#franchises

“Heres more of that thing, except we’ve covered it in filth and fundamentally changed it in ways that reduce or remove the things you liked about it.”

“That’s no longer the thing I like.”

“How are you complaining?! It’s the thing you like!”

“It’s not, though. The things I liked about it are now worse, twisted, removed, and/or parroted without really being understood.”

Yes, although I think the same of any franchise that has shambled on for over 35 years. Everything endures so long as to become the proverbial snake eating its own tail, the object inspired by itself, a procession of familiar symbols evoked over and over again and diminished with every rehearsal. Most series will reach the point where they can no longer tell you anything meaningful about the world because they can only speak of themselves. Should the notion of another Tokyo touched by apocalypse inspire you? How could it? The staid and aging userbase for nearly all legacy franchises points to a logical endpoint in the final senility of both IP and audience, but the road that leads there will be very long and very, very boring.

SMT is, like FF, in a more pliable position than most, since the self-contained nature of each game precludes the worst excesses of continuous timelines and 'lore'. But as of the last decade or so the series has largely ceased to absorb new and distinct influence from outside of itself, holding fast to the most suffocating elements (Tokyo as setting/axis mundi, LNC but especially LNC organized under the same Abrahamic schema) while regarding with disinterest its lifeblood (an earnest if unrigorous approach to myth that did not treat the subject as an obstacle to maneuver, as with the Nahobino concept and its subordination of mythical forms).

To its credit, SMT is backwards-looking in a very ordinary way. It avoids the total collapse into metanarrative evident in, say, FFVIIR, and neither has it begun to regurgitate itself in the manner of Resident Evil and its program of remakes. And nothing can match The Simpsons proper, where both the persistence of long-obsolete archetypes (Disco Stu, Comic Book Guy) and the tortured floating of the timeline have lent the thing a genuine, anthropological fascination.*

Following the videogame industry for over two decades has radicalized me against the mere concept of franchise. But if all franchises were to be abolished by holy writ, a host of Mighty No. 9 type simulacra would replace them on the following day. Our imagination is arrested with the inertia of capital, and nothing will be put to rest with dignity. No investor will say, well, this thematic space has been explored to satiety- time to move on! And we've learned to speak their language. Nothing is more damning than the ease with which we use the term 'IP', as I did earlier in this post.

The ideal outcome for any senile franchise is to explode after a fantastic, rupturing experiment, like Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. The least desireable outcome is to endure as a homunculoid GaaS project, like Breath of Fire VI. If SMTVI emulates the former and assumes a shape so jarring to its pedigree that it kills the franchise, then I'll take that. If it turns out to be Nocturne but with boobies then I'll take that too. Presumably it'll be some other, third thing, but I'll take any garbage they're willing to throw at me. I probably won't be paying for it, though.

*The one point that I'll admit in favor of franchise is that it acts as a neat conduit for this phenomena. Everything gains interest with age. Any appropriately aged art or media, in addition to whatever distinct artistic merit it might possess, is shot through with the historical conditions that produced it. And being produced continuously, a sufficiently long franchise can channel the alterations of time insofar as different iterations distort and color the same basic container. Think of how Star Trek models the same premise across its various decades of existence.

I was in a conversation with Star Wars and Doctor Who fans who wanted to have more constructive discussions compared to the destructiveness of the wider fanbases. The topic of "franchise homework" popped up in the form of Ahsoka and the latest seasons of Doctor Who having Classic Who villains return after so long.

Putting aside how they were executed in storytelling (like I do NOT wanna go down that exhausting fanwank), the topic of them being user-unfriendly came up as it seemed to enjoy these new installments, a new fan would've had to be familiar with what came before.

An argument often being that it should follow the creed, "Every comic is somebody's first" with Star Wars and Doctor Who having a long history dating back to the 70s and 60s respectively. Thus spin offs or continuations should remember the new generation of fans even as they return for the old.

The other side of the argument claimed that even when some installments are heavily branching out from what came before, that doesn't preclude newer fans from jumping in and taking it as part of a long legacy or a slice of the franchise that may invite them to discover more.

In the case of Doctor Who, Classic villains and characters have often been reintroduced with the understanding that the Doctor is an immortal being who has been on countless adventures before Rose Tyler found her job blown up by the Ninth. Additionally, more and more of Classic Who has been uploaded free to YouTube with some serials being more timely than others.

In the case of Ahsoka, one made a cheeky remark of how it was quite the power move to make a live action installment a sequel to two animated runs. Given how animations been getting the shaft lately, it is one I respect deeply.

That said, another argument was how we've had the likes of Dragon Ball Z and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders released overseas. The latter especially enjoyed immense success as a gateway Anime despite how they skipped over 155 episodes when it was released in the USA.

Even in Japan, Dragon Ball Kai, released in 2008, only covered the Z portion of the Anime.

As such, I could see Ahsoka working as a standalone series. A fan would realize that the rebellion was more than just Luke, Han and Leia as well as how Anikan's padawan means that a loooot went down during the Clone Wars. Maybe they heard of the Clone Wars and Rebels series but was all "Ewww, cartoons" before this got them curious.

I feel like "homework" is needlessly derisive when "homework" means you aren't having fun. But if you're this into the property, maybe the installment that came before will be interesting to see. Why not have more of a thing you are invested in?

When the same heroic character is played by more than one actor over the course of a franchise, and at one point, an actor who played that character in an earlier installment comes back to play a villain.

I can think of two examples (if I wanted to, I could apply the "if I had a nickel" meme to them), both from children's media.

In Rankin/Bass's Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, Mickey Rooney voices Santa Claus, while Paul Frees, who had previously voiced Santa in Frosty the Snowman and would voice him again in a few other Rankin/Bass specials, voices the villainous Burgermeister Meisterburger, who outlaws toys and tries to capture Santa. And later, in Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July, it happens again: Mickey Rooney again voices Santa, while Paul Frees voices the evil wizard Winterbolt, who tries to take Santa's place. It's less obvious in Santa Claus in Comin' to Town because of Burgermeister Meisterburger's German accent, but in Rudolph and Frosty, Winterbolt's voice sounds so similar to the voice Frees always used when he voiced Santa, it really feels like Battle of the Rankin/Bass Santa Clauses.

Another example, which I only just learned about, was 1994's Barney Live in New York City. (Yes, I liked Barney as a little kid – don't think less of me, I outgrew him after about two years.) In that Radio City Music Hall show, as in Barney and Friends on TV, Barney's suit performer was David Joyner. Meanwhile, the show had one of the few antagonists the Barney franchise has ever had: a mischievous elf-like creature called the Winkster who steals the magical Barney Bag. And who was the actor who played the Winkster? David Voss, who was the suit performer of Barney back in the original 1988-1990 Barney and the Backyard Gang VHS series, which predated the PBS TV show. So in a way, it's as if the spirit of the original VHS Barney came back to play pranks on the more popular TV Barney.