>>34054Hmmm. There were some parts where the self-lampooning didn't quite land with me, and the "character with dementia regains their memories temporarily" trope isn't something I find particularly touching even if (or because) it's happened to me with my grandma, nor am I the biggest fan of Caine. But the horror was nice and the ending with its foreshadowing is marvelous.
Besides that I recently watched the new viral series of Parkour Civilization, a machinima rather than an animation, which is wholly devoted to Minecraft parkour as a means of combat, of payment, of societal organization and a way of life. It's impressive how far this is taken, one of the best jokes consists of offhandedly stating that a book is "written in parkour" and how the protagonist can thankfully read it. Entirely played straight, there is never any subversion of the premise.
It's predominantly described as a burger shônen: the protagonist is constantly running into challenges where he must learn to outsmart then implement the elements being introduced and has a signature attack that sets him apart from the rest which also happens to be infinitely scalable. Lots of neat little twists and technicalities. But beyond that what really shocks people is how it manages to fit in some fairly strong themes despite being so simple and so ridiculous, when a post said this was 1984 and the New Testament put together I thought they were trolling but it's actually not entirely wrong.
It becomes obvious that part 1 was designed as a self-contained story with a definite end when you compare it to 2 and see that all the exploration of class inequality disappears and is replaced by parkour trials full-time with new progressive additions. Someone described it as fleshing out the power system, I agree with that. Not exactly a must-see, but it's interesting from a writing perspective in how it manages to be as effective as it is while being stripped down to its bare essentials. Definitely earned those tens of millions of views.