Garmore's Den

NOW PLAYING

What I'm currently watching, reading, playing, or listening to

TV

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 24/52)

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.

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.

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.

Thud! (A Discworld Novel)

On a whim, I checked out a discworld book at random from my local library. I TRIED to find an early one, but I was kind of in a hurry. (People were using the shelf...)
Thud! is a book about the police, but not like that. It's a book about how fucking stupid and inept the police are. And also how the police are Very. Very Racist. I'm not deep in this one yet, but I AM enjoying watching these coppers do everything they can to get out of doing their job.