NOW PLAYING
What I'm currently watching, reading, playing, or listening to
TV
- Mobile Suit Gundam (7/43)
- Heard MANY good things about Mobile Suit Gundam and so far, it's living up to the hype. I haven't watched a lot of 70s anime but I loooove this show's animation style. Gundam is nice and chunky. Its movements have a nice weight.
Court Martial Counter:2 - Mobile Suit Gundam: 00 (16/25)
- I'm watching another Gundam show because I played the card game and wanted to know what exactly these guys' deal was. 00 is apparently about a terrorist cell that shows up to war zones and fights both sides until they give up on doing a war. Armed Intervention, they call it. Like the card from the game :)
I'm a smidge upset to find out Tieria is not a woman. Four main pilots and not one woman? Okay, Sunrise. - Number 1 Sentai Gozyuger
- A number of friends have fallen off this one, but I'm still going strong. The beginning of the show is kind of weak in terms of characterization for the team, but every week now they say something or think something or do something that just drives me crazy. Hoeru is a truly miserable person in ways that FASCINATE me. I'm so glad his doggy behavior is more than just a bit he does. The others kind of see him as this lost puppy too. They just are incapable of hating him.
We'd be sad if our dog went missing.
That line singlehandedly rewired my brain chemistry. - Digimon Universe: Appli Monsters (Rewatch, Episode 29/52)
- Appmon is probably my favorite digimon season, but I haven't watched it all the way through since it first aired, so I'm hankering to come back to it and see if it still holds up.
Episode 12 Update:
Yeah, so this show is EXACTLY as good as I remember it. I can't believe it holds up just as well 9 years later. It might even be "more relevant" now as technology advances and "AI" becomes a more relevant part of daily life. Obviously, there aren't intelligent, sentient "AI" like Leviathan running around in real life, but I find it interesting how technology hasn't really "outpaced" Appmon's scifi future yet.
I found myself on the verge of tears thinking about how Rei learned to cook for his little brother and then when that brother went missing, he started subsisting off of convinience store food while he overworked himself. It's something so simple, a detail that many other shows wouldn't care to showcase. It's a tangible change for the worse in Rei's life following Hajime's kidnapping. The poor kid is taking TERRIBLE care of himself. - Kamen Rider Zeztz
- It's kind of a given that I watch this year's Kamen Rider. We're really early, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Show's really stylish and the characters are lovable. Really like the detective guy. He's so smiley.
Episode 22 Update:
We fell off the Zeztz train for a little bit while we tried to process all that stuff that happened with Maya Imamori... but now that we're back, I can tell you this might be some of Yuya Takahashi's best work. It's got a nice blend of modern rider aspects (tons of transforming characters that fight each other with flashy new forms each week) and old staples (Investigation Support Team comprised of Normal Humans who are every bit as interesting as the Kamen Riders). It utilizes the classic staple of, "Heroes and Villains drawing power from the same source" as a fun twist, rather than something that's obvious from the beginning. Also, I really hope this storyline about Nem learning to Lucid Dream is leading to somehting. - Digimon Beatbreak
- The new digimon season! What an interesting world they've managed to set up in a single episode. It's very kind of like if Devil Survivor took place in a techno future where everyone's phones were taking their vitals all the time and also shaped like eggs.
GAMES
- The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy (Dawg, I don't know how to categorize my progress in this game.)
- Truly incredible game so far. It was a really fascinating decision to basically TELL AN ENTIRE STORY before the
true game
begins. Very Ushikoshi in that way. Most of the things I like about Ushikoshi and Kodaka's works are present in Hundred Line. I can't wait to REALLY dig into the meat of this game's themes and what not once I've played more of it. (has already played over 100 hours of Hundred Line...) - Melty Blood: Type Lumina
- The game that got me involved with the FGC again. If it weren't for this, I wouldn't have met some of the friends I have now. I'm enjoying it a lot. It's super snappy and responsibe. The aerial footsies is something truly unique to this game. Jumping in is SO STRONG. Most importantly of all, I love Arcuied.
- White Album 2
- Because of the lovely girls at Fate/Moon Archive, I've started reading White Album 2, a Romance Drama about musicians who have very differing ideas of what a "Friend Group" should look like. If you like NTR, or really good foley work, I can't recommend White Album 2 more.
Introductory Chapter Update
Having officially finished White Album 2: Introductory Chapter, I have to say... It's already an incredible VN. It could have ended there and I would think, "Wow, what a masterpiece." The idea that there's MORE suffering for Haruki and Setsuna in my future DELIGHTS me. Setsuna has a route in Closing Chapter, but there's just no way it's like. Good for her. Right? - Fate/Hollow Ataraxia
- The sequel to Fate/Stay Night! I'm not very deep into it, but I like this Butterfly Dream aspect it's got going on where we switch back and forth between Bazett and Shirou's perspectives. Something is so clearly wrong with BOTH of their scenarios. The twin masters that look exactly like Rin and Sakura, Saber being ALIVE following the Holy Grail war, what could be the reason for this? I have to know.
BOOKS
- Destroy All Humans, They Can't Be Regenerated
- This one's a manga about Magic: The Gathering and LOVE. It follows two very stupid teens as they pursue their passion for the card game and for one another. I'm liking it a lot thus far. I'm about 5 volumes deep; it manages to keep me turning pages with some truly immaculate combos and a pretty cute romance plotline. Multiple times, characters have dueled with love confessions on the line. Every single time, it gets me.
I always feel bad for the secondary love interest in this kind of story, though. Yakumo just wants to be happy with Kano, but I know that can't happen. It was so rough watching her lose to Sawatari at the regional. The kind of games neither player can afford to lose are my favorite in manga like this, even if the results are emotionally devestating.
Most TCG manga and anime have a clear and obvious "villain" who cannot be allowed to win. Destroy All Humans lacks this, but it opens the door for plenty of scenarios where a game's result can be both shocking AND deserved. Major character twists ride on if a character sideboarded correctly or not.
Sideboarding doesn't even get addressed in a lot of other works like this... By default, matches in DAH are best-of-3s. Sometimes they'll skip over a particularly decisive Game 2 victory to focus on the deciding game, with Gmae 1 being an introduction to both players' strategies as they feel each other out. It grounds the gameplay in the realism of actually going to a Magic tournament with your sideboard in hand while making sure the pace isn't bogged down by making every game take three times as long as it should. - Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt (16/27)
- Another manga, this one takes place during Gundam's One Year War. It's about a completely different cast of characters than Gundam 79. Io Flemming is a Federation Gundam pilot who is Actually Kind Of A Fucking Jackass, If I'm Being So For Real Right Now. Daryl Lorenz is an amputee Zeon soldier with an incredible aim. The two of them develop an unhealthy rivalry over how fucking bad they want to kill each other. This series really shows off the worst and best of both Zeon and the Earth Federation.
