Grave of the Fireflies-Ghibli's perfect pathos tool and allegory on Why Dramas perform better than Comedies

The date was April 16 1988.

A Double-Feature Screening took place in many Japanese Cinemas at that time.

That was for 

MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO

and 

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES.

But this blogpost is dedicated to this one film which despite having two English Dubs, I actually have chosen to watch this gem exclusively in Japanese with English Subtitles due to the fact that Setsuko's voice actress was very young at the time as well as the setting of the film.

Plus, it's made by the late ISAO TAKAHATA.

It's also a perfect allegory on why I get mad when I browse on my Custom Built PC or my iPhone,

And I see people on Social Media always complaining, even in their adulthood, that they get still traumatized by dramatic plot points in their favorite animated films like.... 

the death of Littlefoot's Mother after her fierce battle in a violent Earthquake protecting her son from SHARPTOOTH in

THE LAND BEFORE TIME(1988)

or the death of Mufasa following the aftermath of the Stampede in 

THE LION KING(1994)

I feel that the North American Animation Industry has been infantilized to the point that Executives, now influenced by the whining of children turned adults in this decade, will demand that these films have a happy ending just to appease the moral guardians or sensitive children with little to no regard of writer's or other fan's protests.

This is a part of a problematic thing in Executive Decision Making called:

FOCUS GROUP CHANGE.

It's where content is changed just because of audience sensitivities. 

Like most filmmakers, I hate it when the FOCUS GROUP CHANGE happens with a lot of films. 

It takes away the more poignant of plots or endings of a film...

Especially when used in adaptations of novels or fairy tales.

Or Historical Events.

This problem was beautifully parodied in a 1994 THE CRITIC episode where titular film critic JAY PRESCOTT SHERMAN is forced to preview a *NON-EXISTENT* remake of THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES where in that remake, LOU GEHRIG is cured from ALS and survives.

He explained that the remake did that because the GODDAMN EXECUTIVES felt that the original 1942 ending, as well as the real-life events, were too sad for today's sensitive audiences.

This triggers a rant from him that REAL-LIFE is not about happy endings.....

And then he gets cut off by a WE'LL BE RIGHT BACK card.

Now a Real Life example that Happened IN STUDIO:

Did you know there were a lot of fights between the Disney Animators and ART STEVENS? It's all true. Chief the dog was supposed to be killed off just like he was in the novel but was animated almost at the last minute to show he's still alive but injured.

Now lets get back into GHIBLI Topic.

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES DOES NOT HAVE A GODDAMN HAPPY ENDING!!!!

PEROID!!!

We all knew that since watching the very first scene from the film and the first line of dialogue.

(From the subtitled version that is....)

"21 September 1945. The was the night I died."

..... Ok. 

Maybe Isao Takahata should have watched where his writers were doing because that was a blatant and unintentional spoiler.....

Or maybe a Ghost's flashback was really the whole point of that line.

Now, I want to tell you about a topic we call PATHOS.

Yes, I used ALL CAPITALS for the word Pathos because it's an important topic for this blogpost.

PATHOS, 

An Ancient Greek term for Emotional Suffering or experience but not in a PTSD way.

It's more of a rhetoric on quality of making people feel pity or sympathy.

Using this painting of IVAN THE TERRIBLE as an example of PATHOS.

Here, He displays remorse over his action of fatally wounding his son Ivan Ivanovich.

PATHOS is everywhere in Cinema but the one thing it hardly ever gets used on is ANIMATION.

Sort of....

It does get used in animation but not all the time due to things like expectations from audiences for animation to be happy-go-lucky or just plain funny.

It takes balls for animation to actually use pathos so it's no wonder DISNEY always takes that cake with their ways to kill off or fake a character's death with a deep sleep, injury, etc.

It's also tells us why Live-Action DRAMA films actually do better and win the most awards compared to COMEDIES or ANIMATION.

So for example, 

Let's say you watch a shmaltzy, cute, saccharine, funny film such as 

Don Bluth's ROCK-A-DOODLE.

It's got it's share of animals singing and dancing.

But that film did very poorly, Got itself negative reviews from Critics in it's original 1991 release.

And who won the best awards and positive Critical reception in 1991?

If you guessed BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, that was a good guess as that film was nominated for an Academy Award in 1992.

But Disney's 1991 triumph ultimately lost to THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS during the 64th Academy Awards.

And SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is a Live-Action Drama.

But it does illustrate that problem that Critics and Reviewers are going to have when they review films.

Ultimately, the one Genre Critics are going to choose for appraisal is DRAMAS because the more emotional trauma the film inflicts on our audience, the more likely the film is going to win those awards.

I also understand it pisses of people who mostly watch comedies just for the laughs when they find out that CRITICS lambast the Comedies and always are more favorable of dramas..

but I get where this is coming because nowadays, Today's Comedies have degenerated into pukefests on whether you can achieve the most dirtiest of jokes or how many times the word FUCK can be said on-screen just to earn that coveted R-Rating.

Sure, the F-Word is also used in DRAMAS too, but the way it's often handled is through emotional tension, not for poor-in-taste-jokes that would make Teenagers laugh till they wet their pants.

Such as in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS were an officer asks where the F is his ambulance.

Or in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION where inmate TOMMY WILLIAMS flips out over the perceived difficulty of his General Educational Development exam.

Did I say DRAMAS winning awards piss off the Comedy-Loving Viewers?

I forgot to mention that it also pisses off.... or more like makes filmmakers who specializes in Comedies feel somewhat envious.

Let's use the 1993 REN & STIMPY episode SON OF STIMPY as an example.

According to John Kricfalusi, he hated the fact that dramas were always considered for award nominations and marvelous reviews from critics over comedies which he excels at and prefers.

He also hated how studios like Disney have manipulated the Film Criticism Industry into choosing emotional trauma over laughs just so movies can be nominated for said awards.

Maybe that's the reason why Disney's Competitors try but always fail to unseat the MOUSE HOUSE for all the awards and acclaim.

They try too hard but the effort becomes all for naught.

ONCE UPON A FOREST

is an example of a film that tried but failed to unseat the MOUSE HOUSE in both 

critical and commercial success.

Totally not a DRAMA punchline for this Blog. 

So John took it as a challenge to fight that by making the most ridiculous premise that he could think of that could still make people cry and win critical acclaim.

All with the most minimal amount of editing, and instead, focus on the acting... sort of....

THE PLOTLINE: 

STIMPY NOT FARTING FOR A SECOND TIME.

AND THEN HE GETS DEPRESSED ABOUT IT FOR A FEW YEARS.

To quote from his BLOG:

"I purposely made a cartoon that used some filmic tricks to make people cry just to prove it's not difficult to do it. 

And I didn't have shoot anyone's mom either. 

I made people cry over the fact that Stimpy couldn't fart for a second time. 

I went out of my way to make the story have the most preposterous plot events in it-everything to undermine the seriousness of Stimpy's depression.

Besides the mood tricks, I relied heavily on Stimpy and Ren's acting-the drawings of their expressions and their interactions. 

A lot of films will ignore this part of the pathos recipe. 

They rely on the filmic tricks and contrived story points."

.........

Ok. Just like most people, I'm slightly going to disagree with this one for a bit.

Making people cry over the fact that Stimpy couldn't fart for a second time? 

Now that's just absurd.

But what it did succeed at was making people sympathetic towards Stimpy during his depression period.

Ren here, even though he's an asshole to Stimpy most of the time, still had the balls to 

feel worried when his MANX CAT for a best friend who remained depressed for 3 years.

And as far as I can see it, John K still used filmic tricks such as Camera Cuts just to prove his point on that matter... the exact filmic tricks he was lambasting.

All just to prove that it's not so hard to make people cry over the most ridiculous premise even if it's played mostly for drama. 

Plus, the episode was made as an exchange he made with Nickelodeon Executive Vanessa Coffey that if he made a heartwarming story for her, he can make gross and funny stories for the audience such as THE CAT THAT LAID THE GOLDEN HAIRBALL & FAKE DAD.

Also, in that same Blogpost on JOHN K. Stuff, he compared his own SON OF STIMPY episode to an old episode of THE HONEYMOONERS.

Specifically PARDON MY GLOVE from 1956.

Here, Ralph Kramden's actions pissed off his wife Alice, who was about to surprise her husband with a birthday gift. 

Alice was also pissed off on how Ralph ruined her plans to redecorate the Apartment in time for his birthday party.

As you can see below, Ralph realizes through his Manly Remorse on what he's done to Alice so he tries to make up for his past actions and apologize.

He fights his masculine urges but eventually, he lets the guilt get the best of him...

And apologizes to Alice for what has happened throughout the episode.

Here's the Dailymotion link if you want to see for yourself:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1pk7w_ralph-has-remorse

So John's free to say shit about whether Disney or their competitors want to or not to use emotional scenes such as Mufasa's death in the aftermath of the wildebeest stampede,

or more importantly,

when the Dwarves think Snow White is dead,

but in reality, SPOILER ALERT: 

She's in a deep sleep that can only be broken by True Love's Kiss.

Like I said, my obsession with PROPER PATHOS in animation is due to my frustration with people on social media saying PATHOS SCENES like these traumatized them during childhood.

But recently since the September 9 2024 passing of James Earl Jones, 

actor of Darth Vader and Mufasa, 

I'm seeing memes where people are fantasizing about changing the scene to someone on a car rescuing characters like MUFASA from death....

That's what made me so mad about that "NO KILLING CHARACTERS" mentality, it undermines what the writers were doing back when they made these stories. 

It's almost like they're demanding that ANIMATION should be happy-go-lucky....

I'm sorry to say this but Animation doesn't work that way.

And Grave of the Fireflies proves my point by showing two children fighting to survive the atrocities of the KOBE Firebombing in 1945, during the tail-end of WWII...  

we all know it's not going to end well for them.....

GO AND WATCH THIS GHIBLI GEM ON NETFLIX, 

BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO SPOIL THE PLOT FOR YOU ALL.

(And I highly recommend setting this film's language to JAPANESE with English Subtitles just to get that authentic feel to the setting and the story.)

Regardless of the filmic tricks such as jump cuts, melancholic music, or whatever was used during the parts that made us cry such as all the emotional stuff shown on screen, 

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES succeeded on the most important thing that every animated film desperately needs: TRAUMATIC PATHOS.

I don't believe in escapism.

The reason is, once you put yourself back in reality, you find that whatever happened such as what's going on in Europe or the Middle East is still happening with no end in sight to the conflicts.

To quote LIGHT YAGAMI from DEATH NOTE:

"The World is Rotten."

This whole obsession with Drama Films makes me realize, in an age where you can't tell a joke without pissing off the Politically Correct Obsessed, 

maybe COMEDY is not in my blood.

I feel that in order to really make it into the film industry, I should instead focus on DRAMAS as my strong suit because that tends to have an easier time to tell a proper story than a pure comedy due to focus on storytelling than it is to make someone burst into laughter.

And it seems ISAO TAKAHATA, regardless of what subject matter he directs or writes, may have been the perfect man for anything DRAMA related.

Compared to his Contemporary HAYAO MIYAZAKI who specializes in escapist comedy films for Children, with the exception of PRINCESS MONONOKE in 1997 which was marketed for older audiences,

ISAO TAKAHATA mostly specialized on Dramas.

Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, and PRINCESS KAGUYA are all Dramas...... with POM POKO and  MY NEIGHBOR THE YAMADAS being one of his only comedies he directed.

Now that's Academy Respect for you.

And it makes me respect TAKAHATA even more years after his passing.

Well.... I did deviate a little from the film but this wasn't a retrospective. 

Mainly, I just wanted to use this film as an allegory for my frustrations on what I see on Social Media when it comes to mine and other filmmakers obsession with PATHOS.

I mean, seriously, us filmmakers have the right to make our dramas or thrillers. 

For the love of SAKUMA DROPS, 

Please stop bitching about all the trauma that the writers and animators put in critically acclaimed films. 

If the writers and animators have to kill off an important character in order to move the story forward, 

LET THEM!!!

We're just doing our job so please, let us!!!

.......

On a sidenote, while I did have to watch the film on NETFLIX,

*In Japanese with VSI's Subtitles because of my love of Setsuko's prerecorded dialogue*

I instead chose to use high quality photos of the film from IMDB because unlike my later RANMA review where I did resort to iPhone photos in front of my TV, I want visual consistency with this blogpost.

Maverick Foods 01-Savoury Sauce

In 1998, there was a promotional item made by McDonalds that was to promote the Disney movie MULAN.

No, it was not the line of Happy Meals Toys distributed at the time but rather it was a condiment.

The Condiment?

SZECHUAN SAUCE.

It was a dipping sauce to dip your Chicken McNuggets or French Fries in.

It was a limited time only item in 1998 due to the film it was tied towards.

In 2017, the Sauce was reintroduced to Pop-Culture after it was featured in the Season 3 premiere RICK AND MORTY.

After heavy demanding from Fans, the Sauce returned.... for a limited time.

Fortunately, the creator of RICK AND MORTY was kind enough to raffle some of his personal stash to people in an effort to donate to the flood victims after both Hurricane Harvey and Irma in 2017.

But what does the this sauce have to do with this edition of Maverick Foods?

Nothing!!!

I missed the Throwback Sauces promotion on June 25 2024 due to my shift at the cafe that day.

But what I did have was the WcDonald's Savoury Chili Sauce back in March 2024.

The Sauce was purportedly inspired by all those LAWYER FRIENDLY appearances of McDonald's restaurants in anime where they had to modify the logo so it wouldn't actually appear on screen.

Though about 10 years prior in 2014, I did save this image on my HP Pavilion laptop which showed an actual McDonald's in an anime.

And most recently as of 2019, 

Makoto Shinkai's WEATHERING WITH YOU featured an actual McDonald's and one of the protagonists is actually an employee of said chain.

But back to this food choice.

At the time, I decided to forgo my usual DOUBLE QUARTER POUNDER for some Chicken McNuggets so I can properly enjoy the taste of this Savoury Sauce after seeing all the advertisements on WIKIS as well as one of the TVs at the Cafe at worked at.

Bottoms Up...

MMM Tasty...

I remember actually tolerating the taste but what else are you gonna do when you mass market a limited edition sauce in a time-constrained manner?

The irony here was that this tasting of the sauce happened on the most bittersweet day of March 2024:

It was the day I found out about Akira Toriyama's passing as well as the E-Cycling of my borked MSI OPTIX Monitor I was storing by this point.

Let's hope McDonald's brings back this sauce in 2025 so I can reevaluate the taste without all that drama I had witnessed back then.

The drama wasn't coming from me. It was coming from my Social Media feeds.

Four Fingered Discount-Western Animation’s obsession with this style of hand design

Whenever you watch a cartoon, you notice that these Cartoon Characters, regardless if it’s hand-drawn, puppet-rigged, or even CGI, they often have a maximum of four fingers on each hand.

They consist of the thumb, index, middle, and pinky fingers.

So where’s the ring finger?

It’s not there. The middle finger is often interchangeable with the ring finger whenever there’s a cartoon character wearing their wedding ring.

So what’s the gist of these characters that are often drawn with four fingers instead of the more realistic five we have?

It’s simple:

Some artists find it difficult to draw all five fingers on each hand and keep the drawing professionally drawn and on-model.

It's also a process of simplification and that if you want efficiency in drawing those hands on your characters, you will have to sacrifice a single digit of a finger in order to meet that deadline.

Usually, this design philosophy was mostly used almost only on Cartoon Animals since animating human characters believably and realistic was next to impossible without resorting to rotoscoping.

But somewhere down the line, it was decided that once it was possible to animate a cartoony human character, they too should get the four finger treatment.

One of the earliest Human Characters with four fingers but professional construction were the Seven Dwarves from DISNEY's SNOW WHITE 

Though I'm limiting my choice to both DOC and GRUMPY.

And Elmer Fudd from THE LOONEY TUNES.

Yes I'm using Fat Elmer from the early 40s because ARTHUR Q BRYAN.

Most often in the earliest days of cartoons, Four Fingered Animals often are drawn wearing their signature white gloves because it's often a reminder on how they started originally.

In the earliest of days, all the cartoons were in BLACK AND WHITE and because of the general lack of color, the characters, especially if their cel paints are literal black, need to have definition on their finger digits so gloves were almost the only way to have these character's fingers read on the screen.

Of course, some characters who's skin.... or fur are colored white, they just have the gloves because either it's mandated or it's an aesthetic.

Such as Goopy Geer below.....

WHO I REMIND YOU, ACTUALLY PREDATES GOOFY BY A MONTH.

Once the cartoons started using Color, this created a minor conundrum.

Should the gloves be ditched? Or should they be retained?

Many of these early Characters like Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, among the likes have all retained their gloves because it's their signature apparel. 

And yes, the gloves have a thing to do with the four fingers on these characters.

But years later, especially with Hanna-Barbera and Television animation, new characters came and because of the novelty of Color Television becoming Affordable for the home, these newer characters don't need their gloves anymore....

Of course, Yogi doesn't need gloves to hide his paw prints due to all the fur he has.

Wilma's caught Fred Flintstone RED-HANDED stealing all that food without his work gloves.

Oh wait, Fred doesn't even wear gloves.

Even when Teaching, George Jetson doesn't need work gloves to cover his hands from Chalk

And then many cartoonists, especially after the CREATOR-DRIVEN BOOM that started in late 1989, decided that that's the limit for the budget in character creation in terms of how many fingers on each hand you can have.

I've mentioned this before but I can't stand abide to draw four fingers on characters..... but that's only for my own characters that I've designed.

If I'm drawing existing cartoon characters, I can let that slide but not my own characters.

I'm not the only Cartoonist who rebels against the Four Finger Rule for Cartoon Characters.

In fact, before I was born, there were several cartoonists and their works that subvert the Four Finger Rule.

Among them are the works of Mike Judge.

BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD

King of the Hill

DOUG(Both Nickelodeon and Disney)

is another example of a show that refuses to follow the four finger rule on the hands of their human characters regardless of literal color for their skin tone.

Here are some examples of pretty much every human character from DOUG I can show that follows JUMBO PICTURES strict 5 finger rule:

NICE HAND SEPERATION CHALKY.

The only exception to this NO FOUR FINGER RULE in DOUG is the title character's DOG Porkchop.

KNOCK IT OFF ABNORMAL... I NEED THE REAL PORKCHOP.

Oh I see why Mr. Abnormal was here. Looks like Porkchop was out in the cold again.....

And yes, the Porkchop images are from my DOUG NICK SERIES AMAZON DVD.

In fact, with the exception of the GUY GRAHAM image, 

All my DOUG photos were taken from my DOUG NICK SERIES AMAZON DVD.

RICK AND MORTY is another show that despite the ADVENTURE TIME influence in the art, still prefers to have it's RIGS with five fingers on each hand.

Compared to Fairly OddParents, 

DANNY PHANTOM is another show that subverts the FOUR FINGER RULE by having the characters with Five Fingers on their hands.

Nice Subversion from BUTCH HARTMAN.

When compared to THE SIMPSONS and FUTURAMA, 

DISENCHANTMENT remains Matt Groening's only show to date where Human characters are required to have FIVE FINGERS on their hands.

Except for Elves and Mini Demons where they have either 4 or 3 fingers.

Think ELFO and LUCI

Despite the obvious 2010s CALARTS style aesthetic for AMPHIBIA, whoever was responsible for the art direction made it so human characters like ANNE BOONCHUY should have five fingers on each hand.

Just like with Porkchop from DOUG, the frog characters can keep their four fingers on their hands.

The reason I bring up the examples of Cartoons where characters have Five Fingers on each hand like they should is because if I use anime examples, that would not be a fair contest because Japanese anime always have characters with Five Fingers on each hand anyway....

Speaking about that, Four Fingers is considered taboo in Japan due to an issue with the MEAT PACKING SUBCLASS, aka Burakumin, in Feudal Japan, especially when it came to the labor accidents.

The other issue has something to do with the YAKUZA.

I hear stories about losing a finger via amputation if debts weren't paid off.

Also, I heard that the number 4 is considered UNLUCKY in JAPAN.

But yeah, the Meat Packing accidents are true, according to the developers of  the 1997 PS1 game ODDWORLD: ABE'S ODDYSEE in their tell-all book about the FRANCHISE.

Also from said developers, It's stated that DISNEY pays $5 million a year to pressure groups in JAPAN in order for Mickey Mouse to retain his four fingers and still have merchandise in there.

Otherwise, his hands would be different in localized games starring the character

or better yet

KINGDOM HEARTS.

You learn something everyday.

Maverick Quickie-Even the CEO of WBD is ashamed of Joker?

Well this is a surprise.

I was on FACEBOOK on a November night on the 7th looking for any posts from my friends ranting about the 2024 U.S Election results...

Nothing. It's all on INSTAGRAM and THREADS, which for now, until after Remembrance Day, I'm steering clear from for the time being until this thing's been blown over.

But what was I doing on FB?

Well I saw a post from IGN saying that WBD CEO DAVID ZASLAV is ashamed of JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX's Abysmal performance both Commercially and Critically. 

Really? 

Considering the asshole's been responsible for every WARNER BROS. Fan's suffering through his TAX-WRITE-OFF Fingers of Doom touching our Childhood CN shows left and right,

as well as his awful decisions on marketing certain films or projects that none of us have faith with,

Now the Tax obsessed Ass himself admits his Studio's output has been hit or miss this year

And he's disappointed at JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX's performance?

...........

I really don't know what to say about this...

To be honest, I never saw JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX, and I'm not going to.

And those stories about Quinton Tarantino and Hideo Kojima hoping for the film's vindication in the future, 

Don't believe those stories.

Unlike with flops from the past like BLACK CAULDRON and GREMLINS 2 where, sure they've flopped but eventually they'll be reappraised later on,

In today's INTERNET age where we lambast before the release, I highly doubt the JOKER Sequel will recover.

But if it's vindicated in the future, like say in the 2030s or 2040s, then.... 

...........

Let's wait and see, then maybe it'll prove BEN HECKENDORN's theory wrong, or right?....

Ahh. Who cares.

Ben Heck admitted that even if JOKER 2 is vindicated, it'll never be as awesome as Gremlins 2 so who are we to judge.

At least Zaslav admits the folly that befallen his tenure.

Update as of December 17 2024:

I read on Facebook that Joker: Folie A Deux found a new audience through streaming......

WHAT????? 

After my comments about how the film may never be vindicated regardless of Tarantino or Kojima's appraisal of said films, now I've been proven wrong?

Never expected this film to pull a JOHN CARPENTER'S THE THING on me.

(John Carpenter's THE THING did poorly in 1982 but was reappraised after it found success on Television and Home Video in the Mid to Late 80s.)

A day in the Life of a Blogger

Pretty much sums up how I do these inane blogposts.

It also illustrates how the advantage of my 3-Monitor Setup and how I work with my PC.

As seen on the top monitor which is my ACER Nitro QG241Y monitor, that's where I play my videos on VLC Player.

It depends whether I use MP4, MKV, MOV, or other movie files on that player.

But as seen above, I was playing MONTHLY GIRLS NOZAKI-KUN on my monitor and that was using SENTAI FILMWORK's 2016 DVD of said series.

DVDs happen to work without any problems on my SATA Blu-Ray drive.

Blu-Rays on the other hand have some issues playing on my PC due to licensing issues so I have to use THIRD-PARTY Software to get around that problem but even then, I can't get the menus to work on VLC so DVDs are sort of my only other way to go.

My ASUS VG27AQ Monitor is used as my main monitor. That's where I type my posts.

As seen on the image above, 

I was editing the blogpost for MAYA TIPS 07 back in early May 2024, so before I bought my AM5 Motherboard and 20 days before the big upgrade so that dates the image example to May of that year.

If you look at the post, I only had one example used from NOZAKI-KUN which was the part where Nozaki himself asked for Height Boxes to fix some depth problems, much to his BG Artist's chagrin.

My Wacom ONE tablet, which is either my 2nd or 3rd Monitor depending on how you look at it, is often not used unless I need to designate my viewings to that monitor when my Acer Monitor is occupied by VLC Player. 

The only time I use my Tablet is when I'm animating on TOONBOOM, drawing on Photoshop, or when I'm animating on Autodesk Maya and that's where I put the Graph Editor on.

And there you have it, how I do this Blog whenever I have the free time whenever I'm not at the Airport.

Update as of July 13 2025:

The part of this blogpost where I mentioned my Acer Monitor is outdated as I have retired that monitor and now have relegated the Asus Tuf VG27AQ monitor as the Overhead monitor as I have upgraded to an ASUS TUF Ultrawide.