Jacob: I did see the “Toad Road” movie, which was challenging for me, drugs are kind of a trigger for me and the movie was very solidly a film that began in drug culture and focused on drugs as a search for enlightenment.
The series talks about the “toad road” gargoyles, the asylum (or lack thereof), and some related stories–including the movie “ Toad Road.” While these posts aren’t much fun for people who want to believe in the supernatural, they do have a lot of details about the variations on this story, and are a good read. There’s a great exploration of the story in three (four?) parts by Jim McClure, writing for the York Daily Record. Hellam Township would like you to please stop trespassing, thanks. People crossing through the gate may be able to find six more gates (particularly at night), and travelling through all seven will send you to hell. The first of the seven gates of hell is just off Trout Run Road. In brief, there was either a nasty murder or fire in a mental asylum. The area is vaguely near the Hellam township, which of course makes it a prime target for hell-related legendry. There is…a lot of material on the Seven Gates of Hell in York County, Pennsylvania. Victoria mentions the curse of The Exorcist, which was adjacent to something like nine deaths, a few injuries (relatives of the crew as well as crew), a fire on the set (followed by a breakdown of the fire prevention sprinklers), Pazuzu’s statue being temporarily lost in shipment, strange film ghosts…and one of the best bits, a Jesuit priest was called in to bless the production to help things move, which seemed to work, but the nearby Jesuit offices caught fire. It seems like this snowballed and became the Tomino’s Hell legend. The “legend” bit sprouts up around 2004, when author/film historian Inuhiko Yomota describes the curse of Tomino’s Hell, “read it and suffer a terrible fate.” He may or may not have been taking a page from the “Ring” series (1998, English 2002, book 1991), it seems like the same sort of horror. 47 is a bit young, but hardly “cursed by a curse” young. The Tomino legend began to begin in 1974 in the Shuji Teryama film “ Pastoral: To Die in the Country,” which took inspiration from “Tomino’s Hell.” The director did indeed die later, but solidly nine years later. The poem, “Tomino’s Hell,” was written in 1919 by Saijou Yaso in his collection, “Sakin.” In large part it seems to be an allegorical journey through hell, though what, exactly, it’s allegorizing is an open question…likely war, possibly an internal family struggle. You may just want to skip over to Kowabana and listen to Tara Devlin’s minipodcast about “ Tomino’s Hell.” The show notes contain the poem itself and go into much more detail than we could…and for a short-and-simple urban legend, it seems to cover all the bases.
We don’t have time for a deep dive into this strange world (yet?) but I definitely didn’t get a full sense of how much and how wide when I took a peek at it… – Jacob The range of demons, gods, mythicals, and so on in the series is truly vast (and includes YHVH, Metatron, AND Demiurge, so that should cover your creator-of-all bases). The Liberation Dx2 is a fighting monster game for portables, but most of the rest of the series seems to be Japanese style RPGs. The franchise is definitely for mature audiences, but it’s a bit more than fighting sex demons, and has been around since 86 or so in different forms, with at least one anime movie.
So far as Shin Megami Tensei Liberation Dx2, Jacob thinks he looked upon the full, NSFW glory of Tyrant Mara a little too soon. Basic plot seems to be “hell became overpopulated so the leadership turned to media-driven entertainment to deal with several problems at once. It may in fact be a genre-defining game for you. A few video games caught our eye this week…If you’re a fan of cute, infernal 2 on 2 team play games, this is likely to be your best pick for 2021.