A short while ago at the time of writing, my good pal Rob Caporetto (who works on the excellent “Beyond the Scanlines” series over on YouTube) posted a review of Atari’s latest “Recharged” remake of one of its old classics, Lunar Lander Beyond. And it got me thinking.
Specifically, the thing that got me thinking was Rob’s comments on how the whole thing felt like it was acknowledging the corporate-heavy hellscape that is life in 2024, but it didn’t really do anything with it. It just felt dour and cynical about the whole thing, with no attempt to either satirise the shitness or provide a real sense of “hope” lying somewhere beyond, and that left the narrative aspect of Lunar Lander Beyond feeling like something of a drag to him.
I’ve been aware of this overall trend in media for a while, and it’s honestly fairly exhausting. But thankfully, bleak outlooks for the present and/or future aren’t the only things that popular entertainment has to offer… you just have to know where to look. So let’s ponder that a bit today.
It will doubtless not surprise you to learn that one of my first pieces of advice to anyone feeling exhausted and burnt out with cynical, miserable and otherwise drab western popular media is to look eastwards. While Japanese popular media is by no means immune to these trends, I do tend to find that across manga, anime and video games, there seem to be a whole lot more individual works that have an overall positive, hopeful vibe about them. And thus, even as someone who already liked popular media that was unashamedly Japanese, I find what these works offer increasingly important as the world feels like it is more and more wrapped in darkness year after year.
The most common argument in favour of bleak, depressing media is that it is important to acknowledge that today’s society has some significant issues. And I’m not denying that in the slightest. There are a ton of problems that need to be solved if humanity as a whole is to move forward into a more positive, happy place — and at present it feels like it will be a long time before that will happen, because overall it’s hard not to get the sense that we are very much moving down the “wrong” path.
But the thing with works such as Lunar Lander Beyond, as Rob noted in his review (and in some subsequent discussions I had with him), is that they’re not really doing a great job of criticising these issues, or offering solutions and suggestions. There are a significant number of works available today — including Lunar Lander Beyond — that simply feel like they’re saying “Life is shit” without following that up with anything. And while there’s a certain amount of value to that — particularly when the ones delivering that message are the ones most affected by it — it’s also a massive drag. No-one in the world has the mental fortitude and willpower to spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week caring. And that doesn’t make them a bad person, either; it makes them entirely human.
The ability to escape from reality and immerse yourself in something different — better — is important. It’s a big reason why both popular media and the arts exist in the first place. Because while both can and should reflect reality to a certain degree, there’s also great, great value for the overall wellbeing of the general public in providing them a means of getting away from everything that is stressful, anxiety-inducing and depressing.
With the rise of social media came people who were a lot more willing to be honest about how they felt about certain things. In many ways, this has been a positive thing — it has helped destigmatise discussions around subjects such as mental health, sexuality, gender dysphoria, sex work and all manner of other things that were previously swept under the rug. At the same time, though, it feels like over the course of the last 15-20 years or so, there has been a marked uptick in the people who are suffering and struggling with some sort of mental health issues.
Perhaps it’s just that those people are a lot more willing to admit they are suffering with those mental health issues; perhaps it’s just that the Internet and social media give those who are suffering more of a voice than they have had in the past; or perhaps there really are more people who are struggling. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if it was the latter.
In retrospect, I have been dealing with depression, stress and anxiety in my own life for many years. I’m not sure I could pin down exactly when each of them first started to manifest, but I do know I felt aspects of social anxiety from a very young age, and as soon as I became aware of what “depression” really meant in my early 20s, I started to understand some of the feelings that had been creeping into my mind a bit better.
However, speaking personally, I can say that the last 20 years or so have seen a marked and consistent decline in my own mental health and overall wellbeing, with the last 10 years in particular feeling like the curve was trending more sharply downwards than ever before.
For me personally, there have been a few specific occasions when things came to a head. Two incidents in particular spring to mind. There was the nervous breakdown I suffered that caused me to leave the teaching profession. And there was my separation and subsequent divorce from my first wife. Both of these saw me reaching an absolutely catastrophic low point in my own mental wellbeing, and in both instances I’m pretty sure that if I had been feeding that darkness with even more negativity from the media I was enjoying at the time, I would have been in an even worse position.
As difficult as it was to get through the day sometimes when I was dealing with these particular episodes in my own life, I knew that there was value to finding an “escape”. And on both occasions, I found that valuable way out, even if it was only for an hour or two at a time, through the media I was enjoying: the games I was playing, the books I was reading and the shows I was watching.
And, as I stare down what feels like another particularly low ebb in my mental health — without a specific cause this time around, other than the mounting pressure from the stresses of the COVID years onwards breaking my back — I feel the same sense of value from media that carries some sort of uplifting message, rather than unrelenting cynicism and bitter, ironic humour about how shit everything is.
To that end, there are a number of relatively recent pieces of media that I’ve simply refused to engage with because I know that however “good” they might be, they just won’t “work” for me.
The TV series Breaking Bad (not pictured above) is the example that springs most readily to mind; however much people talk about how amazing that show supposedly was from start to finish, I have no desire to watch it, because everything I’ve heard about it makes it sound incredibly depressing and not something I particularly want to spend my “escapism” time engaging with. Along the same lines, the recent TV show adaptations of The Last of Us and Fallout do not appeal for very similar reasons — and I don’t care for the original source material, either, for the exact same reasons.
This is one of the things that knocked me off the triple-A train around 15 years or so ago, and why I pretty consistently have zero interest in any first-party Sony titles today: they’re all just so fucking miserable. And, again, I will say that there is nothing wrong with exploring misery and depressing subjects through popular media; I simply know that, personally, there is much greater value in being to escape from the negativity I feel in reality through the media I enjoy — ideally through media that manages to strike a good balance between acknowledging that problems exist, but which offers a clear sense of hope for the future.
Tokyo Xanadu eX+, which I’m playing through at the time of writing, is a good example of this. Each chapter in that game focuses around something obviously negative happening, and culminates in the heroic central group managing to overcome the difficulty and provide hope for the future. The exact form that each of these arcs takes varies from chapter to chapter: so far in the 25 hours or so I’ve played, there has been a personal story of two people and the jealousy that threatened to crush their relationship; a tale about how obsession with social media and AI can quickly get out of hand; an incident of drug abuse threatening to destroy the lives of a large group of people; and how superstition and misinformation can lead to tragedy.
In each case, the game has felt like it has something to say about the subject, but it never presents the situation as being so irreversibly bleak that it cannot be “solved” in some way. Granted, the ways in which the situations are solved are somewhat “supernatural” in nature (largely because their causes were also supernatural, when it comes down to it) but that doesn’t really matter; the important thing is that it’s a piece of media that shows that while bad things can, do and will happen, it is possible to overcome them — ideally with the assistance of those that you love and trust surrounding you.
I’m sure there are some folks out there who think that sounds a bit “cheesy” — indeed, there are a couple of moments in Tokyo Xanadu eX+ where the characters themselves admit the things they just said in the heat of the moment are a bit cheesy — but this, in itself, is a bit of a problem: the idea that being sincere and earnestly positive about something is somehow a bad thing appears to very much be a product of the social media age, and is doubtless a contributing factor in how people feel the need to focus on the negative on a daily basis.
That’s a problem! People should be able to speak their mind and heart on things in a positive manner and not be shamed for it. And yet if you delve into a comments thread on pretty much any subject on social media any day right now, you’ll almost certainly find at least one person arguing, yelling or being abusive. It’s a big reason why I’ve completely disconnected from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and refuse to even try getting involved on TikTok; it was getting to a point where it actively did not feel good for me in the slightest.
So I stepped away, regardless of whether or not doing so would be “bad for my numbers” on both this site and my YouTube channel. (Caring about “the numbers” is another matter entirely that is probably beyond the scope of what we’ve already talked about at great length today.)
Instead, when I’m at a loose end, I try and make a point of engaging with works that provide at least a glimmer of hope in the mix — whether that’s TV shows such as various forms of classic Star Trek, light novels such as Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki and My Friend’s Little Sister Has It In For Me! (both of which I can highly recommend to anyone who recognises any of the feelings I’ve described today) or games like Tokyo Xanadu eX+ or my longstanding favourite, the Neptunia series.
Life is shit. But during those periods of time where you’re in complete control of what your experiences will be, there’s nothing to say you have to continue wallowing in that shit. There’s no shame in escapism, whether it’s reading a chapter of a novel on the toilet or sitting playing a video game for 6 hours or more at a weekend.
I’d perhaps go so far as to say it’s essential, given the world we live in today. And so that’s certainly what I plan to go on doing, for as long as I am able to.
Want more Pete? Check my personal blog I’m Not Doctor Who, and my YouTube channel ThisIsPete. If you enjoy what you read here, please consider buying me a coffee.
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