Month: February 2022

Enlarge / Roscosmos Head Dmitry Rogozin is seen before Russia-China talks at the Moscow Kremlin. (credit: Mikhail Metzel/TASS via Getty Images)

Nearly four years have passed since Dmitry Rogozin became director general of Roscosmos, the state-run corporation that manages the country's human and civil spaceflight programs, rocket production, and space technology development.

Roscosmos is a sprawling entity, with about 170,000 employees at its various companies, and it is effectively charged with carrying on the legacy of the once-dominant Soviet space program that launched the world's first satellite, first astronaut, and more than half a dozen space stations.

However, under Rogozin's tenure, Roscosmos has seen its fortunes diminish. There have been public embarrassments aplenty. For example,  After he previously mocked NASA for not having its own means of transporting its astronauts into space, Rogozin was forced to eat his words following SpaceX's Crew Dragon flight in 2020.

Enlarge / Shenmue protagonist Ryo Hazuki bids his father farewell in an iconic game series moment. The new animated TV version expands upon this scene in interesting ways, and it's a great start for the series' first season. (credit: Adult Swim / Crunchyroll)

For its 23 years of existence, Sega's game series, Shenmue, has arguably experienced a lot of drama. The series began life with a record-breaking budget and industry-changing aspirations, only to founder as a casualty of its original target platform, the short-lived Dreamcast. While the series returned as a surprising, Sony-promoted Kickstarter in 2015, the resulting Shenmue III underwhelmed (and left some backers livid thanks to an EGS-related switcheroo).

Yet the series' first two games, in spite of their dated mechanics, remain beloved for players who reveled in Shenmue's mix of substantial martial arts combat, open-city exploration, and fully voiced dialogue. (The 1999 original's best ideas are better realized in the likes of Grand Theft Auto and Sega's own Yakuza.) Furthermore, Shenmue games always came with an intriguing, detective-like story of family, friendship, and revenge. Forget the game industry drama. Ryo's suspenseful search for his father's killer, Lan Di, was the good stuff, and dedicated fans continue to hope its story might even see a logical conclusion.

I kept all of that in mind while tuning in to this week's Shenmue: The Animation, a new TV series co-produced by Adult Swim and Crunchyroll, in hopes that its season premiere might benefit from leaving its video game roots behind. And now I'm a bit upset—enough to beg Sega: please don't get fans' hopes up with an animated series premiere this good, only to yank Shenmue away from us again.