizers offered was not up to par with others on the server. A big blunder made by the organizers was assuming every bit of the raid would go off without a hitch. From recruiting players, to starting an hour late, to poor attitudes leaking from the guild members, it was obvious the leadership had very little control over their ship. I know I’ve had a history of overcontrolling things, which I why I wrote about handing over keys. There’s a balance and that balance is what I’ll be instilling into our guild as we grow forward and have more leaders.

Bad Dating Stories in California

I was ecstatic to move to California for a number of reasons. One of them was for the women. Dating was tough for me in Chicago and I found the most success dating Asian women. I knew California had a strong Asian foundation and with a new dating pool of women to select from, my luck would come in no time.

At first, I did experience a new pool of women to select from, but my quality of dates was not very good. A couple of my matches did not match their pictures or used somewhat deceiving photos, or the girls were dull and uninteresting. The most upsetting one was with a girl who could not stop texting during our drive or dinner. She was insistent upon going to Universal Studios as well, something I was not interested in. She was polite enough to buy me lunch, as she offered to take me out as my birthday gift. That was our second date and I never saw her again. Thinking back, I gave her a second chance because my luck with dates was so bad, I couldn’t turn down a lunch date with a girl. Now I know better.

A confusing girl I went on a few lunch dates with was obsessed with Uni, the Japanese name for sea urchin. She was a young working professional who met for for three or so lunch dates. She was very strange, as she never engaged in any conversation beyond food. I remember listening to her talk and talk, then suddenly I asked her, “What are looking for from your dates? Why are you dating?” She looked puzzled and said, “That’s really deep,” before carrying on about the food. She made a big deal about how she chose this placed based on their delivery route, getting the best and freshest fish. I tried to order a bowl of udon, a comfort food of mine, and she told me we should go to a different restaurant to get noodles and that I should get what she’s having. I paid for another date afterwards. What a waste of time.

Some girls took artsy photos of themselves or had weird angles. I wasn’t getting a lot of matches and I found these types of girls were more likely to match with me. Turns out, if you don’t have a normal good looking photo of yourself, you’re probably not that good looking. I tried overlooking the discrepancies between her profile and her self, but it was difficult in the nicest sushi restaurant in town. To my left and to my right were guys on dates with beautiful girls. I realized if my peripherals were more attractive than my focus, I was in a lost battle. I never saw her again.

I took a lot of lessons I learned from these girls and applied them to my dating profile. I was way more mysterious and aloof, I took much better pictures of myself, which required the aid of friends and the strategic use of backdrops, and I focused on my life experiences and charisma over “connecting” or being too similar to my date. One thing I had mistaken in Chicago was believing that my dating pool or my environment were holding me back. But really it was myself with my lack of experience, my lack of worldliness, and my lack of status. As I grew into myself and became more confident, my luck with girls came very naturally. It sounds cliché to say this because I wished for this confidence when I was 18. But as a young male adult, we don’t have any experience, worldliness, status, charisma, strength… it goes on.

I started getting more and more dates. Some were good, some were not. I learned a lot about women and how they saw men. I find that with just a little bit of sexual trust, women will tell you everything they think about men whether they consciously or subconsciously understand it themselves. Some women gave me chances based on my charisma, some based on my height and race, some on the pictures I had. Many rejected a second date with me because of laundry list of reasons: from status, to lifestyle, to income, to appearance, to my charisma, and more. I went on a date with a cardiac surgeon who spent her free time working on a board of health directors. She said it was hard to find tall Chinese men. I tried to play up my humor and my personal character. She asked if I spoke Chinese, so I joked and told her, “Only enough to disappoint my grandmother.” She looked disappointed. I tried to laugh about it and I asked her. She said yes without interest. I playfully asked, “Mandarin or Cantonese?” She said both. I glowed with excitement and said that’s amazing. She said, “No, it’s easy.” She did not want to be friends.

I went on a date with a girl who wore a sports suit and a large fake watch. She was the manager of her optometry store and worked a couple hustles on the side. She wasn’t my usual type, but I thought why not, it could be interesting. She controlled most of the conversation and asked a lot about my job and status. I did my best to match her energy and ask her the same questions back. I was interested in her position because I was learning managing as well, from an independent and remote type of work environment. My inexperience showed with the questions I had. Our chemistry had subdued pretty quickly and our meal had yet to come. I attempted to transition the conversation to a more friendly and professional tone. I asked her about dating in general and adulthood in general. She was quite open minded. She spoke about her dating experience and how it was difficult for her to date as well. I asked if she wanted to see each other more and she firmly declined. It felt like a bad interview.

Two dates in with a different girl and I had decided in the back of my mind that we should probably only be friends, I wasn’t very attracted to this woman. She had started taking a fond liking to me for my conversation and problem solving. She had difficulty changing her sleep schedule, which was something I had a lot of experience with and worked with in professional gaming. The more objective and knowledgeable I was about a subject, the more interested she was in my attention. She asked for more dates and I made it clear I only wanted to be friends. We would hang out and she would ask to take me out for dinner. She was persistent and I began to flirt back with her. We had casual sex and I agreed to go on a dinner date with her. She drove and paid for the date and I felt nauseous the whole time. I tried being friends with her, but she kept seeking sexual attention. The dinner was the last time I saw her.

I was with a younger girl, a freshman in college. It was a cute date, I was having some light-hearted fun. She was nice but a bit reserved. I asked to kiss her before I dropped her off. We made out a bit and she stayed in my car and chatted. I asked her about dating and sex. She laughed. She said she doesn’t go on many dates and that this was a cute experience. I laughed and agreed. I casually brought up when was the last time she had sex and she said recently. I like having honest conversations and she opened very naturally. She asked me about sex and I said it’s been a little while. She laughed again. I asked her, if she doesn’t go on dates a lot but is sexually active, if she had a recent boyfriend or something along those lines. She laughed. Her openness and honesty trailed off there. I tried to be playful about it and asked if she went out and looked for guys or if guys just hitted on her all the time. She took out her phone and gave me her number. “Why don’t you text me the next time you’re in the area?” She smiled and got out of the car. I texted her and she never replied.

I have a few bad dating stories that preclude this in Chicago. I’ll include those and how my good dates in California went in a future post.

Handing Over Keys

Raiding is when 10 or 25 players come together to fight challenging encounters and bosses. It used to be 40 people, but with the most recent expansions, it’s come down in size. I’ve equated raiding to my girlfriend as a song and dance. It’s funny to think of PC gamers as choreographed dancers, but it is true. Every boss requires some sort of positioning or timing. Add in the inherent variety from RPGs and you get classic role division, making the group choreography that much more dynamic or varied.

Insert Video

Each raid may only be done once a week, making the rewards from the raid that much more interesting and the experience gained so much more valuable. While it is possible to practice and study these raids, most players gain their only experience first hand. This makes each experience a learning lesson and an on-the-fly experiment. Not every boss is the same and not every solution is applicable to each group. As I wrote in a previous post, an experienced leader is able to recreate the same types of groups or is able to identify the unique features and capabilities of each group. This means each song and dance may be different even when approaching the same boss week to week.

This makes handing over the reigns a bit difficult. It takes experience and game knowledge to understand not only what is happening during a fight, but what could be happening during a fight. As my groups become more accustomed to encounters, I am able to pass over leadership and control because I know the base skill floor is high enough that everyone can handle the fights smoothly. I have begun doing this not only by encouraging others to host without me whenever they can, but also by handing over the driver’s seat even when I’m participating in the raid. It’s been slightly difficult to hold my tongue, allowing my group and myself to sink or swim. But after many years of being a control freak, it’s nice to see the other side of letting loose and allowing people to make their own mistakes first hand.

I’ve been very stubborn in my life about learning from mistakes, especially from others. I’ve had a strong desire to learn things first hand, which I’m sure many others relate to. Whoever we learn from, I think the most important thing is that the lesson was effective and came to us in time. It’s a pleasure to experience so many different journeys from gaming.

Lost in White Hen

The first home I remember as a child was a duplex in a lower income neighborhood. I loved everything about it. I rode my bicycle up and down the residential streets, I played with kids across the streets and down the field. There were two parks and my elementary school was a 10 minute bus ride away.

As a child, I loved playing hide and seek. I’d sometimes play with my parents without their consent, hiding when they needed me. One day I did this with my mother at our local convenience store. We had a store called White Hen, it was a local chain. My mother brought me there to buy milk or bread. I decided to hang around the aisles, just out of sight. Apparently at this time this was such a common occurrence, me playing hide and seek with my mother, that she left the store without hesitation, presumably thinking I was hiding in the car.

When I had looked around the corner of the aisle, my mother was long gone. Her car was pulling out of the driveway and she was heading home. I couldn’t believe it. What was I going to do?

I ran up to the counter and told the clerk that my mom had left me behind. He looked confused. He asked me if I could call home. He asked my what my number was.

I must have been six years old. I had no idea what my phone number was. I closed my eyes and tried to think of something. I used to wait outside my father’s basement office. He made himself a home office and had an answering machine. I would hear the machine play over and over. It was his voice, reading out our phone number.

I slowly recited the numbers from my memory to the clerk. He dialed the numbers and reached someone on the other line. “Hello, yes? Did you leave your son at White Hen?” My mother was in horror. She quickly returned, it was only a five minute drive. She scolded me on the way home, telling me she thought I was hiding in the trunk. By the time we made it home, her grief had subsided and she realized her son had called home for the first time. “How did you know?” she asked. I told her about our answering machine. She was still a bit upset, but she showed me smile and we went inside.

Silence in Numbers

One of the challenges I’ve been encountering in World of Warcraft is engaging players directly. My guild has been steadily gaining players both by recruitment and by referral. With such a large sized guild, one assumes there would be a lot of engagement. While there is some engagement within the game, any barrier above what is experienced in a solo play is far too much of a barrier for many of our players.

One metric we can take is the number of players in guild and the number of players in the guild Discord. Since opening Discord links incurs friction, we already lose a percentage of our population in the first step. World of Warcraft does not natively allow players to copy and paste messages or open hyperlinks, which by nature is an appropriate tool. However, because voice chat and offline organization is incredibly difficult without a third party app like Discord, the World of Warcraft experience is incredibly limited within game. For many of our casual players, the experience of Discord is a foreign one, one that is extraneous or superfluous to the core of the game. Why should I use a third party app when I get what I want out of the game natively?

This is where a large miscommunication comes from the guild organization to the guild members. Because our guild targets casual players, many players find themselves in a strange position. Why is my casual guild asking so much out of me? Therein lies the first miscommunication. Perhaps it is the assumption of a loaded trade. But the only thing the organization seeks out of its members joining Discord is to offer its members tools the game does not natively offer. Do members think that joining Discord incurs them a cost? Or is it just too much hassle for what seems like an insignificant reward?

Yesterday I was able to organize a group of all guildmates to go onto a tour of dungeons, a world tour. It took a lot of individual whispering to organize this group. No matter how many messages I put out in guild chat, the most effective method was reaching out to people individually and asking them about their individuals needs before guiding them to the scheduled tour I mentioned in guild chat. After taking a small break to prepare for the tour, I attempted to invite the four individuals I spoke to through guild chat. None of them responded. I once again had to reach out to all four of them individually before the group was assembled. I asked all of them to join Discord, which they all surprisingly did. Once in Discord, less than 20 words were exchanged amongst the four of them, despite me bringing up casual conversations and topics in game and out of game. I get that some people are shy, but these people wanted help and could not bother to socialize with people along their journey. To me that is both sad and telling of what kind of population we have.

What I believe is happening is a silent majority is growing within the guild and the guild most respond to the silent majority instead of waiting for the guild to engage with what the organization has to offer. Meeting members halfway is a guaranteed beginning, but certainly not an end. Our guild is in a special place compared to other guilds which recruit specifically for a designated raid time and raid experience, while our guild is made our social members growing together. Other guilds will face the problem of their silent majority in different ways, in the form of inactivity outside of raid night. Our guild faces the problem of organization within game, despite player activity. Even with a large number of players, our engagement can improve. This can be done both by recruiting engaging players and by lifting up members organically so they are indoctrinated to engage others.

My goal for February is to empower members to have a voice, especially when asking for help or the next horizon. Members should be able to work together and form their own ambitions, with or without management. Finding officers and creating schedules will provide the necessary framework for scalable self-reliance.

Film Friday: Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution

This movie is a classic to me, recreated faithfully. I first watched the original in theaters as a child, watching it again and again as an adult. There was a period of time in which Twitch played the original animated movie and together with other internet fans I watched the movie over and over again. Mewtwo Strikes back is the first Pokémon film brought to theaters and it is my favorite of the Pokémon films. There’s a good chance my nostalgia glasses have overtaken me and I need to give the other films a better shot.

Transforming beloved characters from 2D representations to 3D ones is a precarious one, one that must be executed well. Over the many iterations of 3D Pokémon representations, this one seems to be on the more passable side, keeping the animations playful, charming, and without compromise. There are cases in which animators attempt to make the world look too real, which draws us out of the magical realism.

Outside of the animation, the only difference I can detect in this film from the original is the voice acting, which has also been recreated faithfully. Just as close as the 3D animation can get to its original counterpart, I feel similarly to the voice acting. Sure, it’s not the exact same audio from years ago, but the acting and voices feel familiar. I can’t tell if the music is the same or not, it feels fitting either way.

The familiar story, scenes, and narrative make this movie such a heartfelt pleasure to watch. It’s one of the few animated movies that gets a tear from me each time. I highly recommend this movie to any animated film or Pokémon lovers. It hits all the right notes with nostalgia, the hero’s journey, and tales of friendship.